INDEX

The President of UN General Assembly is to receive 5 million signatures calling for a moratorium on executions collected worldwide by the Community of Sant’Egidio and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

Together with filmmaker Tim Robbins, abolitionists launched an appeal from New York to support the proposed UN resolution imposing a freeze on executions. Five million people signed the petition supporting this initiative. Watch the video.

France, Peru, Togo, India… Abolitionist activists sounded a rallying call for the 5th World Day Against the Death Penalty across numerous countries via a variety of initiatives.

The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (WCADP) is greatly concerned with the arrest and imprisonment, on 14 October, of Iranian abolitionist Emmadeddin Baghi.

Abolitionists from the two countries set up a gallows in the heart of the French capital similar to that used in Tehran only a few weeks ago.

In the run-up to the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, action is increasing to call China to account for its copious use of the death penalty. Far from being a western whim, abolition of capital punishment in China would be a return to an imperial decision made in the 18th century.

The 5th World Day Against the Death Penalty takes place on Wednesday, 10 October 2007. Organised by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, it is marked by thousands of citizens and hundreds of organisations across the world who together, through hundreds of local initiatives, say ‘NO’ to capital punishment.

The Federation of Liberal Students (FEL), a Belgian political organisation, has just joined the World Coalition. FEL president Arnaud Van Praet explains his organisation’s mobilisation against capital punishment.

Iran has taken a dreadful step in the wrong direction in the summer of 2007, through a combination of an increase in executions and the repression of activists opposed to the death penalty.

Kenneth Foster, who was sentenced to death in Texas for having driven a murderer in his car, saw his sentence commuted on August 30 – thanks to unprecedented mobilisation.