Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-25-Speech-3-231"
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"en.20001025.9.3-231"2
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". – Mr President, I will sum this up very briefly and I hope Parliament will not misunderstand what I want to say at the outset. We do not want to get into competitive humanitarianism, but I feel as passionately about this subject as any Member in Parliament and I have spoken in debates about this subject as often as anyone in Parliament, indeed I suspect I have probably spoken in more debates than some people in Parliament. I have spoken in debates at university when I was a student. I have spoken in debates at universities subsequently in my political career. I have spoken on radio and television programmes. I have been booed for what I have said at public meetings on capital punishment. I have spoken in Parliament about capital punishment. I have spoken in Parliament during highly charged debates on terrorism, on terrorist acts and capital punishment, against the use of capital punishment. This is in my experience a completely unique debate. I have never taken part in a debate on capital punishment where everyone was on the same side and that is a point worth reflecting on.
The honourable lady in an extremely good and moving speech referred to the Bible and referred to Cain and Abel. The Bible has been more misused in these debates – and I am not suggesting the honourable lady was misusing it – than most other texts except perhaps for Confucius. Usually we hear the Bible quoted in another way. We hear that verse about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. That is usually the text which is quoted so it was admirable to hear the honourable lady going back even further to Genesis. And you cannot get much earlier than that. I just ask Parliament to reflect on the fact that this debate included speeches all of which were on the same side – a side with which I passionately agree. That suggests to me that we need not only to think about public information campaigns in other countries, but occasionally to think about the need for continuing public information campaigns in the European Union as well because I am not sure that everybody outside these extraordinary halls, outside this Parliament, thinks exactly as we do. And we must remember that it is one of the tasks of political leadership to carry public opinion with you and not just to assume that everybody agrees with us. I thought Mr Rutelli's idea about a European day in our calendar when we make the case again and again against capital punishment was a sensible and effective idea which falls into the area that I have been touching on.
When I find myself disagreeing with the honourable lady, my initial reaction is that I must be wrong. The disagreement we have about the UN General Assembly is solely a disagreement about tactics. There is no question that we want to see as a medium-term objective, a successful resolution and the UN General Assembly against capital punishment. There is no question about that at all. It was our view last year that we could not succeed as we would have liked. That there was the real danger of a ending up with a resolution being accepted which would have made the point with which I thoroughly disagree, and I think the honourable lady thoroughly disagrees, that the human rights record in one country is no business of other countries. We could have seen the misuse of treaty language to make that point. We want to have a good clean text denouncing capital punishment and asserting the universal validity of human rights including the sanctity of life. We want to continue to build on what has been achieved in the Commission on human rights in order to build up the majority that we would like to see in the United Nations itself.
There were several references to countries where capital punishment is carried out in prodigious, horrific quantities.
There were references to China and we know well the record there. It is an issue that we raise again and again in our human rights dialogue. I cannot say hand on heart, or even hand off heart, that it is getting us very far, but we continue to raise the issue.
It is also an issue that we raise with the United States. We made a general
in the United States in February this year, in addition to the
we made to individual state authorities: for example, in relation to individual cases of the death penalty. We called upon the United States to establish a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, with a view to completely eliminating capital punishment. We urged the United States to withdraw its reservation to the article of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights concerning the prohibition on imposing the death penalty on minors. We also called upon the United States to respect the strict conditions under which the death penalty may be used, which is set out in several international instruments.
One or two honourable Members referred to the presidential debates. They referred to the fact that both the Republican and Democrat candidates, whatever they disagreed about – the size of government, the rate of taxes, moral standards in public life – the one thing they agreed on was capital punishment. They may agree about capital punishment. They may say capital punishment is effective and morally justified because they believe that. Most American politicians, public officials, seem to take that view and it is sometimes the case that public officials, elected officials, take particular points of view because they think they are popular. It may be that, going back to the point about public information, we also have to address that issue in even perhaps the best informed society in the world.
The number of executions, the number of people in prison, the number of executions in the United States is extraordinarily high for a country whose democracy was celebrated in such appropriately eloquent terms by Alexis de Tocqueville a century ago. I am not sure what he would have thought about the presidential debates. I am not sure what he would have thought about the amount of capital punishment in the United States.
This has been a useful, if admirably atypical, debate. I hope we have it again. But I hope that we also go out and debate this issue in company which is not so uniform in its judgments and wisdom. I hope we use our intellectual as well as financial resources to put the case again and again for the sanctity of human life, against the intolerable practice of capital punishment. We must all look forward to the day when capital punishment is regarded as a medieval barbarity, as it should be."@en1
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