Prime Minister Helen Clark marked World Day against the Death Penalty by calling the practice "utterly obnoxious" and vowed the government will push for a global death penalty moratorium.
"I personally find the death penalty, in any circumstances, completely abhorrent and always have," she said at a press conference in the Beehive hosted by Amnesty International.
Ms Clark said the Government will be working with other abolitionist countries on a resolution on abolition of the death penalty to be considered by the UN General Assembly later this year.
"The resolution will ask countries to implement a global moratorium on executions as a first step towards the eventual abolition of the death penalty."
She said achieving the milestone of a death penalty free world will require huge efforts.
"The death penalty violates the right to life - it is by definition a cruel and degrading treatment. It is known to have been inflicted on the innocent. Its very nature means it cannot be reversed."
Ms Clark said although China is by far the "largest practitioner of the death penalty today" she sees no correlation between this and signing a free trade deal with China.
"Our message is to all countries who have the death penalty on the statute books and to those who specifically have it carried out."
"No Valid Arguments"
Amnesty International NZ Executive Director Ced Simpson said the death penalty is often used as a tool for political repression, against the poor and minority groups.
"Experience shows that executions brutalise everyone involved in the process and nowhere has it been shown that the death penalty has any special power to reduce crime or political violence."
There are no valid arguments in favour of the death penalty, Mr Simpson said.
"That is why Amnesty International is putting resources into a renewed international campaign around the time of the UN General Assembly resolution."
Although polls suggest the vast majority of New Zealanders are opposed to the death penalty, Mr Simpson said Amnesty understands why so many New Zealanders sometimes call for the re-introduction of the death penalty.
"We who are members of Amnesty International deal with the victims of horrific crime, horrific suffering everyday, the victims of torture, the victims of killings. And we know too well the anguish and the anger that accompanies that sort of barbarity against human beings."
There is no evidence it [death penalty] acts as a deterrent, Mr Simpson said.
"There is overwhelming evidence that it brutalises all those involved."
He welcomed the governments' commitment towards abolition and said other governments were also strong opponents of abolition.
"The Italian government has taken all sorts of creative initiatives against the death penalty – including bathing the Coliseum in red light every time someone is executed (that they know of)."
Death Penalty in NZ
New Zealand officially abolished the death penalty in 1989. The first execution in New Zealand was that of a young Maori named Maketu, convicted at Auckland in 1842.
Walter Bolton became the last to be executed when he was hanged at Mount Eden prison in 1957. In total there were 83 verified executions for murder and one for treason between these dates.
The method of execution has always been hanging, and before 1862 executions were conducted in public.
Capital Punishment Around the World
- 133 countries have now abolished the death penalty in law or in practice.
- 25 states carried out executions in 2006.
- Between 1976 and 2005, 1004 people were executed in the United States and over 3000 prisoners were awaiting execution on 'death row'.
- In China in 2001 alone, a government crackdown on crime executed at least 1781 people in about four months.
- In 2006 in China there were 1,591 'known' executions, but sources inside China say executions may total up to 10,000 people a year.
Sources: Amnesty International and NZhistory.net
The offences that carried the death penalty in New Zealand were, in accordance with English common law, 'murder, treason and piracy'.
Minnie Dean, the Only Woman Executed
One of the most famous executions was that of Minnie Dean in Invercargill in 1895 – the only woman to be executed in New Zealand.
Minnie Dean was tried for murdering a baby on her baby farm in Winton, Southland. The baby-farm project consisted of taking in illegitimate children, from mothers with otherwise-respectable backgrounds, boarding them for a while, and then finding them permanent foster homes.
The baby that Minnie Dean was tried for murdering was not the only child to die in her care - two other babies had earlier been verified as dying from natural causes.
In May 1895 the bodies of two babies and the skeleton of a third were discovered in Minnie's flower garden.
She was arrested, tried on a charge of murdering one of these, found guilty, and executed on 12 August 1895.
Minnie Dean did not appear in the witness box.
She went to the gallows calmly, protesting her innocence to the end.
Information from NZhistory.net
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