United States Behind Rwanda in Human Rights?
Responding to the international community's overwhelming denunciation of the death penalty, the Justice Minister of Rwanda, Tharcisse Karugarama, recently announced that the government will propose a law ending capital punishment by December 2006. This move would allow Rwanda to try suspects charged with atrocities in the 1994 war, who are currently in countries that refuse to extradite prisoners if they face the death penalty.In 2005, there were at least 2,148 executions in 22 countries around the world. China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States were responsible for 94% of these known executions. 124 countries worldwide have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice, including all of Western Europe. Those nations frequently refuse to extradite those suspected of crimes in countries that do allow the death penalty, for fear they may be executed.
Recently, nations such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland have refused to extradite those suspected of orchestrating genocide in Rwanda. Suspects held under United Nations auspices also are not sent to the country if the death penalty is to be sought. Amnesty International, in a statement regarding death sentences in Rwanda, urged the country to commute the sentences to "other appropriate penalties, commensurate with the seriousness of the crimes which do not violate the right to life and the right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment..... Exclusion of the death penalty is in keeping with the desire of the Rwandese people to see an end to death and violence in their country."
Rwanda's Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama admits the majority of the population have emphatically expressed their desire to continue using the death penalty. There are currently some 650 prisoners on death row in the country's overcrowded penitentiaries. In 1998, 22 people found guilty of masterminding the genocide were executed.
But ideas on capital punishment seem to be evolving. "In spite of genocide's aftermath," said Minister Karugarama, "Rwanda remains a country which needs to rebuild itself anew and integrate itself into the reality of standards of international justice."
Only the United States, which allows the death penalty, has extradited a genocide suspect to Rwanda. In 2005, Enos Kagaba was deported from Minnesota, after he was judged to have entered the country illegally. The United States has executed 1,045 men and women since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
Alison, No Death Penalty Wisconsin
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