Gail Alexan­der

MADRID–The next An­ti-Death Penal­ty Con­gress will be held in a coun­try that has not abol­ished the death penal­ty, and a call has been made to spe­cial­ly in­vite judges from states that up­hold cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.

These de­vel­op­ments cli­maxed the Fifth Con­gress in Madrid yes­ter­day which end­ed with a march by abo­li­tion­ists from around the world through down­town Madrid, Car­ni­val style to drum­ming rhythms.

T&T's Leela Ramdeen par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pa­rade's por­tray­al of the abo­li­tion­ist move­ment halt­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment via a line of mem­bers–from all over the globe–hold­ing a huge rope and noose. Ramdeen held part of the rope with oth­ers as the pa­rade at­tract­ed at­ten­tion in a swel­ter­ing sum­mer Span­ish Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon.

Ad­dress­ing par­tic­i­pants ahead of the march, the gen­er­al man­ag­er of the or­gan­is­ing en­ti­ty of the World Coali­tion Against the Death Penal­ty (WCADP), Raphael Chenuil Haz­an an­nounced the next meet­ing will be held in a re­ten­tion­ist coun­try.

No­bel Peace Prize Lau­re­ate Shirin Ebadie made the call for judges from coun­tries up­hold­ing the death penal­ty to be in­vit­ed to the next meet­ing. She al­so ap­pealed for the rest of her fel­low Peace Prize hold­ers to join the lob­by.

The de­c­la­ra­tion at the end of the meet­ing not­ed the abo­li­tion move­ment is ex­pand­ing with 70 states no longer im­ple­ment­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and re­ten­tion­ist states like Iraq show­ing con­cern on the is­sue.

How­ev­er, it was not­ed 93 states still re­tain the death penal­ty, 58 im­ple­ment it and some states which had shown in­ter­est in halt­ing have re­gressed to rein­tro­duc­tion.

The con­gress called on re­ten­tion­ist states to re­duce the list of crimes pun­ish­able by the penal­ty, im­ple­ment UN pro­to­cols on hu­man rights in­clud­ing mora­to­ri­ums and called on judges in re­ten­tion­ist states to use dis­cre­tion and not utilise cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.

Mem­bers al­so called on Par­lia­ments to laise with re­ten­tion­ist states on the mat­ter. Coun­tries which abol­ished the penal­ty were man­dat­ed to use more diplo­mat­ic ac­tion to reach re­ten­tion­ist states on the is­sue.

The move­ment's lob­by ex­pand­ing

The move­ment's lob­by is al­so ex­pand­ing via a world net­work of uni­ver­si­ties es­tab­lished in Nor­way, said Spain's Fred­er­ick May­or.

Swiss For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Di­di­er Burkhal­ter said the group will have many choic­es for the next con­gress.

A rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the In­di­an Bar As­so­ci­a­tion ap­pealed for the con­gress to be held in In­dia. Eu­ro­pean Union rep­re­sen­ta­tive on hu­man rights Stavros Lam­bini­dis, who spoke ahead of that rep­re­sen­ta­tive and who had sug­gest­ed the next con­gress be held in a re­ten­tion­ist state, had called on Africa to play a lead­er­ship role in en­cour­ag­ing states to drop the death penal­ty.

The four-day con­fer­ence aimed at height­en­ing aware­ness of the abo­li­tion thrust, gauged world­wide suc­cess in the ef­fort and planned to meet chal­lenges old and new.

Eu­ro­pean politi­cians and lead­ers, world ex­perts and No­bel Peace Prize Lau­re­ates fea­tured along­side for­mer death row ex­onorees–those proven in­no­cent af­ter death row sta­tus–from the US and Tai­wan told their sto­ries as well.

Im­pact was al­so cre­at­ed by Japan­ese pho­tog­ra­ph­er Toshi Kaza­ma who re­lat­ed touch­ing­ly his ex­pe­ri­ence in pho­tograph­ing death row teenagers in the US, and Souad Al Khame whose hus­band and son were killed by ter­ror­ists yet doesn't sub­scribe to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.

Con­gress plans Oc­to­ber 10 meet­ing in T&T

The Caribbean re­gion's 13 states which up­hold the death penal­ty fea­tured strong­ly enough for or­gan­is­ers of the con­gress, the World Coali­tion Against the Death Penal­ty, to plan a meet­ing in T&T on Oc­to­ber 10, ac­cord­ing to an an­nounce­ment to par­tic­i­pants by Carme­lo Cruz of the Puer­to Ri­can re­gion on Thurs­day. Aim is to con­sol­i­date re­gion­al abo­li­tion­ist units of each is­land to strength­en the re­gion­al lob­by.

An­oth­er con­tender to host the meet­ing was Ja­maica which al­so re­tains the death penal­ty and which like T&T has ex­pan­sive con­fer­ence fa­cil­i­ties. How­ev­er, Cruz said T&T was strate­gi­cal­ly im­por­tant since many saw it as a lead­ing Caribbean cen­tre. Maria Do­natel­li, WCAT­DP ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, told the T&T Guardian the sit­u­a­tion is to be worked out.

T&T's im­pact on the sit­u­a­tion has been al­ready been es­tab­lished. Par­tic­i­pants from the UN, Ja­maica and Ar­genti­na all ref­er­enced is­sues rel­e­vant to the mat­ter by T&T at­tor­ney Dou­glas Mendes, SC, for­mer pres­i­dent Arthur NR Robin­son as well as is­sues con­cern­ing T&T where for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tions were at odds with the abo­li­tion thrust. The In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court–born of Robin­son's ini­tia­tive–and where cur­rent Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona once served in his pre­vi­ous in­car­na­tion on is­sues with the for­mer Yu­goslavia and Rwan­da, have al­so been talk­ing points in the ses­sions.

The ICC is ex­pect­ed to as­sume larg­er sta­tus at the next con­gress fol­low­ing a idea point by WCADP Pres­i­dent Flo­rence Bel­livi­er on Fri­day.