Amnesty
International, Ghana has renewed calls for abolishing of the death penalty in
the country because the sentence has lost its usefulness and has had adverse
effects on relatives and children of incarcerated parents who are on the death
row.
Even though
the nation has not executed any convict in the last 26 years, the law still
needed a review as recommended by the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC),
since there are also severe consequences if the sentence is not reviewed in the
best interests of the country.
George Aggrey, the Board Chairman of Amnesty
International, Ghana, said:
“There are issues including trauma experienced
by children whose parents have been executed that we have not thought of it, this
is not to say that, those who have suffered in the hands of armed robbers and
has cost them their lives, we don’t think about them.
“We do think about all of them but what we are saying is that the death penalty has outlived its usefulness and we need to do something about it as a nation, nobody knows who will come in as the president and start doing that.
“The
earlier the better, we call for it to be abolished other than leaving it for
somebody to come one day and say that I am signing for all those on death roll
to be executed, in our country, the constitution and criminal code list
treason, murder, genocide, war, smuggling and other crimes as punishable by
death.
“The constitution states that individuals
who commit such crimes against the constitutional order shall, upon conviction,
be sentenced to suffer death even though our country has not recorded any
execution by the death penalty since 1993, the number of death sentences has
increased from nine in 2014 to 18 in 2015.
“As of December 31, 2018, there were 172
people, including three women, on the death row in the country. Amnesty International,
Ghana has described the situation as worrying and we want the state to take
appropriate steps to expunge the death sentence through a referendum,” Mr
Aggrey appealed. -citinewsroom.com
