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NEWSROOM (ADV) – The Zambian government has voted in the affirmative to maintain a moratorium on the death penalty at the United Nations, a senior government official said on Wednesday.
Justice Minister Given Lubinda said President Edgar Lungu had asked the country's embassy in the United States to vote positively after abstaining from voting on the moratorium for years.
The Zambian minister, in a speech delivered in anticipation of the Rome conference on the 10th anniversary of the campaign against the death penalty, said that the decision to vote in the affirmative had been taken in 2016 but that the decision to vote in the affirmative was made in 2016 but that she had just been updated, according to a press release.
According to him, although the death penalty is still included in the country's constitution, no Zambian leader has signed it since 1998, when President Frederick Chiluba, the chief president, annexed the execution of a prisoner.
The decision not to sign a death sentence has earned Zambia the reputation of being an abolitionist in the implementation of the death penalty, he added.
However, he added, unlike other easily modifiable laws, the death penalty is part of the bill of rights and can only be changed by referendum.
Lubinda said outgoing President Lungu had commuted more death sentences to life imprisonment than any other leader in the country.
© Bur-csa – N.A.African Daily Voice (ADV) – Follow us on twitter : @ADVinfo_eng
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