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Raymond Forni: "Getting the death penalty abolished takes time"

Raymond Forni, President of the French National Assembly, has a long record of opposing the death penalty - indeed he acted as rapporteur on the Act of 9 October 1981, which abolished it in France.  He is one of the main sponsors of the appeal launched in Strasbourg on 22 June by national and international parliaments for a world-wide moratorium on executions, pending universal abolition.  Exclusive interview

Interview (22.06.2001)

Question: Mr. Forni, you are the President of the French National Assembly. You are also one of the people behind the appeal launched by the presidents of national and international parliaments for a worldwide moratorium on executions, until the death penalty is universally abolished. Everywhere, even in non-democratic countries, the death penalty is enforced on the strength of laws voted by parliaments - so why are you appealing to states and not to your parliamentary colleagues?

Raymond Forni: Obviously, we are appealing to national parliaments. This congress is being attended by Nicole Fontaine, President of the European Parliament, Lord Russell-Johnston, President of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, and representatives from 13 national parliaments, including the President of the Senate of Chile - which, just a few days ago, became the latest country to abolish the death penalty. We are, in other words, a congress of the world's parliaments. So we are addressing the world's parliamentarians - but we are also addressing public opinion, which can play a decisive part in changing national situations.

Question: In calling for a moratorium, isn't the appeal tacitly admitting that abolition is too much to hope for at the moment?

Raymond Forni: Not at all. It is admitting that getting the death penalty abolished takes time. My own country, France, is an example. Way back, at the time of the French Revolution, Robespierre himself was talking about abolition. Victor Hugo was talking about it again in the mid-nineteenth century - but it took over a century to make it a reality. Calling for immediate abolition would have been completely unrealistic. On the other hand, calling for a moratorium makes sense, since it gives the countries which are not yet convinced a chance to see for themselves that having no executions does not encourage crime or violence. They can also see for themselves that the death penalty is not just barbarous, but useless.

Question: You were a member of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly from 1973 to 1978, at a time when the member states still accepted the death penalty. Today, you want observer status taken away from the US, because of its policy on executions. Surely this is a case of double standards?

Raymond Forni: First of all, this isn't just a question of the US, but also of Japan, which has observer status too. Having been a member myself, I remember very clearly that the compatibility of the death penalty with defence of the universal principles of human rights - one of the Council of Europe's main functions - was the subject of long and heated debate in the Assembly. The question today is a legal one. We have to decide whether observer status is compatible with failure to respect one of the basic principles on which the Council is founded. The observers themselves claim to respect the principles of democracy and human rights - and the organisation is fully entitled to call on them to do so.