The President of Rwanda Paul Kagame has said death penalty is not a form of justice people need. Kagame was addressing hundreds of worldwide participants who turned up for death penalty conference in Kigali.
Death penalty conference held in Kigali was among high profiled events across the globe to mark world day against death penalty.
Kagame’s remarks while addressing the participants, referred to Rwanda’s experience after 1994 Genocide.
“After wide consultations and debts Rwandans came to the conclusion that under these circumstances of executing criminals was not the form of justice that the people needed. Both victims and perpetrators need to restore their faith in the value and sanctity of life, believe in the ability to live together again and a more humane sense of justice,” Kagame said.
“The government couldn’t become a mass executioner in order to correct mass murder. So we chose to break with the past and abolish death penalty in order to move forward. We have never regretted that decision,” Kagame added.
He said that because of Rwanda’s decision towards death penalty, legal and social environment in the country provides a sense of satisfaction and security among the citizenry which reinforces belief in communal harmony and value of life.
He told the participants that Rwandans have achieved a degree of unity and reconciliation in just a decade and half because a culture of forgiveness not vengeance has taken root.
In practical terms, Kagame added saying death penalty would have meant executing more than a million people in addition to the loss Rwanda had already witnessed during the genocide.
“Regardless of the extreme circumstances there is no doubt the social consequences that would have accompanied such mass execution. What we needed most was away to punish crime and impunity, heal the physical and emotional wounds of survivors of the genocide and deliver justice to all,” He emphasied.
He said Rwanda’s experience illustrated was to make people get inspired not held by a sense of idealism opposition to the penalty.
President wondered what results have the world witnessed after centuries of administering Death penalty saying that the general conscious shows there are results adding that this should the time people to have another careful look at the issue and possibly move forward towards abolishing it.
“In my opinion to whether the death penalty should or should not be abolished lies in another question- Does the legal taking away of life really provide the most effective deterrent offering us enough substantive evidence to tie us to this form of punishment? I believe it does not,”. Kagame wondered.
Despite the pain and desire for justice Rwanda’s victims’ families felt which is understandable and cannot be ignored the kind of punishment policy would be put in a broader context.
It is this reason and historical circumstances that Rwanda took a definite stand on the subject and abolished the death penalty in the year 2007, according to president Kagame.
He says Rwanda is committed to the protection of fundamental human rights for all even though there was a time in history when some Rwandans were denied these rights including the right to life which denial culminated to the death of over 1million people in the genocide of 1994.
The genocide and its aftermath raised serious issues of justices some practical others philosophical that the government had to deal with.
The law as it existed then provided that those who had committed genocide should suffer the ultimate punishment of death.
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