Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-18-Speech-4-218"
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"en.19991118.11.4-218"2
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"Mr President, every year hundreds of human beings are executed in the world – often in the so-called civilised world – at the hands of other human beings. In 1998 it was noted that there were at least 1,625 executions in 37 countries and almost 4,000 death sentences in another 78 countries. These figures refer exclusively to the information which Amnesty International has been able to collect. The true figure is, without doubt, much higher. Every year an unknown number of people are declared innocent after being executed. According to a report released recently, since 1973 and in the United States alone, 75 prisoners condemned to death were released when it was discovered that they had been wrongly convicted. We will never know how many innocent people there were amongst the approximately 7000 prisoners executed in the United States of America during this century. According to Amnesty International, for every six prisoners executed since the restoration of the death penalty in the United States, one innocent person was condemned to death and later pardoned.
Therefore, it seems to me that the Council’s proposal to the United Nations, however important and positive the initiative may be, is very timid because calls on those States which retain the death penalty – and I quote – “to progressively restrict the number of crimes for which it is imposed”.
Does that seem to us to be sufficient? Do we want to be a diplomatic Assembly or a political Parliament? That is why we ask the Council, in section 9 of this resolution, in the negotiations with third countries, to examine the possibility of incorporating the abolition of the death penalty into the clause on human rights. Perhaps the Council is not in a position to do any more, but what about us? Should we not be more demanding? Should we not be more ambitious? The answer is yes. This is why we are sending this message to the Council and all the nations of the world.
The case of the Spanish citizen, José Joaquín Martínez, is a clear example of justice with no guarantees. That is why he is calling for real justice, and that is why we support him today. He wants a new form of justice so that he can demonstrate his innocence, and he has the right to it. But I declare, we all declare together, that no death sentence is a just sentence. None is.
I will also end with a biblical quote which is more positive than the one quoted by my colleague. It is a quote from Genesis. Cain killed Abel and nobody disputed his guilt in this horrendous crime. He spilled the blood of his brother and the Lord cursed him and expelled him from his house and condemned him to live as a fugitive and a vagabond: “And Cain said to the Lord: ‘every one that findeth me shall slay me’. And the Lord said unto him: ‘Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold’. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain lest any finding him should kill him”. May nobody touch Cain, that was the message. May nobody touch Cain.
That should be our ambition: that nobody can execute any human being ever, in any part of the world, for any reason. Nobody. Not even the United States of America."@en1
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