Monika Jorde
NEWS REPORTER
The United States uses a double standard when it comes to human rights issues, said University of Houston professor Robert Buzzanco.
The United States, as a member of the United Nations, is attempting to force Iraq to comply with U.N. standards on human rights.
When faced with human rights issues within in its own borders, however, America ignores the explicit goal of the U.N. to abolish the death penalty worldwide, Buzzanco said.
The United States also ignores international protests of the death penalty, said Buzzanco, who helped organize an anti-war "teach-in" two weeks ago at the University of Houston Underground Center.
"It is a form of hypocrisy (for the U.S.) to claim that Saddam Hussein has to comply to the U.N. standards of human rights and to adhere to the rule of law, but to simply ignore other U.N. human rights issues such as the worldwide abolition of the death penalty," Buzzanco said.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, initiated by the United Nations General Assembly, states that "no one within the jurisdiction of a state party should be executed."
The European Convention on Human Rights also called for an abolition of the death penalty in peacetime.
However, the United States refuses to recognize the abolition of the death penalty as a human right.
No treaty ratified by the United States bans the death penalty, explained Jordan Praust, a UH law professor specializing in international law.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by the United States in 1992, makes this reservation for countries that have not yet abolished the death penalty: "The sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes."
The fact that most nations do not use capital punishment for civil law enforcement raises the question whether such a widespread practice leads to a general pattern of expectations for international laws, Praust said.
"I do not believe that such proof exists, although a growing number of respected scholars and some states argue that customary international law prohibits imposition of the death penalty," he said.
According to Amnesty International statistics, a total of 99 countries worldwide have abolished the death penalty, leaving 95 territories and countries that have carried out executions in the last 10 years.
Among the retentionist countries, the United States is the only Western democracy that executes people for ordinary crimes other than treason. In number of executions, the U.S. ranks seventh worldwide.
Marking an international trend towards the practice, former leading countries in execution such as South Africa, Russia and the Ukraine have recently made important steps toward abolishing the death penalty.
South Africa has formally abolished the death penalty.
The Ukraine and Russia have also promised do away with it this decade as a prerequisite for joining the Council of Europe, a 40-nation organization.
Most countries that have abolished the death penalty reason that it conflicts with basic human rights.
In a landmark decision in 1989, the European Court of Human Rights said that application of the death penalty is a violation of human rights.
The United Nations Charter, which addresses the abolition of the death penalty on a worldwide basis as one of its subscribed goals, establishes for its members a "moral commitment of foremost importance."
"The United States just ignores the issues that are not of interest for its politics," Buzzanco said.
"The United States uses the U.N. just as a political tool. In the '80s, when the U.N. acted on the Cuba or Central America issue, that became a broad public issue.
However, if the U.N. or even the Pope speaks out against the death penalty, nobody learns about it."
Others on campus shared Buzzanco's sentiments.
"So far, all these international conventions and treaties have not been taken seriously," said David Dow, a UH law professor who has represented more than 20 death row inmates in their habeas corpus appeals in the last 10 years.
"A lot of people don't know about the international actions taken to interfere with the death penalty.
"They should know that European countries are just stupefied that the United States still practices the death penalty," Dow said.
He pointed out that Americans argue that they are different from other countries and that they have to fight a crime rate that is much higher than that of most European countries.
"However, there is no evidence that capital punishment has any deterrent effect," he argued in his recent Houston Chronicle article.
"Unlike the act of imprisonment, the act of murder is inherently wrong. It is wrong for us individuals to commit homicide. It is wrong for our state to do it for us."
This is part one of a two
part series. Part two
will be in Thursday's issue
of The Daily Cougar.