A firm ‘No’ to the death penalty

The Horizon Group Against the Death Penalty, a satellite organisation of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, and Amnesty International Poland issued a joint declaration to express their deepest concern about statements made by certain politicians and columnists who supported the idea of reinstating the death penalty in Poland and Europe.‘Death penalty is cruel, inhuman and degrading. The use of this penalty is nothing else than a murder in retaliation, violating the very essence of humanity. Criminology studies have proved beyond any doubt that the death penalty has no deterrent effect on other potential delinquents. The death penalty will not protect us from such tragedies as the one that has occurred in Norway’, reads the statement.

At the same occasion the organisations remind that Poland has not yet ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Protocol 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights. Authors of the statement urged Poland to promptly ratify the two protocols.