A world of protest against the death penalty

Social justice news
December 2004

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A world of protest against the death penalty
Monuments in more than 300 cities around the world were illuminated on November 30 in protest against the death penalty.

Stefania Tallei, head of the Community of Sant'Egidio's Anti Death Penalty Campaign, told Fides news service the project began in Rome in 2002. She said: "We lit up the Colosseum to increase awareness on the problem of the death penalty all over the world. Since then every year on November 30 monuments in many parts of the world are illuminated to encourage as many people as possible to join our campaign."

In Rome the day was marked by a meeting at the Palazzo Leopardi in Trastevere, followed by a march through the streets to the Colosseum. November 30 is the date on which the Grand Duchy of Tuscany abolished the death penalty in 1786. Ahead of his times, Grand Duke Leopoldo passed a law to abolish torture and the death penalty.

The U.S. death penalty is currently in the global spotlight with dozens of mistakenly convicted death row prisoners being freed in recent years. Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court banned executions of the mentally disabled. In Illinois, the outgoing governor in January 2003 cleared the nation's eighth biggest death row. In June, New York's highest court threw out the state's death penalty law.

The unevenness around the country in applying the death penalty is also cause for concern to many. At the extremes are California, where the pace of death-sentence appeals and executions is extremely slow, and Texas, which has put more than three times as many inmates to death as the next closest state since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

The 36 other states that sanction executions fall between.

Public approval of capital punishment in the USA has slid from 80 percent in 1994 to 66 percent a decade later, according to Gallup polls.

Cities that held observances included: Milan, Florence, Naples, Genoa, Palermo, Turin, Venice, Madrid, Barcelona, Vienna, Brussels, Geneva, Berlin, Paris, Dublin, Copenhagen and Stockholm, Tirana and Kosovo. For the first time Mexico City and the Mexican President Vicente Fox; Buenos Aires, San Salvador, Bogota and Medellin (Colombia); Canberra and Wellington; Atlanta, Porto Alegre (Brazil), Montreal, Tokyo took part.

The Community of Sant'Egidio has focused a part of its international efforts on the fight against the death penalty: it promotes the Appeal for a Universal Moratorium which has gathered more than 5 million signatures in 150 countries around the world.

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