Speech by Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, at the conference marking the first European Day against the Death Penalty

Lisbon, 9 October 2007

The year 2007 marks a decade without the death penalty in the member states of the Council of Europe. It means that no one has been hanged, poisoned, decapitated, electrocuted, shot or otherwise killed by criminal justice systems during the last 10 years anywhere in Europe except in Belarus, which is not a member of the Council of Europe.

Achieving continent-wide abolition was not easy. It took courage and persistence and much persuasion. Today, it is widely accepted that the death penalty is barbaric, that it does not deter crime, that it does not help the victims of crime, and that it transforms murderers into martyrs and judicial errors into irreversible tragedies.
But today, Europe is a death-penalty free zone, and it is largely thanks to the work of the Council of Europe. 46 European countries have ratified Protocol 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights which bans the death penalty in peacetime. Russia is the only exception. There they have a moratorium. They have abolished the death penalty in practice but not in the law so that we are still waiting for them to keep the promise they made at the time of joining the Council of Europe. However the fact remains that no one has been executed in Russia since they joined the Council of Europe 10 years ago. The majority of the rest of the Council of Europe member states have not only banned the death penalty in peacetime, but gone further by having signed and ratified Protocol 13, which prohibits the death penalty in all circumstances, in wartime as well as peace time.

Now some people ask why, after 3650 European days without the death penalty, we need a European Day against the Death Penalty.

The reply is simple – our work is not yet done. The abolition of the death penalty is far too important to be taken for granted.

We know that there are many people in Europe who continue to support the death penalty. Every time there is a particularly gruesome crime, or, in some cases, when election is coming - there are voices calling for the death penalty to be reinstated.

We cannot afford to ignore these voices or treat this subject as a taboo. It would be irresponsible and undemocratic. We have all the arguments against the death penalty, and we should not be shy about putting them in a public debate. We need to go out and explain to people why the death penalty is wrong, why it has been abolished, and why it should stay abolished. The European Day against the Death Penalty provides an opportunity to do so.

Europe’s second priority is to demonstrate that there is no contradiction between the effective fight against crime, including terrorism, and a criminal justice system which respects human rights.

The abolition of the death penalty must be accompanied by the introduction of adequate alternative sanctions – where these do not yet exist – which provide for the highest possible protection of the public and take into account the rights of the victims of crimes without compromising the fundamental principles of efficiency and proportionality of penal sanctions.

Many countries which have abolished death penalty as a result of their accession to the Council of Europe have prisons which are often in poor condition and fail to meet minimum standards in terms of space, security, health and living conditions. It is a problem for all prison populations, but especially for those serving long-term prison sentences. The Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture is regularly visiting places of detention in all European countries except non-member Belarus, and the recommendations and standards they have developed have helped to improve the situation to some extent, but not enough. There are two reasons: the shortage of money and the fact that investment in prisons is not popular so that it is not high on the political agenda.

The fact is that an effective police, judicial and prison system offers the best possible deterrent to violent crime. The Council of Europe has developed legal standards in these fields and assisted member states in their effective implementation. And we shall continue to do so in the future.

Our final priority is the death penalty elsewhere in the world. Some of our closest friends and observers at the Council of Europe continue to execute people. The 90-minute agony of Joseph Lewis Clark in a Florida prison a few months ago was dramatic evidence of the cruelty and inhumanity of capital punishment. The fact that some detainees stay for up to 30 years on death row, like Ronald Curtis Chambers, is an example of the absurdity of what constitutes a double human rights violation: the inhuman waiting period to be executed and the execution itself.

But in the United States of America the tide seems to be turning. Several states have introduced a moratorium, and the Supreme Court is currently considering whether lethal injection violates the 8^th Amendment to the US Constitution. The question the Justices will examine is whether strapping someone to a chair and poisoning him to death is cruel and unusual. To my mind, it is, as Americans would put it, a no-brainer, but we shall have to wait and see. It is encouraging that the American justice system, the politicians and public opinion have begun to question the humanity of executions. Eventually, they will understand that the problem is not the method of execution, but the death penalty itself. It cannot be fixed, it can only be abolished.

There are changes also in other parts of the world. The Chinese Supreme Court recently ordered judges to be more sparing in the imposition of the death penalty and reserve it for “an extremely small number of serious offenders”.

This is of course nowhere close to abolition or a moratorium, but it will spare a huge number of human lives. Last year, China alone carried out two thirds of the world’s executions.

On the other hand we are all bound to be disappointed by the sudden burst of executions in Japan. The recent hangings, which came after a long period without executions mean that Japan is out of step with other civilised countries.

And then there is the situation in Iraq. The Iraqi people have gained nothing from the gruesome executions of their former dictator and his closest collaborators. The death penalty does not serve justice and reconciliation. The only result of the execution of Saddam Hussein is that the former dictator is no longer paying for his terrible crimes. He is no longer being punished. He is simply dead.

The terrible suffering of the Bulgarian medical staff in Libya, and the years they spent in prison facing the prospect of execution for crimes they had not committed is another example of the blatant inhumanity of capital punishment. The show-trial which led to these sentences was an attempt to distract attention from the desperate need for proper assistance and medical care for children affected by the HIV virus. I am, of course, delighted that the Bulgarians have finally been released.

It is for all these reasons that the Council of Europe has decided to hold the European Day against the Death Penalty every year on 10 October. The abolition of the death penalty in Europe is the pinnacle of our progress in the defence of human dignity and human rights. It symbolises the progress we have made in terms of humanity and civilisation in Europe. It is why the European Day against the Death Penalty was, from the very beginning, meant to be a joint enterprise of the Council of Europe and the European Union. In fact, the credit for this idea should go to the Vice-President of the European Commission Franco Frattini, who suggested it to me the first time we met soon after he took up his responsibilities. Naturally, I hope that the European Union will be able to overcome its present difficulties in this respect and join the Council of Europe in this important initiative. And not only this initiative.

The Council of Europe and the European Union should also join forces to promote efforts to introduce a worldwide moratorium and an eventual global ban on the death penalty through the United Nations.

This is why I thank the Portuguese Government for their steadfast support for this initiative and for organising this conference. I am convinced that the European Day against the Death Penalty will help us to make progress towards the day, in a not too distant future, when the death penalty will be eradicated throughout the world.