Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has made it her trademark to describe political issues based on the fate of people. At the UN General Assembly in March, she spoke of the little girl Mia, who was born in a subway station in the Ukrainian capital because of the Russian air raids on Kyiv. This Tuesday she could be talking about Debra Milke, an American born in Berlin, or Antoinette Chahine from Lebanon.
The two women have in common that they were sentenced to death even though they are innocent. You are among the participants of the 8th World Congress Against the Death Penalty, which begins on Tuesday in Berlin. The Federal Foreign Office supports the organization “Ensemble contre la peine de mort” in organizing it, as does the Federal Ministry of Justice. Its boss Marco Buschmann and Baerbock will speak at the opening ceremony, which will be attended by a dozen foreign and justice ministers from abroad, including France’s chief diplomat Catherine Colonna.
Germany rejects the death penalty under all circumstances as a cruel and inhuman punishment and is committed to its abolition worldwide. “The list of reasons against the death penalty is long: it is an irreversible punishment imposed by fallible judicial systems,” Baerbock said Süddeutsche Zeitung. Their deterrent effect is questionable at best and often goes hand in hand with structural discrimination. “In the end, for me, it all comes down to this: the state has no right to take the lives of its citizens. Period.”
It is primarily authoritarian states that carry out death sentences. By far the most executions have been in China for many years. The official number is a state secret, but human rights organizations such as Amnesty International estimate that thousands of people are killed each year – more than the 80 or so countries combined that still use the death penalty. In Iran, Amnesty documented 314 executions last year, followed by Egypt with 83 and Saudi Arabia with 65; however, the kingdom executed 81 people on March 12 alone.
According to the Foreign Office, the death penalty is part of the system as an instrument of control in authoritarian regimes. They not only executed murderers, but activists and members of the opposition. The death penalty should intimidate people and silence them. As evidence, revolutionary courts in Iran recently charged demonstrators with crimes such as “war against God” and “depravity on earth,” which are punishable by death.
But Western allies, such as Japan, and above all the USA, also uphold the death penalty. Debra Milke spent 25 years on Arizona’s death row before being released and her case dropped. The congress in Berlin is expressly intended as an incentive for states that are considering abolishing the death penalty. Attempts by Berlin to persuade representatives of the government of US President Joe Biden or individual US states to participate were unsuccessful.