Proposition 52K1233

Proposition de résolution visant à instaurer un moratoire universel sur la peine de mort.

General information ¶

Authors

Open Vld Mathias De Clercq, Bart Tommelein, Hilde Vautmans

Submission date

June 9, 2008

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

death penalty resolution of parliament

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP Open Vld N-VA LDD MR

Abstained from voting

VB

Party dissidents ¶

• Dirk Van der Maelen (Vooruit) abstained from voting.

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

July 23, 2008 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

Mr Roel Deseyn, rapporteur, refers to the written report.

Mr. Speaker, dear ministers, dear colleagues, if we have recently debated the crisis in our country and the image that our country currently has abroad, it may be hallucinating that I am going to ask something that our country should do with regard to abroad. However, I think it is important, even though our image abroad is very bad at the moment. I have been able to experience that this week at a meeting of the Chairmen of the Foreign Affairs Committees of the European Union.

The resolution presented today is very important as a signal. Currently, 137 countries have abolished the death penalty, either in law or in practice. In Belgium the death penalty has not been applied since 1863, with two exceptions, namely at the end of the First and Second World Wars. However, it took until 1996 before we voted here a law to abolish the death penalty definitively. In 2005, the abolition of the death penalty was incorporated into our Constitution. It was the first bill I signed here as a newly elected member. I am still very proud of it. Our country has not only legal instruments, we have also ratified and signed international treaties around this point.

I would like to ask you to approve this resolution later after the other votes. There are still 60 countries that carry out executions. The most well-known – which we all know – are the United States and China. However, in Egypt, Benin, Pakistan and Belarus, people are also executed annually. In 2007, 1,252 people were executed in 24 countries. We all know – colleague De Croo also said it during the discussions – that the actual figure is likely to be much higher. Officially – I say only officially – 5,186 people worldwide are waiting for their execution. An Amnesty International survey shows that the number will vary between 18,000 and 27,000.

I think we haven’t forgotten it all: those 5 Bulgarian nurses who have been imprisoned in a Libyan cell for eight years, waiting for their death penalty. Fortunately, they were released thanks to international pressure and also thanks to Belgian pressure. In the meantime, we have received them in this house and they have heartily thanked us for the pressure we have continued to exert.

Colleagues, there are currently seven official ways in which people are killed today with government approval. Terrible ways: hanging, the fire peloton, stoning, decapitating, electrocution, gasing or the deadly injection, Mrs. Van der Auwera. I cannot stand still at these horrible ways, because then I think we will not be able to eat.

The argument that is often cited is that in a horrible crime, the death penalty is the only correct punishment. I know well that at the time when Dutroux came up here in Belgium, there were a lot of people who called for the death penalty. Sometimes the crimes are indeed so horrible that you may wonder which punishment is still appropriate for the criminal. Revenge, however, is not a good punishment in a trial. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, is not an instrument: the death penalty is cruel and irreversible. In fact, it gives exactly the wrong signal: we will then do what we actually want to sanction the criminal. We will then kill someone because he or she killed someone.

A rule of law, colleagues, punishes, but never takes revenge. Liberals around the world advocate the abolition of the death penalty because it contributes to the improvement of human dignity. Furthermore, I would like to emphasize that the risk of executing innocent persons remains real as long as the death penalty exists. Amnesty International found that in the United States alone since 1973 123 prisoners from the death row have been released after their innocence has been proven. Unfortunately, for 23 cases this determination came too late. The execution was carried out.

Therefore, I ask you, colleagues, with these arguments in pocket, that this government, in every international contact – how difficult it is now even with our image – would advocate the abolition of that cruel death penalty.