The media reported the appointment of unnamed hangman of Malawian origin recently.
“This macabre recruitment is disturbing and suggests that Zimbabwe does not want to join the global trend towards abolition of this cruel, inhuman and degrading form of punishment. The death penalty is a violation of the right to life which is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments to which Zimbabwe is a state party,” Noel Kututwa, Amnesty International’s Southern Africa Director, said in Johannesburg on Friday.
He called for the death penalty to be abolished fully in the new Constitution regardless of gender and the circumstances in which a crime was committed.
Zimbabwe’s new draft Constitution, which will be put to referendum in the next few months, exempts women, men under 21 at the time of the crime and the over-70s from the death penalty.
It also prohibits the imposition of the death penalty as a mandatory punishment.
“The death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights. It is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the State.
Zimbabwe has not conducted any executions since 2005, the same year that the country’s last hangman retired,” Kututwa said.
At least 76 people are on death row in Zimbabwe. Of these, two are women.
Amnesty International has been campaigning for total abolition of the death penalty in the context of the constitution-making process since 2009, and for the recognition of economic, social and cultural rights in a new constitution.
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Let us have no mercy on these murderers on death penalty. They killed innocent souls, so let face the consequences of their actions. Zvavaiurya vamwe vanhu vaifunga kuti imbudzi here? What is Amnesty International? What is international about having mercy on killers instead of victims? V
If someone murders another person, and their guilt can be proved indisputably and beyond doubt, they should, in turn, die, for that is what they have inflicted on the murdered person. the only mitigating circumstance is self-defence. The gender of the offender should not be a consideration in this matter.
The death sentence s a VERY powerful deterrant.
It is better to sentence the man/woman to life imprisonment, with very hard labour. We all know that there are people who have been wrongly convicted, or framed. The death sentence is something that can be, and is, used as a means of getting rid of somebody. It should be banished. Make the person work hard, growing vegetables, digging trenches, etc. so that they plough back into the community from which they took away.
Oh no this is not good