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Forty years after giving a speech that led to the end of the death penalty in France, former justice minister Robert Badinter continues to fight for the abolition of capital punishment around the world.
“I am sure that the movement towards abolition will continue. Sooner or later it will win,” Badinter said Wednesday at a seminar organized by the French National Assembly on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the abolition of the death penalty.
Badinter, 93, who served as justice minister under Socialist President François Mitterrand, fought to end the death penalty at a time when most French people supported the practice.
On September 17, 1981, Badinter delivered a historic two-hour speech to MPs, in which he claimed that only totalitarian regimes applied the death penalty.
“In countries of freedom, abolition is almost always the rule; in countries where dictatorship reigns, the death penalty is still practiced, ”he told lawmakers at the time.
The day after the speech, the National Assembly adopted with an overwhelming majority a first bill, the final version of which entered into force on October 9 of the same year.
The abolition of the death penalty was enshrined in the French constitution in 2007.
Badinter has since fought for this practice to be banned around the world.
“Progress in this cause has exceeded our expectations,” he said Wednesday.
Three-quarters of the 198 United Nations countries have abolished the death penalty “in law or de facto,” he said, and in Europe, only Belarus has not moved to abolish the practice, which shows the lasting link between dictatorship and the death penalty. ”.
Among countries that continue the practice, Badinter highlighted China, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, while in the United States, which continues to execute prisoners, “the march towards ‘abolition continues’.
The former minister also spoke of the need to rethink the French prison system, in particular prison overcrowding, “which weighs particularly heavily on our country”.
(with AFP)
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