Death to the Death Penalty

Tanzania is one of 25 countries that retain the death penalty. In Tanzania, the offence of murder carries a mandatory death sentence, while a person may be sentenced to death for committing various treasonous offences. It has been 14 years or so since the last person was hung, but the death penalty continues to be on the books and death row continues to fill up.

October 10th is the world day against the death penalty. The LHRC marked this occasion by organising an early morning march from the suburbs of Dar to downtown Dar. The march ended on a large field where a band of actors depicted the less savoury side of the death penalty and activists gave impassioned speeches calling for the end of the death penalty. The government has rather infamously stated that it will abolish the death penalty, if the public makes it clear to the government that they want it to be abolished. This stance was adopted by the Court of Appeal in a 1995 decision in which it quashed a trial judge’s finding that the death penalty was inhumane and thus unconstitutional. Until last week, the use of the death penalty remained unchallenged. On October 10th, the LHRC, the Tanganyika Law Society and a regional NGO filed a petition challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty. It will be interesting to see how the government addresses this petition. There is increasing international pressure for Tanzania to abolish the death penalty and a study done by the Law Reform Commission of Tanzania recommends the same, despite its finding that the public still support the use of the death penalty.

I have all these fun facts about the death penalty because I’ve just drafted the subsection of the Human Rights Report that deals with the death penalty. After 2 months of solid research, it seemed like an appropriate time to start writing the report. Besides, if I let the research material pile any higher, it will irrevocably swamp my desk and I would never find my keyboard. The next few weeks will be a big push to get a skeleton version of the report drafted before the heady days of late November hit. November is going to be a busy month, as I am meant to be travelling to Zanzibar to train the Zanzibar Legal Services Centre on how to write the human rights report; the LHRC is having its annual retreat to assess its performance this year; and, LHRC employees (at least those who choose to) are going to climb Mt Kili to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to promote women’s rights in Tanzania.