RESOLUTION
OF THE MALAYSIAN BAR FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY
(which
was adopted at the 60th AGM of the Malaysian Bar on 18/3/2006)
WHEREAS every human being has
the inherent right to life;
WHEREAS Malaysia has hanged at least 358 persons between 1981 and 2005;
WHEREAS about 173 persons are on death row as at December 2005;
WHEREAS
:
a)
studies conducted throughout the world over the past seventy years have
failed to find convincing evidence that
capital punishment is a more effective deterrent of crime
than long-term imprisonment;
b)
studies conducted in Australia show that abolition of the death penalty had no
effect on the homicide rate and in Canada there in fact was a sharp decline in
the homicide rate after abolition;
c)
in the United States over the past twenty years, states with the death penalty
in general have had a higher homicide rate than states without the death
penalty;
WHEREAS
on the other hand the execution of human beings by the State gives an ‘example
of barbarity’ to society and legitimizes the taking of human life;
WHEREAS
Malaysia lacks safeguards that
would ensure a fair trial such as the right to immediate access to a lawyer upon
arrest, right to full disclosure of evidence in the possession of the police and
prosecution, and has to the extreme prejudice of accused persons loaded a
capital crime statute such as the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 ( which generates the
largest number of death sentences annually ) with presumptions of trafficking
that compromise the presumption of innocence which is integral to any fair and
just criminal justice system;
WHEREAS:
a)
it is not possible in any system of human justice to prevent the horrifying
possibility of the execution of innocent persons; and
b)
the infliction of the death penalty makes wrongful convictions irreversible;
WHEREAS :
a)
122 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice
as opposed to 74 countries which retain the death penalty;
b)
An average of three countries have abolished the death penalty each year
over the last decade;
c)
the trend worldwide has been for the abolition of the death penalty;
WHEREAS
the UN Commission on Human Rights Resolution 2005/59 passed in 2005 calls upon
all states to abolish the death penalty and states that the abolition of the
death penalty is essential for the protection of the right to life of every
human being;
WHEREAS
Article 1 of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides that ‘ No one within the jurisdiction of
a State party to the present Optional Protocol shall be executed ’.
WHEREAS
the death penalty has no place in any society which values human rights, justice
and mercy;
NOW IT IS HEREBY RESOLVED that
the Malaysian Bar calls for the:
2)
An immediate moratorium on all executions pending abolition;
3)
Commutation of the sentences of all persons currently on death row;
4)
Ratification by Malaysia of the Second Optional Protocol to the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
Proposers:
N.Surendran
* the facts and
statistics relied on here are from Professor Roger Hood’s The Death Penalty( A
Worldwide Perspective) OUP 2002, Amnesty International and statistics released
by the Government of Malaysia.