Rwandan : World Day Against the Death Penalty

President Paul Kagame

This letter was delivered on October 10, 2005

World Day Against the Death Penalty

Dear...,

We are pleased and honoured to address you and the Rwandan people. We want to assure you that we are in solidarity with the efforts of all Rwandan citizens who aim to restore justice and human rights after a long period of terrible tribulations in your Country. It is in a spirit of deep friendship and humility that we request that you do your best to achieve, as soon as possible, the complete abolition of the death penalty in Rwanda, and that in the meantime you maintain the present moratorium on executions.

We are aware that we write to you from a privileged place, a part of the world where survival, freedom, safety and peace are assured. We are also aware that our privileges have come at a high cost to other, less fortunate populations. As citizens of the industrialized West, we must accept responsibility for an economic system that excludes and exploits billions of our fellow human beings.

It is our sincere desire to work for change even as we hope for an era of freedom, justice and peace, a time when relationships among individuals and among nations will be ruled by a common respect for human rights rather than by force, violence, and abuse.

We believe that the solemn words from the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man, issued on December 10, 1948, are still valid and true: "recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world."

These words give us the strength to dare ask you to abolish the death penalty, which offends personal dignity and undermines the enjoyment of the first and fundamental human right: the right to life. This right is without doubt a condition for the respect of all other rights.

Capital punishment, which has been a part of human history through millennia, no longer has a place in modern and civilized legal system. In the second half of the Eighteenth century, thanks to the Italian scholar Cesare Beccaria, the abolitionist idea was born. Today, the countries that maintain the death penalty in their legal system are a minority, and those who actually enforce it are even fewer. This shows the growing understanding that the death penalty, which originated in fear and the wish for revenge, is neither fair nor useful; it does not fight criminality; nor does it uplift the morality of a country.

You are facing huge problems - the administration of justice in regard to the tens of thousands of people responsible for crimes against humanity; the struggle to find a way to insure basic survival for all your citizens, to solve serious health problems, and to grant civil rights, particularly women’s rights. Yet these problems do not make the issue of the death penalty a secondary or negligible problem.

Mr. President, Rwandan friends, we urge you to take a brave step forward: Abolish the death penalty and let Rwanda join a universal ideal of civilization. Help to heal the wounds in society, promote a positive image of your Country in the world, and increase international co-operation and solidarity.

We moreover beg you to add your voice to the abolitionist ones in the international seats to call upon all States that still maintain the death penalty to abolish the death penalty completely and, in the meantime, to establish a moratorium on executions.

Thanking you in advance for an answer, we remain
respectfully yours,