Death Penalty News

Click here to Google translate this story into your own language. El caso de Pablo Ibar ha vuelto a poner sobre la mesa el debate sobre la pena de muerte. Si nos planteáramos constituir un estado democrático y nos tomáramos en serio los derechos humanos, la pena capital no tendría cabida en la organización de nuestra convivencia. Y es que si la democracia significa algo es establecer límites al poder . A menudo se identifica la democracia con votar, elegir a nuestros líderes y elaborar leyes por medio de nuestros representantes. Y está claro que todo eso también lo es. Pero no se remarca lo suficiente que el ADN de la democracia está precisamente en establecer límites al poder. En las democracias modernas, las y los ciudadanos cedemos el poder al Parlamento para que nuestros representantes organicen la vida colectiva. Así las cosas, a menudo prevalece la norma de la mayoría en cuanto a las decisiones que deben adoptarse. Pero no todo debe decidirse así. En una democrac...

On 20 January 1942 Reinhard Heydrich, the Head of the Reich Security Main Office, chaired a meeting of 15 high-ranking civil servants and SS officers in a villa at Großer Wannsee 56/58. The topic of the conference was technical, logistic and legal implementation of the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", which was a euphemism for the planned mass extermination of Jews. Exactly a year after this conference, on 20 January 1943, a transport of 748 Jews arrived to Auschwitz from the Westerbork camp in occupied Netherlands – 315 men and boys and 433 women and girls. After the selection 10 men and 25 women were registered in the camp. The remaining 713 people were killed in the gas chambers. On the same day a transport of around 2,000 Jews from the ghetto in Grodno arrived to the camp. After the selection 155 men and 101 women were registered. The remaining group, probably 1,744 people, were killed in the gas chambers. The Wannsee Conference ...

Nazi Germany perverted every democratic institution that was supposed to uphold the rule of law and ensure the people of Europe’s most powerful nation were governed fairly. And in relation to the law, Roland Freisler played a huge part in this warped ideology. Freisler displayed a strong patriotic streak towards his country from a young age. He was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class and 2nd Class because of his actions with the German Imperial Army’s 22nd Division during the First World War. It was during this action that the lawyer was captured by the Russian forces and interned in a prison camp in 1918. It was then that Freisler learned Russian and was appointed a Commissar and given the duty of organising the camp’s food supplies. This title, handed to him by the communists, that would prevent Freisler from advancing further in the Nazi party as it tainted his reputation and made him appear to be someone who had co-operated with the Soviets. Freisler’s action during...