Policy-makers in Papua New Guinea are drawing up a framework on how the death penalty might work there.
The will soon submit the framework to Cabinet for discussion.
The justice minister, Kerenga Kua, says members of government will debate the details of the policy once it is is written.
He says the government will have the final say on which execution method will be used: lethal injection, firing squad, deprivation of oxygen, hanging, or electrocution.
Kua said it was very important to introduce the death penalty in PNG despite “dissenting views from foreign governments…and human rights groups”.
“The state in its own sovereign right has determined to go ahead with this process”.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea strongly opposes the introduction of the death penalty
Kua claims that just having the debate on the death penalty had already prevented many “gruesome crimes” and deterred many would-be criminals.
However last year the Archbishop of Mount Hagan, Douglas Young, said, “The evidence continues to show us the death penalty is not a deterrent to violent crime,”
He pointed out that evidence from nations where capital punishment continues to be practiced, the majority of those who commit violent crimes do not think they will be caught with even more of this number believing that even if they are caught, they will not be sentenced and condemned to die.
At the same time, Jack de Groot, CEO of Caritas Australia said “The death penalty equates to state-sponsored violence and will not change anything,”
“We have long known there is no point using violence as a means of preventing violence,” he says and insists that rather than expand and update the nation’s death penalty law which has not been enforced since 1954, PNG needs to confront the reality of its struggle with violent crime and find solutions that work.
There are 13 prisoners on death row in Papua New Guinea at the moment, some of whom have been awaiting execution for more than a decade.
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News category: Asia Pacific.
