Reports by Zimbabwean state media that a new hangman has been appointed raises fears that the country may be preparing to start executions again after a seven year hiatus, Amnesty International said today.
Zimbabwe hasn't conducted any executions since 2005, the same year that the country's last hangman retired.
"This macabre recruitment is disturbing and suggests that Zimbabwe does not want to join the global trend towards abolition of this cruel, inhuman and degrading form of punishment," said Noel Kututwa, Amnesty International's southern Africa director.
"The death penalty is a violation of the right to life which is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments to which Zimbabwe is a state party."
Zimbabwe's new draft Constitution, which will be put to referendum in the next few months, exempts women, men under 21 at the time of the crime and the over 70s from the death penalty. It also prohibits the imposition of the death penalty as a mandatory punishment.
While these proposed limitations to the application of the death penalty are welcome, Amnesty International calls for the death penalty to be abolished fully in the new Constitution regardless of gender and the circumstances in which a crime was committed.
"The death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights. It is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state," said Kututwa.
"We oppose the death penalty in all cases without exception regardless of the nature of the crime, the characteristics of the offender, or the method used by the state to kill the prisoner."
Amnesty International is aware of at least 76 people on death row in Zimbabwe at present. Of these 76, only two are women. The practical impact of the provisions under the current draft to exempt women would therefore not significantly reduce the use of the death penalty.
Amnesty International has been campaigning for total abolition of the death penalty in the context of the constitution-making process since 2009, and for the recognition of economic, social and cultural rights in a new constitution.
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the only way to totally abolish this form of punishment is to first agree that people can sometimes move from humans to wild animals and back. A person who rapes a child is a wild animal and therefore should not have HUMAN RIGHTS. A person who murders another just because the other does not hold the same political point of view, or other trivial reason, is not at that time a human being and shuld not deserve HUMAN RIGHTS. A mass murderer should not be described as Human.
The death sentence should be reserved for such criminals, and should be seen as improving the humanity f those that are left after the hanging. to me a politician who wants power so much he causes the deaths of other people should hung.
The government should spell out the categories of crime that result in the death sentence, rape, murder, armed robbery, burglary, etc These should then be put on billboards for all to see. After that the only inhuman act would be to keep the criminal waiting for hanging for more than three days after sentencing. I think its wrong to make them wait. Better t hang them the following morning.
Hang people "the following morning?" If hanging "the following morning" is the best way for murderers, why is Mugabe still stalking Zimbabweans even after murdering thousands of Ndebele?