Just a few weeks ago, hundreds of thousands of people here in Australia and across the world respectfully called for an immediate halt to plans in Indonesia to execute Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran and up to eight others on death row.
They held vigils, they signed letters and petitions, and they spoke out on social media. They also witnessed the torturous inhumanity of the death penalty up close. News updates detailed the excruciating agony of the families of those at imminent risk in Indonesia, as they watched the clock tick, never knowing how much closer their loved one was to death, battling through a media scrum for one last hug, kiss or conversation.
Hundreds of thousands of us across the nation felt enormous sadness when we heard the news that the heartwarming stories of reform, of the painter and the pastor, had been wasted on an archaic and barbaric form of ‘justice’.
The Australian government has been outspoken in condemning the execution of Andrew and Myuran and state sanctioned killings. But it must now harness the shock and anger over their deaths and become an international leader against the death penalty.
Amnesty International Australia has joined forces with Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Law Centre, Reprieve and other leading human rights organisations in Australia, putting to the Australian Government a four step blueprint of how it can build on this momentum and help move the world to being death penalty free.
The blueprint proposes developing a new Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade public strategy aimed at ending the death penalty, everywhere, providing the aid program with new funding to support organisations campaigning for abolition and joining forces with other nations, in our region and globally, to push for the universal adoption of a global moratorium on the death penalty. Here in Australia, the government must also put in place stronger legislation so the Australian Federal Police is required by law not to share information with other law enforcement agencies that would potentially result in suspected perpetrators facing the death penalty.
Australia has had a proud and strong history of advocating internationally for human rights and the Australian government must now actively campaign to end this inhuman and unjust punishment.
We know from over 30 years of experience that this change is possible. When Amnesty International started its campaign to end the death penalty, only 16 countries were abolitionist. Now that number stands at 140 countries that have stopped using the death penalty either in law or practice, with Fiji the latest to abandon it as recently as February.
Despite promising steps away from the death penalty prior to 2013, and four years without any executions, Indonesia’s resumption of this cruel and inhuman punishment has put it well out of step with the rest of the world.
Fourteen people have now been put to death in Indonesia in 2015, and the government has announced plans for further executions this year.
This new blueprint gives the Australian government the opportunity to channel the pain and suffering the death penalty has brought so many Australians, into positive, effective and lasting change.
Amnesty International’s decades of research on the death penalty shows that a large number of death sentences are handed down after unfair trials or on the basis of “confessions” extracted through torture and other ill-treatment, in countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, North Korea, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. In Iran, some of these “confessions” were broadcast on television before the trial even took place. In China failings include lack of prompt access to lawyers, lack of presumption of innocence, political interference in the judiciary and failure to exclude evidence extracted through torture.
The Australian government must now channel the grief and anger over recent state sanctioned killings in Indonesia into a force for good and use this blueprint to push forward with its steps to end the ultimate in cruel and degrading punishments: the death penalty.
Share
