Dear Editor,

In his letter to SN of 4th July Ambassador Kopecky spoke the truth when he said the death penalty is a cruel and inhuman punishment (‘Guyana should abolish the death penalty’). It is also being rejected by more and more countries. At the UN last year, 117 countries voted in favour of a moratorium on the death penalty, 34 abstained. 38 including Guyana voted against the moratorium. Guyana is now the last retentionist country in South America.

In 2014, only one country in the Americas actually used the death penalty ‒ the USA executed more people than Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine (Hamas in the Gaza strip), the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Taiwan combined.

The death penalty does not make Guyana a safe place. UN statistics indicate that the homicide rate in Guyana hovers around 18:100,000 persons. In the last 20 years the murder rate has not once dropped below 10:100,000. However the belief that the death penalty can deter crime is one factor which stops us from analysing critically the causes of violent crime in our country and from taking effective measures to reduce our own murder rate.

As Cesare Beccaria, the Italian philosopher and jurist, pointed out 250 years ago, “…centuries of experience have taught mankind that executions do not deter men from committing crimes.”

Let us get rid of the death penalty in Guyana and work together to create a just and violence-free society.

Yours faithfully,

Melinda Janki