Everyone at forum agreed there should be a widespread education campaign on the death penalty

Dear Editor,

Stabroek News is a good newspaper but yesterday’s headline ‘Vote on death penalty repeal has no chance’ was misleading. It is not news that many Guyanese believe in the death penalty or that the National Assembly does not at this moment have a mandate from the Guyanese people to repeal the death penalty. It is, or should be news, that everybody present, at the Justice Institute’s forum, including a number of civil society organisations, lawyers and law students, agreed that we must have a widespread education campaign on the death penalty before we can have an intelligent discussion which is based on facts and reason rather than emotion. This does not provide an exciting headline but it is a significant step forward.

The meeting was not about who is for or against the death penalty. We discussed the effectiveness of the death penalty and alternatives. I pointed out that 154 people were murdered last year, of which 29 were women killed by their partners and 2 were police officers gunned down in the street. The death penalty clearly did not stop these people from being murdered so what else should we do? That requires an informed national consensus.

Amnesty International is completely opposed to the death penalty but Ms Sangiorgio did not come to campaign against the death penalty in Guyana. The Justice Institute invited Amnesty International to provide information on international practice and standards. Any decisions on the death penalty will be taken by the Guyanese people and our elected representatives.

Ms Teixeira acknowledged that the death penalty is a very difficult issue. It cuts across party lines. But while all of Ms Teixeira’s comments were valuable, the report missed out most of the discussion. There is no mention of the fact that Guyana is the only country in South America which has not abolished the death penalty in law or practice, or that the top five executioners in the world are China, the United States of America, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, or that there is a clear trend towards the abolition of capital punishment worldwide. We noted that in the last 10 years Monaco, Liechtenstein, Iceland, Palau, Malta, Turks and Caicos Islands and Montserrat and Brunei all reported at least one year free of murder. Only Brunei has the death penalty.

One of the outcomes of the meeting was a recognition of the need to educate the public about the death penalty in Guyana – why we have it, how it works, how many are on death row, what are capital offences, what alternatives exist to make Guyana safer. The meeting also discussed ways of ensuring that there is a truly informed national conversation that includes young people, the different faiths and religions in Guyana, the interior as well as the coast, the poor as well as the rich, the families of the victims etc. It would have been fairer to mention these points in the report

A national discussion on the death penalty is an opportunity for us as a nation to discuss and reach a consensus on our core values, outside of party politics. It is also an opportunity to find common ground and work to find ways to eliminate murder in our society.

Yours faithfully,

Melinda Janki