Global business leaders launched a campaign on Thursday declaring their opposition to the death penalty, urging governments everywhere to end the practice and asking their peers to join them.
Speaking to the virtual South by Southwest festival, Sir Richard Branson, one of the campaign’s leaders, said: “The death penalty is broken beyond repair and plainly fails to deliver justice by every reasonable measure. It is marred by cruelty, waste, ineffectiveness, discrimination and an unacceptable risk of error.
“By speaking out at this crucial moment, business leaders have an opportunity to help end this inhumane and flawed practice.”
Initial signatories of Business Against Death Penalty include billionaires fashion mogul François-Henri Pinault and telecoms tycoon Mo Ibrahim, Ben & Jerry founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Martha Lane Fox, tech entrepreneur and Twitter board member and Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post.
The campaign is being coordinated by the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice, a nonprofit human rights group led by Celia Ouellette, a former death row lawyer. “This campaign is an opportunity for business leaders to embrace their responsibility to speak out authentically on issues of racial and social justice in a way that delivers real impact.”
Ouellette said in the light of the business communities support for Black Lives Matter and racial justice there was a growing awareness of the “long history of race and the death penalty among business leaders” and many were now prepared to stand against it.
In a statement, Ben & Jerry founders Cohen and Greenfield said: “Business leaders need to do more than just say Black Lives Matter. They need to walk the talk and be instrumental in tearing down all the symbols of structural racism in our society. The death penalty has a long history with oppression, and it needs to end. Now.”
Joe Biden is the first US president to openly oppose executions and is under pressure to end the federal death penalty. Ouellette said she was hopeful that the business community could help lobby for change in the same way it helped press for marriage equality in the US and elsewhere.
“Bringing powerful voices to the table is highly impactful,” she said.
The group plans to build support and increase pressure for change ahead of the World Day Against the Death Penalty on 10 October.
More than 170 United Nations member states have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice.
Ouellette said the practice was at a “tipping point” and that Biden’s appointment could pave the way for the US to join the countries that have effectively ended it. “I am hopeful,” she said. But she warned that the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, when the government for the first time executed more American civilians than all the states combined, shows what is at stake.
“Movements can tip backwards too,” she said.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
