Death Penalty (India)

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I am grateful for the work the hon. Lady is undertaking. When we visit the gurdwaras, it is interesting to see not only the range of men and women who support the campaign but the number of young people who have joined and led it recently.

I raised the death penalty and human rights abuses in India in this House last year, but I do so today with an even greater sense of urgency. Why? India has started to execute people again. When India secured its independence from Britain, it retained its 19th century penal code, which included the death penalty for murder. Until the 1980s, capital punishment was implemented regularly. From then on, although death sentences were pronounced by Indian courts they were increasingly not put into practice. In 1980, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty should be used in the rarest of rare cases, which led eventually to an eight-year moratorium on the death penalty being implemented within India.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) and I have a large Punjabi community in Coventry, which is very concerned about the death penalty. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) agree that the British Government should be encouraging the Indian Government to honour and sign international treaties against the death penalty and, more importantly, to reform the police force? We have seen in the media instances of the police force not investigating serious crimes against women or not taking them seriously. Last night, I presented a petition on behalf of the Punjabi community not only in Coventry but nationally.

[John McDonnell]

I am grateful for the work that my hon. Friend has undertaken in this campaign over the years—his involvement is not merely recent. It is interesting that although the debate is focused on the death penalty, it has emerged that there have been extra-judicial killings, too.

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[Mr Swire]

If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, all will soon be revealed.

It remains the British Government’s long-standing policy to oppose the death penalty in all circumstances as a matter of principle, and I hope the Indian Government will re-establish a moratorium on executions in line with the global trend towards the abolition of capital punishment. When I was in Delhi last week, I reiterated the British Government’s position on the death penalty to India’s Foreign Secretary, Ranjan Mathai, the permanent under-secretary equivalent at the Ministry of External Affairs. We will also raise our concerns about the death penalty at the EU-India human rights dialogue, which we hope will take place soon.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

The Minister said that he raised the death penalty with the relevant Minister, but what response did he receive?

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[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend obviously speaks with great experience from before he became a Member of Parliament in dealing in highly conflicting situations with people of different religious and ethnic backgrounds in Europe. Those differences can lead to extremism and the actions of governing authorities can create martyrdom situations that exacerbate divisions. Any healing democracy always wishes to heal the divisions within society. The death penalty is not a friend of that aim; it is an opponent. As we can see from the petition, there are real concerns that the existence of the death penalty in India will exacerbate the tensions within Indian society rather than achieving a better long-term solution.

The human aspect for those under threat of the death penalty must also be a considerable concern to us. It is inhumane treatment to leave a human being on death row for many years. No one should have to go through the psychological trauma of not knowing if or when their appeal may be heard and whether they may be executed. That is not a mark of a decent society.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned George Bush, and some years ago, when I was a member of the Home Affairs Committee, we visited Huntsville in Texas, where most of the staff were against the death penalty. People had been on death row for 17 or 18 years, and I agree with the hon. Gentleman that that is utterly inhumane.

[Richard Fuller]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support for that point. The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) mentioned the recent reaction in India to the issue of rape. If there is still the possibility that the death penalty can be applied, and if its application would have political currency in certain situations or be popular at a particular moment, politicians will use that as a reason to bring it back. It may be completely ineffective, or out of step with what is needed at the time, but it is always alluring to politicians who believe that the death penalty has popular support to seize on it as a remedy. A moratorium always leaves that possibility: abolition removes it.