{"id":19916,"date":"2019-10-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southafricajournal.com\/?guid=352de33b585e7a6715cb222278deac78"},"modified":"2019-10-31T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T00:00:00","slug":"botswana-urged-to-abolish-death-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricajournal.com\/botswana-urged-to-abolish-death-sentence\/","title":{"rendered":"Botswana urged to abolish death sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"
GABORONE, THE incoming government of Botswana must prioritise abolishing the death penalty, a human rights organisation has said.<\/p>\n
Amnesty International’s call comes after the election of incumbent, Mokgweetsi Masisi, in last week’s election, and his swearing-in at the University of Botswana on Friday (tomorrow).<\/p>\n
Mr Masisi has a chance to immediately demonstrate strong leadership by abolishing the death penalty, said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s Southern Africa director<\/p>\n
Muchena said the death penalty was contrary to Botswana’s demonstration of a great leadership role on some difficult political issues, including by denouncing impunity for human rights violations on the African continent.<\/p>\n
The death penalty is still used for certain crimes in Botswana.<\/p>\n
According to human rights groups, in 2018, two people were executed after they were convicted of murder.<\/p>\n
Botswana is the only country in Southern Africa that consistently uses capital punishment.<\/p>\n
Globally, executions fell by almost one-third in 2018 to the lowest figure in a decade.<\/p>\n
At the end of last year, 142 countries had abolished the death penalty.<\/p>\n
Justice is not served by executing people, and the world is moving away from this abhorrent and degrading form of punishment, Muchena said.<\/p>\n
During election campaign as party presidential leader for the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), Masisi pledged to transform the country’s economy.<\/p>\n
Botswana is overly reliant on its diamond wealth.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Source CAJ News Agency <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GABORONE, THE incoming government of Botswana must prioritise abolishing the death penalty, a human rights organisation has said.Amnesty International’s call comes after the election of incumbent, Mokgweetsi Masisi, in last week’s election, and his sw…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n