4.
Sant’Egidio and the Birth of an International Movement
1968 was a year of student movements in Paris, Germany, the United States, and Rome.
That was the atmosphere in which I joined what would become the Community of Sant’Egidio, but at the time was just a group of students meeting at a picturesque old Baroque church in the center of Rome: the Chiesa Nuova. When I joined them they had recently started a school for poor children on the outskirts, or periferia, of the city, where they had gained firsthand experience of urban violence and the problems it creates. Here were immigrant families living in shantytowns, their children filling the city’s jails and correctional facilities. Here were women who had had to put up with the violence of husbands and bosses on a daily basis. For middle-class teenagers it was shocking, but also life-changing: the beginning of a journey that, for many of us, has continued through the present day.
After we were given the keys to an abandoned church and convent in Trastevere—the working-class district of Rome whose name is derived from the Latin for “across the Tiber”—we took on the name of the church and became the Community of Sant’Egidio. Our namesake (in English, St. Giles) turned out to be the ideal patron: a monk and abbot of the undivided church of the first millennium, he was a follower of the Gospel rather than of any ideology, and a protector of the poor.
We also made it our mission to protect the poor, taking our cue from the Second Vatican Council and Pope John XXIII’s message that the Catholic Church “wishes to be the Church of all, and especially the Church of the poor.” As time went on, it became clear to us that our mission would involve combating violence, which was how we came to join the fight against the death penalty.
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Of course, the second half of the twentieth century was a time of violence not just in the suburbs of Rome but all around the world. We heard about the brutality of prisons worldwide, about rulers who used the death penalty against political opponents, about child soldiers involved in an endless war in North Uganda, and so on. The pervasiveness of this violence drove us to the conclusion that capital punishment—as a symbol of the involvement of the State in a process of death, in the destruction of human life—must be overcome.
The Community of Sant’Egidio got involved in the fight against the death penalty in the 1990s, when the movement was gaining traction, but slowly—fewer than twenty countries had renounced the death penalty in 1975, compared to nearly fifty just twenty years later. And at the time opposition was deeply—if unofficially—split between the pro-moratorium and the pro-abolition fronts, as was apparent to me at the conference in San Francisco in 2000. This division was a problem that needed to be solved. Back in Italy, we sought to introduce some new ideas.
We identified four key problems in the fight against the death penalty:
All these problems had a common root: the conviction that one’s own cause is different from everyone else’s.
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In 1998 the Community of Sant’Egidio launched an appeal for a Universal Moratorium Against the Death Penalty. We drafted a text and submitted it to religious leaders we knew through our annual interfaith World Prayer for Peace, as well as political figures and secular opinion leaders. Then we presented it to ordinary people, passing out fliers, speaking at universities, and so on. We started in Rome, then expanded our efforts to the rest of Italy, some other European capitals, and finally the rest of the world. In two years, we collected three million signatures from 145 countries.
On December 18, 2000, we presented the first 3.2 million signatures to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in his office. The delegation, which I led, included Sister Helen Prejean and Paul Hoffman from the American branch of Amnesty International. Secretary General Annan was deeply sympathetic. We organized a press conference with Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins at the UN, and later held a demonstration across the street. It was a very cold day, but worth it. Sister Helen, Susan Sarandon, and I met with some people from the abolitionist side. It was then that some abolitionists asked me, “What does it take to collect three million signatures?” I told them, “It takes at least a pencil and a lot of work—and the right cause.”
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“Cities for Life, Cities against the Death Penalty”—a moral, inter-religious, and secular campaign against capital punishment—grew out of the night we lit up the Coliseum to celebrate the end of the death penalty in Albania. The Coliseum, we decided, would be the campaign’s symbol, and Rome its driving force. The date chosen for its founding—November 30, 2000—was the 214th anniversary of the first official abolishment of the death penalty by a state: the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1786.
The aim of Cities for Life was to mobilize civil society against the death penalty, starting with cities, which in recent decades have become the home of more than half of the world’s population. Cities for Life made direct contact, city by city, country by country, with governors, parliamentarians, jurists, law enforcement officers, moral leaders, and other officials, which in many cases expedited the legislative process of abolishing the death penalty, particularly in Africa and Asia. The Community’s international network proved useful to grassroots leaders and organizations active in the defense of human rights. Working together, they were able to create national and regional coalitions, and to coordinate more effectively with their counterparts in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
Chile’s repudiation of the death penalty in the wake of General Pinochet’s killing campaign was one of Cities for Life’s first major successes. Working alongside the Chilean embassy in Rome and the journalist Marcia Scantlebury, who had been incarcerated and tortured by the Pinochet regime, Cities for Life helped to accelerate the legislative process and weaken substantial parliamentary opposition. The moment for a vote came in April 2001, and the death penalty was abolished. We lit up the Coliseum in the presence of Chilean Justice Minister José Antonio Gomez and the Chilean ambassador to Italy.
The event was a dress rehearsal for the first Cities for Life Day on November 30, 2002. Approximately eighty cities participated that first year, and since then the number has steadily increased, reaching 1,600 in 2013. Participating cities illuminate a monument—such as the Coliseum—to commemorate the first state to abolish the death penalty, to promote events, and to show their commitment to life.
The French NGO Together Against the Death Penalty (Ensemble contre la peine de mort, or ECPM) was another group working hard to abolish capital punishment. ECPM promoted the first World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Strasbourg in 2001. Twenty-six representatives of as many international associations, including the Community of Sant’Egidio, signed the Strasbourg Declaration on June 22, 2001, committing to “create a worldwide coordination of abolitionist associations and campaigners, whose first goal will be to launch a worldwide day for the universal abolition of the death penalty.” On May 13, 2002, they founded the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty in Rome, at the Community of Sant’Egidio’s headquarters in Trastevere. An executive committee of eleven associations and NGOs became the movement’s strategic nerve-center. Since its founding, the World Coalition has worked to abolish the death penalty by lobbying organizations and states and supporting local activists. The World Day Against the Death Penalty, held for the first time on October 10, 2003, is another important part of their strategy: together with Cities for Life Day, it has become an annual flashpoint for global mobilization against the death penalty.
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Sant’Egidio had had enormous success in mobilizing in Europe, but, as we knew all too well, the fight against the death penalty is an international one. Thus, we turned our attention to the United States, which has a long history of using capital punishment. First, we worked to tighten relations with many American groups against the death penalty, such as Journey of Hope, the Texas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, and Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation.68 All this coordination not only helped to make US movements less isolated, but also boosted European mobilization at a time when the question of judicial error was gaining a foothold in mainstream conversation: a growing number of prisoners were being released because they had been either proven innocent or shown to be victims of glaring legal discrimination.
Sant’Egidio also got involved with the defense of John Paul Penry, the intellectually disabled convict whose death sentence was overturned three times. Over the years, the Supreme Court had declared the execution of the intellectually disabled unconstitutional, but their ruling did not stop the state of Texas from trying to convict Penry a fourth time.
In the Penry case, humanitarian activities and diplomacy promoted a standard of moral decency hard to ignore in a globalized world. The campaign to save Penry, which involved disability rights organizations, finally succeeded when the US District Court for the District of Eastern Texas decided to commute Penry’s death penalty to life in prison with no possibility of reprieve, a solution that his legal team accepted. As of January 15, 2008, John Paul Penry was no longer on death row. And Penry’s case was successful in more than ways than one: it also encouraged American organizations to take part in the international gatherings, facilitating Sant’Egidio’s efforts to merge all groups into a single movement against the death penalty.
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Things weren’t just happening in the United States. In its humanitarian work, Sant’Egidio came into contact—through letters and legal efforts—with areas generally ignored by European activists, particularly in Asia and Africa. Through the years, Sant’Egidio has launched direct initiatives and urgent actions to halt executions in ninety international cases—for instance, the case of Safiya Hussaini.
On October 9, 2001, Safiya Hussaini Tungar Tudu was charged with adultery and sentenced to death by stoning in Nigeria. She was pregnant at the time. The Community’s website published the first online petition on behalf of Safiya’s plight, and it was picked up by major international news organizations, particularly the Italian and British media.
On November 27, 2001, more than twenty Italian senators heeded the Community’s appeal and urged Renato Ruggiero, Silvio Berlusconi’s foreign minister, to appeal to the Nigerian government to save the woman’s life. Sant’Egidio sent a letter to Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo requesting that the “inhuman sentence” not be carried out. Even though Safiya’s case was formally a matter for local government and so out of the central government’s hands, the letter represented an important step that prompted substantial involvement on the part of the Italian government in the cause to save Safiya’s life. On December 18, another sixty parliamentarians signed on to the official request to the Nigerian government. Meanwhile, demonstrations were organized in Italy with the help of a popular radio station and the attention of the media in general.
On International Women’s Day, March 8, 2002, the Council of Europe launched an appeal on behalf of Safiya and Nigerian women in Italy, who faced the danger of expulsion and repatriation to a country that punishes prostitution and adultery with death. On March 17 there was a silent vigil in front of the Nigerian embassy in Rome following a statement from President Obasanjo in which he said he was “hopeful” that there might be a favorable outcome.
It took six months of international mobilization, but five days later, Safiya was acquitted and became a free woman again.
Sant’Egidio succeeded in this case because it gained public support through news campaigns, international mobilizations, joint actions with other groups, and the involvement of parliamentarians and diplomats. Publicity campaigns are not usually a part of Sant’Egidio’s strategy, but they may become necessary when basic human rights, such as the right to a defense, or the right to life itself, are at risk.
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It was in this context of humanitarian activities, carried out through direct diplomatic contacts with political leaders, that the death sentences against two Lebanese citizens in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sami Yassine and Khalil Ghodban, were annulled. Laurent Kabila, president at the time, granted the Community’s appeal for a pardon in this and in other, lesser-known cases.
In Cameroon, the death sentences of two young men held in the prison of Tcholliré were commuted after the Community got involved with the legal work and contacted local authorities. At the same time, the Community sponsored an international campaign on behalf of prisoners, taking on the battle for the liberation of inmates with definitive death sentences, whose appeals had been exhausted. In many judicial systems, executions do not take place automatically, and even without legal defense they can be annulled in exchange for financial compensation or by official act. Thanks to the Community’s efforts, as an example of the kind of actions that over the years have become global, the death sentences of fourteen other prisoners were commuted between 2003 and 2004.
The Community’s interventions have not always worked. In Morocco, we tried without success to save Merzoug Hamel, an Algerian sentenced to death for a massacre he did not end up participating in—abandoned by his accomplices, he had fired his clip into a wall. The death sentence remained in effect despite the efforts of the Community and the light shed on the case by Mario Giro’s book about it, Gli occhi di un bambino ebreo (The Eyes of a Jewish Child), which was translated into several languages. Morocco has since joined the list of countries that appear to be respecting a de facto moratorium.
In Central Asia, the persisting influence of state socialism on judicial institutions, and the habitual lack of transparency in the relationship between citizens and central power, combine to create a dangerous situation. The fundamental rights of legal defense are frequently denied, and the death penalty is used as a weapon against political opposition.
The Community of Sant’Egidio began the Central Asia branch of its mission in Uzbekistan, where the government kept the burial place of executed prisoners secret, making it impossible to ascertain whether prisoners had been physically tortured before being put to death. Working with an extraordinary woman, Tamara Chikunova, and her association “Mothers against the Death Penalty and Torture,” the Community succeeded in averting the executions of twenty-two prisoners. We also succeeded in securing new trials and subsequent acquittals for five death row prisoners. Another five death row candidates were proven innocent before the sentence was handed down. This success was brought about through our involvement with the legal process and civil affairs, at great personal risk, which required the backing of an international movement to defend the lives of those exposed to the most extreme danger—first and foremost, Tamara Chikunova herself. Deprived of her freedom, her safety threatened, she received aid on numerous occasions from the Italian, German, and French embassies in Tashkent, through the good offices of the Community. The effort to obtain complete abolition took about seven years to complete, but on January 1, 2008, the Uzbek government revoked the death penalty for all crimes.
The road to abolition was marked by fewer obstacles in Kyrgyzstan. The capital, Bishkek, was the first city of Central Asia to join the Cities for Life movement. On June 27, 2007, the law to amend the Criminal Code was enacted, replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment. The new law also provided for a review of past capital punishment trials. And on January 1, 2008, Uzbekistan was the first state in the world to abolish the death penalty after the approval of the UN Resolution at the General Assembly.
The Supreme Court of Kyrgyzstan had six months to review all of the death penalty cases commuted to life imprisonment. According to Article 384 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the sentence handed down by a judge can be revoked and the trial can be reopened if there is new evidence to bring to the case.
In March 2007, the Community of Sant’Egidio undertook a mission to Kazakhstan in order to probe the possibility of getting the government to adhere to the moratorium on the death penalty under discussion by the UN. Kazakhstan gave a favorable vote to the Resolution in December 2008. The mission was preceded by talks with the Italian Minister Plenipotentiary and head of the European office of the Italian Foreign Ministry Laura Mirachian, and was organized in close coordination with the Italian Ambassador in Kazakhstan, Bruno Antonio Pasquino. It was a successful case of combined institutional action.
During the visit, Community representatives had talks with several of the country’s civil and religious authorities. On the opening day of the conference, Pope Benedict XVI met with the participating religious leaders in the presence of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I; the primate of the Anglican Church, Rowan Williams; and the chief rabbi of Israel, Yona Metzger. The talks touched upon several political and religious issues, with an emphasis on the international moratorium on the death penalty and inter-religious dialogue.
The Community of Sant’Egidio made an official request for a moratorium on executions by law and offered its legislative assistance. Kazakhstan’s first response to the Community’s request, drawn up in conjunction with the Italian Embassy, was to agree to sign the preliminary protocol of intent for an initiative at the UN launched by the Italian foreign minister.
Then in October 2007, in Naples, the president of the Kazakh Senate announced that he was going to introduce a legal moratorium on executions. In the days that followed, the Kazakh parliament formally ratified a moratorium on executions. Shortly thereafter, the death penalty was abolished for ordinary crimes in Kazakhstan.
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At the end of the 1990s, President Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia, home to the largest Muslim population in the world, was no doubt the most influential Muslim figure to sign the UN’s appeal for a universal moratorium on capital punishment. His signature paved the way for a series of debates and reflections, which the Community of Sant’Egidio aided through direct contacts with the Indonesian authorities. The contacts continued through the crisis surrounding the 2006 execution of three Christians accused of playing a key role in a revolt that claimed many lives. The Community promoted and coordinated an international campaign to save the prisoners’ lives and downgrade the charges against them. International efforts did not stop their execution, but the movement of parliamentarians in favor of a moratorium by law gained ground.69
Meanwhile, a debate was raging between the Justice Minister, the Supreme Court, and the executive powers about the commutation of seven thousand death sentences in Pakistan. On October 30, 2006, and in August 2008, the Community of Sant’Egidio negotiated pardons from the victims’ families for three death row inmates, blocking their executions. From 2008 to 2012, Pakistan observed an unofficial moratorium, but it ended with the execution of Muhammed Hussain, a soldier convicted of murder, on November 15, 2012.
By then, the moratorium in Indonesia had led to a special protocol of agreement and collaboration between Sant’Egidio and the largest Indonesian Muslim organization, the Muhammadiya, one that constitutes a huge step forward by opening this organization to the abolition of the death penalty.
Sant’Egidio had more success in sub-Saharan Africa, where in the space of just a few years the number of abolitionist countries had grown from four to fifteen. Aside from numerous contacts with officials from death penalty countries, from 2005 to 2008, the Community of Sant’Egidio, which had a network of local members spread throughout the region, organized a series of international conferences in Rome attended by twenty-five African Justice Ministers, who took part in public forums, workshops, and closed-door sessions. The presence of political and judicial officials along with representatives of Sant’Egidio paved the way for a series of processes mobilizing legal aid and support for legislative proceedings, thus establishing a new and more effective venue than the traditional recourse to petitions and appeals.
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Since 2003, the World Cities for Life Day events, held in conjunction with the Tuscan regional administration and the City of Rome, have represented the most widespread international mobilization against capital punishment. Since 2006, the European Union has recognized and supported the Community of Sant’Egidio’s project for the creation of an international network that would support human rights organizations and spontaneous groups of citizens against the death penalty in retentionist countries, especially in key geographic areas. One of the goals: to foster the birth of regional coalitions and the empowerment of local activists and humane civil societies. Collaboration with the European Union has greatly factored into the Community’s success: if this link were to be weakened it would limit support for decisive regions, such as the Caribbean and the Middle East.
In 2008, the UN held discussions on how to proceed with a new resolution in the General Assembly, a year after approving the first resolution. The debate between European countries and the cosponsors of the previous resolution focused on the advisability of presenting a “strong (political) resolution” or a more “technical” one. They opted for a “hybrid” text, which introduced some new concepts, such as the need for information and transparency, while incorporating the recommendations of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s first report, published in September.
The Resolution gained more supporters, 104 in all, and fewer opponents, forty-eight. The matter was put off until the Secretary General’s next report and a new resolution would be presented. Meanwhile it was agreed that the issue would be examined on a biannual, rather than annual, basis. The mood had changed.
While there was a setback in Liberia—which reinstated capital punishment in 2008, violating its earlier adoption of the UN resolution—things were looking up in the United States. Just before the first UN Resolution in 2007, Governor Corzine of New Jersey signed a bill of abolition. New Mexico followed suit in 2009, and a few days later, the 131st innocent prisoner was released from death row in the United States. On April 16 of that year, Colorado had an abolitionist draft law approved by one of the two houses of the legislature. In April 2014, New Hampshire, the only state in New England where the penalty remains law, considered a repeal bill, which received a tie of twelve for and twelve against, and remains, for now, before the state senate. New York, Illinois, Connecticut, and Maryland have also abolished capital punishment. It’s not enough—but the story isn’t over yet.
Footnotes:
68 Other groups included Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights; the US National Coalition; Death Penalty Focus, the organization in California coordinated at the time by Lance Lindsay and Mike Farrell; and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), engaged through the good offices of human rights activist and legal scholar Speedy Rice.
69 On September 22, 2006, Fabianus Tibo, Dominggus da Silva and Marinus Riwu, three Indonesian Catholics, were put to death in Palu, Indonesia. Former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid had just a few days earlier renewed his plea to suspend the execution and reopen the trial, which had been decided without the testimony of many defense witnesses being heard. He joined the voices of other Muslim representatives who, during the International Peace Conference in Assisi organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio, had asked Indonesian Head of State Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to intervene on the prisoners’ behalf. In the months preceding the execution of the three men, the Community of Sant’Egidio worked closely with the movement to save their lives, including their legal defense team, their prison chaplain Monsignor Joseph Suwatan, and the Indonesian Episcopal Conference. A widespread movement sprang up in support of them. The European Union, the Italian government, and prominent state figures from Germany and Spain became involved. In addition, Pope Benedict XVI, who had often spoken about the case, made a personal appeal for a pardon to the Indonesian president on August 11, 2006.