Summary The UN's human rights office Friday faulted Papua New Guinea's push to renew the death penalty.
GENEVA (AFP) - The UN s human rights office Friday faulted Papua New Guinea s push to renew the death penalty, but hailed the plans to repeal controversial anti-sorcery legislation which critics say has fuelled violence against women.
"We are very concerned about a recent statement issued by the government of Papua New Guinea announcing that it intends to resume the death penalty, more than half a century since it last carried out an execution," said Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The government of the impoverished Pacific nation recently said that draconian penalties were needed to tackle a surge in violent crime, and that it planned to deploy the death penalty.
"While recognising the challenge presented by the recent alarming rise in violent crime in PNG, including rape, torture and murder, the use of capital punishment has never been proved to be a more effective deterrent than other forms of punishment," Colville underlined.
The country has not carried out an execution since 1954, and the de facto moratorium was inscribed into law in 1970, a step short of an outright abolition of capital punishment.
"Resuming the death penalty again would be a major setback, especially after so many other states have subsequently abolished the death penalty or adopted moratoriums," said Colville.
Some 150 of the UN s 193 member states have either wiped the death penalty from their statutes or simply stopped using it, he noted.
Despite criticising the death penalty move, Colville hailed Papua New Guinea s plans to repeal its controversial Sorcery Act.
The 1974 act criminalised sorcery, in which there is a widespread belief in Papua New Guinea, where many do not accept natural causes as an explanation for misfortune and death.
Human rights groups said the law stoked false claims by people against their enemies and gave the notion of sorcery a legitimacy it would not otherwise have had, fuelling crimes against women including the beheadings and burning alive of alleged witches.
