By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
Religious, human rights and civic groups Tuesday called for the government's abolishment of capital punishment and its signing a global treaty against the system.
Twenty civic groups including Amnesty International and Lawyers for a Democratic Society asked the government to join the moratorium on executions introduced at the 62nd session of the United Nations General Assembly that opened Tuesday. The issue is the most urgent one for this session.
``The adoption of such a resolution by the U.N.'s principal organ would be an important milestone toward the abolition of the death penalty,'' the Association for the Abolishment of the Death Penalty said. The United Nation High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour called the punishment ``a sanction that should have no place in any society that claims to value human rights.''
The association will hold a 100-day campaign, as the government is yet reluctant to show its standpoint. Many voices in and outside of the country requested the government join the signing since the resolution was first proposed in 1977.
``A total of 131 countries legally or practically abolished the system and only 25 are performing it. Korea has the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who leads the world's human rights. Still, it has 64 people sentenced to death,'' Kim Ho-soo, the human rights watch dog's campaigner, said.
He said Korea is near to the goal in reality. The last executions were in 1997 when 23 people were hung, and by Dec. 29 this year, the country will be classified as ``abolitionist in practice'' by Amnesty.
Also, the abolishment bill has been supported by 175 lawmakers and is pending at the National Assembly for approval.
The association spokesman said that history such as "Inhyeokdang" incident, which resulted in the deaths of eight pro-democracy activists wrongfully accused by a dictatorship in 1970s, showed that courts and humans do make mistakes but cannot bring back lives.
The groups will hold road campaigns with citizens to write letters to the Legislation-Judiciary Committee of the National Assembly and to attend prayer meetings organized by each religious group.