I will make bold to make this prediction: at some point in time, history will catch up with us as a country. Notwithstanding what actions we are taking today, given the tide of the international community . . . and notwithstanding that assuming that we pass this Bill this morning, we will be complimented for taking the bold step of removing the mandatory nature of the death penalty, and next we are going to hear having gone this far, in fact, we will have to go the other length and remove the death penalty altogether.
– Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite, January 27.
IT DID NOT take any particular prescience or intellectual agility on the part of the Attorney General to recognise the ineluctable nature of the movement towards the elimination of the death penalty by international forces which call themselves “progressives”.
Though he used the words “bold” and “prediction” in the same sentence, he would certainly have been aware of the position of some international entities on the issue.
As he introduced the Offences against the Person (Amendment) Bill 2015 in the House of Assembly on Tuesday, January 27, with the chief aim of dropping the mandatory element of the death penalty, Brathwaite acknowledged that among the groups “very passionate” about the removal of the death penalty was the European Union (EU).
“Since I have been Attorney General, I have had several meetings with our international partners from the British government who are very passionate about the abolition of the death penalty,” he said. “The European Union is also very, very passionate about the human rights issue and about the removal of the death penalty.
“I dare say that even within our own Caribbean courts over the last couple of years we have seen a move towards addressing the issue of the mandatory nature of the death penalty and, in fact, addressing the issue of the death penalty itself,” he noted.
Parenthetically, it was reported in the media that the amendment had been passed and that the mandatory provision had been removed; in fact, after a few hours debate, further consideration was postponed – not quite sure at whose behest – and the matter has not re-emerged.
I was drawn to the issue not only by the misinformation put out by the media, but also this past week, by what appeared to ramped-up pressure by the EU on Government.
At a media luncheon, EU Ambassador Mikael Barfod commended Government for taking the amendment to Parliament but almost in the same breath chided it for tardiness in moving the process forward and, indeed, called for a legal moratorium on executions with the law still on the statute books.
“We don’t feel that is correct,” Barfod was reported as saying, “and that is not the way the rest of the world is moving.”
There has been, in fact, an “unofficial” moratorium on hanging, as Barford himself acknowledged, with the last execution being in 1984. So, it suggests that Barbados is by no means a “hangman’s country”.
Indeed, official statistics reveal that between 1924 and the present day, 60 people, including one woman, have been hanged here.
Still, Barfod’s renewed appeal represents the kind of pressure that Barbados can expect from the “progressives” in the anti-death penalty league, and we can only expect more.
Brathwaite alluded to this situation and its ramifications when he pointed out that Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago stood out like sore thumbs in the English-speaking Caribbean as being the only two countries maintaining the mandatory death penalty.
“. . . Because such has been the [anti-hanging] movement to the extent where the whole human rights issue took on legs of its own,” he added, “and some international agencies began linking your human rights performance , including the issue of the death penalty, or whether or not you still maintain the death penalty, which they thought was an infringement of persons’ basic human rights, as to whether they would do business with you, or whether or not you could have access to loans [and so on]”.
Sadly, pressure or no pressure, time seems to be running out not only for the mandatory provision, but for the death sentence itself.
As Brathwaite noted: “We are on the wrong side of the law, and … it is as simple as that, that the law has overtaken where we are presently, and that it why we are here.”
Albert Brandford is an independent political correspondent. Email: albertbrandford@nationnews.com
