From 18 to 23 August a delegation of the Nonviolent Radical Party and Hands Off Cain composed of Sergio D'Elia, Secretary General of HOC, the Hon. Elisabetta Zamparutti, MP, Treasurer of HOC, and Sen. Marco Perduca, co-vicepresident of the NRP will be visiting Zimbabwe to promote the support for the Universal Moratorium of the Death Penalty. In December of this year, the UN General Assembly will be voting upon a resolution that since 2007 has been considering the suspetion of execution the way to go to promote the abolition of the death penalty the world over.
Here is a brief on the death penalty in Zimbabwe
In 2012, for the
ninth consecutive year, Zimbabwe has not carried out executions.
On 10 October
2011, Zimbabwe was reviewed under the Universal
Periodic Review (UPR) of the UN Human Rights Council. On the issue of capital
punishment, the Country’s delegation stated
that abolition of the death penalty was under consideration as part of the
process of writing a new Constitution, which started in 2010 and is supposed to
be concluded in 2012. “Zimbabwe is exercising a de facto moratorium… Currently there is constitutional debate on
whether the death penalty should be retained or abolished,” said
the Government in its national report.
On 10 October
2011, speaking at a function organised by the Zimbabwe Association for Crime
Prevention and Rehabilitation of the Offender (Zacro), during a campaign
against capital punishment, Minister of Defence Emmerson Mnangagwa, who
survived a death sentence because he was underage, told delegates that he had
been facing resistance in Cabinet as he tried to have the death sentence
scrapped from the Constitution. He said Cabinet was divided in the middle over
whether or not to abolish the death penalty. “My views on the death penalty
are, to a large extent, informed by the harrowing experiences I went through while
on death row, the sanctity of life and the need to rehabilitate offenders,”
Mnangagwa said, referring to the pre-independence horrors he experienced while
on death row from which he was saved by an age technicality. Former High Court
judge Justice Simpson Mutambanengwe, who has in his career sentenced convicts
to death, has also come out clear about what he thinks about the death penalty.
“We take an oath to do justice according to the law. As a judge, you do the
best you can with the evidence given to you and some judges strain to find the
extenuating circumstances just to evade the death penalty,” said Mutambanengwe.
On 28 March 2012,
Constitutional Affairs Minister Eric Matinenga said Zimbabwe was considering
cutting back on hangings according to a proposed new constitution, reserving
the death penalty for only extreme cases of aggravated murder. He said only
killers who commit “gratuitous violence to the extent it becomes sickening”
will be hanged. Matinenga told The Associated Press that despite calls for its abolition, the
death penalty cannot be “totally scrapped because there are murders that make
you shudder.” In a compromise between human
rights groups and traditional supporters of capital punishment, it will be up
to judges to rule on the level of violence used. Rights groups argue every
criminal killing is extreme violence and say it will be open to wide
interpretations in courts asked to differentiate between axing deaths in
village disputes, anger-fuelled shootings and cold-blooded, premeditated
murder.
On 19 July 2012, the Select Committee of
Parliament on the New Constitution (COPAC), that was established in April 2009
to spearhead the Constitution-making process in the country, announced that the
new draft constitution was complete and signed by all the party negotiators to
the 2007 Global Political Agreement (i.e. the Zimbabwe African National
Union-Patriotic Front and the two Movement for Democratic Change formations)
and members of COPAC's management committee. Zimbabwe’s new draft constitution
has abolished the death sentence for women and those under the age of 21 and
above 70 years, but rights groups pushing for the total removal of the death
penalty say it does not go far enough. “Every person has the right to life,” is
written in Article 4.5 of the new Charter. However, “A law may permit the death
penalty to be imposed only on a person convicted of murder committed in
aggravating circumstances,” Article 4.5 adds. “The penalty must not be imposed
on a person who was less than twenty-one years old when the offence was
committed; or who is more than seventy years old; the penalty must not be
imposed or carried out on a woman,” the draft says. “The law must permit the
court a discretion whether or not to impose the penalty.”
Once approved by
an All-Stakeholders Conference, the
new Charter will be subject to a constitutional referendum planned by the end
of 2012.
The current Constitution of
Zimbabwe at Chapter 3, section 12, dealing with the protection of right to life
states that: “No person shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in
execution of the sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence of which
he has been convicted.”
After
independence in 1980, there were nine offences which attracted the death
penalty, but over the years they have been reduced to three. Currently, murder,
treason and mutiny are punished by death under the Zimbabwean law.
All persons
sentenced to death have the automatic right of appeal to the Supreme Court, as
well as that of application to the President for pardon or commutation of the
death sentence to a lesser sentence.
The March 2002
presidential elections took place amidst widespread allegations of vote-rigging
and intimidation of the opposition, which led the Commonwealth to suspend
Zimbabwe’s membership.
Treason charges
were brought against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change leader
Morgan Tsvangirai in 2003. The year-long high profile trial was finally
concluded on October 15, 2004, when Zimbabwe’s High Court acquitted the
Tsvangirai, saying the State had failed to prove its case beyond reasonable
doubt.
In September
2008, a power-sharing agreement was reached between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, in
which Mugabe remained president and Tsvangirai became prime minister. The
agreement was not fully implemented until 13 February 2009, two days after the
swearing in of Tsvangirai as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.
No executions
have been carried out under the three-year old coalition government. Prime
Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s former opposition Movement for Democratic Change
party has voiced its disapproval of hanging.
Execution orders
must be signed by the coalition’s co-ministers of justice and approved by
President Robert Mugabe and Tsvangirai.
Official records
show 78 people have been executed in Zimbabwe since the African Country won
independence from Britain in 1980.
The last executions were carried out on 13 June 2003, when Stephen Chidhumo, Elias
Chauke, William Mukurugunye and John Nyamazana were hanged
at the same prison complex where
Morgan Tsvangirai, the Zimbabwean opposition leader, was awaiting trial on
treason charges. The four prisoners had all been
convicted of murder “without extenuating circumstances,” and their execution
took place without any warning to their families.
In 2010, the
justice ministry said it was looking for a new hangman. The last executioner
retired after carrying out his last execution in 2003, saying he was struggling
with his conscience in the face of superstitious local custom and beliefs in
avenging ancestral spirits. After that, authorities reportedly sought a foreign
executioner from Asia.
As of 28 March
2012, there were at least 61 prisoners on death row.
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