President López Obrador announced his opposition to a proposal to reinstate the death penalty at his morning press conference on Wednesday.
“I don’t believe in the death penalty and I also don’t think it’s an option, an alternative,” he told reporters.
His declaration came in response to a proposal on Tuesday by federal deputies from the Green Party and his own Morena party to put up for discussion the amendment of four articles of the constitution, as well as the country’s withdrawal from two international treaties by which is it bound not to reinstate the punishment.
They proposed the death penalty for those found guilty of femicide and homicide of people under 18 years of age, saying that the measure would be temporary “until Mexico returns to times of peace and tranquility.”
Green Party national director Carlos Puente and the party’s parliamentary leader in the Chamber of Deputies, Arturo Escobar, also suggested that the Supreme Court be the entity to decide on the matter.
Last week, National Action Party (PAN) Senator Víctor Fuentes Solís proposed a debate on the issue after the widely publicized femicides of Ingrid Escamilla and 7-year-old Fátima in Mexico City.
Morena party Senate leader Ricardo Monreal spoke against it, calling the death penalty a “barbarity.”
“We cannot, for the circumstances and crises which we’ve experienced in this country in recent years, establish this type of barbarous penalty,” he said.
The death penalty was abolished in Mexico in 1929 and the country signed the American Convention on Human Rights, also known as the “Pact of San José,” in 1969.
Article 4 of the treaty, which deals with the right to life, stipulates that “the death penalty shall not be reestablished in states that have abolished it.”
Source: El Financiero (sp)
