ASIA/KAZAKHSTAN - Abolition of the death penalty: a step forward for the nation in the protection of human life

Friday, 18 February 2022 human rights human life catholic church

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Astana (Agenzia Fides) - "In December 2021 there was an important event in the history of our state: Kazakhstan finally abolished the death penalty. This news unfairly went unnoticed due to the January riots. However, now that peace and order have returned to the country, we would like to reflect together on the importance of this event. The rejection of violence in all its forms, the recognition of the illegality of torture and the abolition of the death penalty in criminal law are the result of the progress of ethical thought in the process of historical and cultural development of society". This is what we read in a note sent to Fides by the Commission for Social Communications of the Catholic Church in Kazakhstan. On December 29, 2021, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the Law on Amendments and Additions to Certain Legislative Acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan on the Abolition of the Death Penalty: the measure officially abolished capital punishment and recognized life imprisonment as the highest level of punishment in the republic. Kazakhstan reached this result after a long journey. In fact, the death penalty was applied for the first 13 years of independent Kazakhstan's history: the last death sentence was carried out in 2003, when 12 prisoners were shot. An indefinite moratorium on the execution of death sentences, signed by the first President Nursultan Nazarbayev, entered into force in 2004. In total, 536 death sentences have been carried out in Kazakhstan since 1990. "Violence - reads the note from the Commission - cannot stop violence, the death penalty is murder and a State that allows the death penalty legitimizes murder. Furthermore, there is no proven correlation between the use of this criminal instrument and a reduction in the level of crime. The cost of any judicial error is too high: innocent people can be wrongfully sentenced to death. Finally, the legal-criminal measures committed must not have as their objective the destruction of the offender, but the repression of the crime: by imposing a death sentence, we permanently attribute to the convicted person the stigma of being a criminal, while, with prison, we punish the crime, we neutralize the threat to society, and we give the convicted person a chance for re-education".
Pope Francis, recalls the text sent to Fides, has repeatedly expressed his support for the abolition of the death penalty, considered "contrary to the Gospel". In October 2017, during the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the approval of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it announced its decision to amend article no. 2267, which previously did not exclude "the use of the death penalty, when this was the only viable way to effectively defend the life of human beings from the unjust aggressor". Today, the same article reads: "The Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that 'the death penalty is inadmissible, because it attacks the inviolability and dignity of the person', and is committed to its abolition throughout the world". (LF-PA) (Agenzia Fides,18/2/2022)