Sunday, June 5, 2011

Sunday Evening – Dinner with my new friends


Twelve of us arrived from all over the world for the “Dialogue with Germany: Visitors Programme on Capital Punishment.” We are joined by our hosts and interpreters.

Our first meeting was dinner….

Hmmm …. Should we eat the tomatoes?  There has been a big health crisis in Germany this week due to E. coli contaminated tomatoes, cucumbers, and bean sprouts…. I think most of us lived dangerously and ate our vegetables…

I had never met the other American on the trip, Elizabeth Zitrin, who is a lawyer that works the California abolition group, Death Penalty Focus.  Kristin, the director of our Texas group (TCAP.org) has worked with her and spoke very highly of Elizabeth.

Elizabeth and I were asked a lot of questions through the evening about the state of capital punishment in the USA….

I also had several good conversations with Nagendar Sharma, who is the associate legal editor with the Hindustan Times in New Delhi, India… He noted that although hanging is still on the books in India, it has not been used in seven years…

Ken Ito is a professor of music and a conductor and composer, but the death penalty is an issue that continues to be important to him.  We talked lots of issues, but especially about the poison gas cases in Japan and the difficulty of sparing the life of someone involved in heinous cases such as that, even through that person has turned their life around.

I got to spend a good bit of time with the creator of our trip, Dr. Odila Triebel, who is the head of Dialogue Forums for the Institute of Foreign Cultural relations (IFA). It was very interesting hearing her talk about the German history of the abolition of capital punishment, its origins in the Prussian kingdom, where even King Frederick Wilhelm was opposed to the death penalty. But then came World Wars I and II. During this period she mentioned how arbitrary the use of capital punishment had become and how it continued to sour the German people on its use. Eventually those wars ended and in 1949 while the German Bundestag (Parliament) was formulating their Basic Law (comparable to our Constitution), the Delegates decided to end capital punishment.

Tomorrow morning, we start at 8 AM, German time… meaning…. Don’t be late!  LOL

Auf Weidersehen Austin

Saturday afternoon I drove to Houston to catch my Lufthansa flight to Germany. I guess I should mention that although I have travelled all over the USA,  a little bit a Canada, and travel a lot in Mexico...I have never been to Europe. So this was my maiden voyage....

Additionally I have never flown in a 747.  I was pretty impressed. I don't know what things are like on other airlines, but I knew I was in for a treat when I asked for Bloody Mary mix for a beverage and she poured in vodka as well. Not only did they serve a real dinner.... with actual metal cutlery, but we also got a full breakfast. During dinner there was a nice period where the attendants were walking through the cabin with a bottle of wine in each hand... "Would you like red or white with your meal?"

Clearly, I've been riding on domestic airlines too long.... I was pretty much in shock with the great service.... LOL

I was planning to study up on my death penalty facts a bit and work on learning some more German... but the in-flight movies killed my ambition.  in my defense, I could say that in spite of the good food and great service, there was no internet/Wi-Fi.... so I settled for a couple of movies instead.  I especially like "The Adjustment Bureau"..... Have y'all seen it?

So I am up for breakfast on my 747 and arrive in Frankfort at about 8 AM local time and then off for another flight to Berlin.  Very efficient luggage service, btw.... the baggage handler was right off the jetway for our plane and the exit was also right there... no long walks through the terminal...

Sebastian from the IFA (our hosts) met me at the exit and put on a taxi to the hotel... Now I am in Berlin!


Monday, May 30, 2011

The abolition of the death penalty in Germany....

So how did it come to be that Germany abolished the death penalty?


The story is told on the Dialog International web site in the following article:
"Friedrich Wilhelm Wagner and the Death Penalty"
http://dialoginternational.typepad.com/dialog_international/2005/12/friedrich_wilhe.html


In 1949, World War II have been over for less than five years. The German Parliament (der Bundestag) was working through its Basic Law when the death penalty came up for debate...


How this came to pass is a fascinating chapter in the early days of Bundesrepublik. The issue of the death penalty was debated by the plenary session of the Parliamentary Council (Dr. Konrad Adenauer presiding) in May of 1949.  The proceedings were captured by a stenographer and are availble to read (in German) on the Web sitegewaltenteilung.de.  It makes for fascinating reading. 

On May 6, 1949 Dr. Paul de Chapeaurouge - the CDU represenatative - made an impassioned argument for reintroducing the death penalty into the Basic Law (Gundgesetz).  In memoranda he had distributed to the press as well as members of the plenary committee, he had insisted that the death penalty was necessary for the "protection of the young German democracy".
Then Friedrich Wilhalm Wagner rose to speak.  Wagner represented the Social Democrats. He had been in theReichstag from 1930 until the Nazi seizure of power, and so brought the spirit of the Weimar Republic to the plenary committee. During the NS period he fled to France and later to the United States, returning to Germany in 1946 to help create the young republic.  In speaking about the death penalty, he first disputed the arguments of de Chapeaurouge:
Der Herr Kollege Dr. de Chapeaurouge hat in seiner Begründung etwas angeführt, das ich politisch für absolut unverständlich halte. Er sagt, unsere junge deutsche Demokratie brauche die Todesstrafe zu ihrem Schutz. Er stellt damit der jungen deutschen Demokratie ein sehr schlechtes Zeugnis aus. Ich glaube, wenn die junge deutsche Demokratie sich nur mit Hilfe der Todesstrafe halten kann, dann wird sie niemals zur Welt kommen, dann werden wir in Deutschland nie und nimmer eine Demokratie haben. Wir haben mehr Vertrauen zur jungen deutschen Demokratie. Wir glauben nicht, daß wir sie mit Hilfe der Todesstrafe aufrechterhalten können. Wir meinen vielmehr, wir können sie nur aufrechterhalten, indem wir das Leben schützen, indem wir nicht den Grundsatz aufstellen, daß die Demokratie das Recht habe, Menschenleben zu vernichten.
Wagner then turns to his country's recent past as the most compelling reason for why there must never be a death penalty in Germany:
Wenn wir heute, meine Damen und Herren, zur Frage der Todesstrafe Stellung nehmen, so haben wir hinter uns die Erfahrung jener schrecklich blutigen Hitlertyrannei, in der das Leben systematisch mißachtet wurde, der nichts heilig war, in der man Menschen gemordet hat, zunächst im kleinen, dann im größeren, dann im Riesenmaßstab. Wenn der Staat nicht beginnt, von sich aus mit der Tötung von Menschenleben aufzuhören, wenn er nicht von sich aus beginnt, das Morden einzustellen, dann wird es auch mit dem großen Völkermorden niemals ein Ende nehmen. Denn das ist der Beginn. Sie mögen die Dinge betrachten, wie Sie wollen.
(transLadies and Gentlemen, when we think about the death penalty today we have to consider that we have been through the experience of the horrible bloody Hitler-tyranny where human life was abused, and nothing was sacred, where people were murdered - first a few at a time, then more, then on a huge scale. If the state does not begin to end the practice of killing human life, if it does not on its own accord stop the murdering, then there can never be an end to genocide in the world. For that is how it starts, no matter how you may view the situation.) 
The result of the debate was the addition of Article 102 to the German Basic Law, the death penalty is abolished (Artikel 102 of the Grundgesetz: Die Todesstrafe ist abgeschafft). 

Almost 20 years later the United Kingdom followed suit in 1965. In 1981, France abolished the death penalty. The death penalty is now abolished in all of Europe except for Belarus. 
An interesting note: Portugal and San Marino were the first European states to abandon the death penalty in 1867 and 1876, respectively.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Europe)

My fellow visitors in Germany

Here are my fellow participants in the German Visitors Program on Capital Punishment:


Belarus: Anton Taras
     Journalist with the independent news agency „BelaPAN” and Interportal „Naviny.by“, Minsk

China: Li Jiao
     Law Institute of the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences, Beijing

Ghana: Vincent Emmanuel Kobina Asmah
     Editor-in-Chief, political bureau of Ghana's biggest daily newspaper “Daily Graphic“, Accra


India: Nagendar Sharma
     Associate Editor, Political Bureau, Hindustan Times, Daily Newspaper, New Delhi

Japan: Fumio Tanaka
     Journalist, “Yomiuri Shimbun”, Tokyo

Japan: Prof. Ken Ito
    Journalist, Academic Researcher, University of Tokyo, Tokyo

Korea, Republic: Duck-jin Kim
     Head (Secretary General) NGO “Catholic Human Rights Committee”, Seoul

Liberia: Fredie R. Taylor
     Acting Deputy Minister of Justice for Administration, Monrovia

Tanzania: Irene Florence Mkwawa-Kasyanju
     Lawyer/diplomat, Head of Legal Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tanzania, Daressalam

Uganda: Doreen Namyalo
     Head of “Death Penalty Project” at the “Foundation for Human Rights Initiative” (FHRI) in Uganda, Kampala

United States of America: Elizabeth Ann Zitrin, JD,
     NGO “Death Penalty Focus” (represents the NGO at the Steering Committee of "World Coalition Against the Death Penalty"; she chairs the working groups on the USA and Corporate Responsibility), San Francisco

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Off to Germany....

I am creating this blog as a way to keep my friends and allies updated on my trip to Germany.

I have been inviting to participate in "A Dialogue with Germany: Visitors Programme of the Federal Republic of Germany on Capital Punishment." We will be visiting Berlin, Köln (Cologne), and Freiburg from June 5 to 10.


So rather than just making occasional postings on Facebook, I have decided to try my hand at blogging.  This trip is a great honor to me, but more than that, it is an opportunity to share with the good people in Europe why Americans, and even us here in Texas, are against the death penalty.

So this blog will serve as a way of letting you know how the trip is progressing.

So I hope you will follow this blog and comment.

Have a great day!!!