Michelle Bachelet’s comment came after a Bangladeshi court sentenced five men to death on Thursday (File)
Geneva, Switzerland:
Sentencing rapists to death, as Bangladesh did on Thursday, is not an appropriate punishment even for such a heinous crime, the UN rights chief said.
“As tempting as it may be to impose draconian punishments on those who commit such monstrous acts, we must not allow ourselves to commit further violations,” Michelle Bachelet said in a statement.
His comment came after a Bangladeshi court on Thursday sentenced five men to death for the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl in 2012.
It was the first conviction since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government this week introduced the death penalty for rape.
Gang rape already carried the death penalty, but rape by a single offender was previously only punishable by life imprisonment.
Bachelet cited the law change in Bangladesh, but also calls on a number of other countries to impose the death penalty for rape.
She highlighted calls in Pakistan for the public hanging and castration of rapists, and a law introduced last month in the northwestern Nigerian state of Kaduna, requiring surgical castration followed by execution. in rape cases where the victim is under 14 years old.
“The main argument for the death penalty is that it deters rape – but in fact there is no evidence that the death penalty deters crime more than other forms of punishment,” he said. Bachelet said.
“Evidence shows that the certainty of punishment, rather than its severity, deters crime.”
She stressed that in most countries, “the key problem is that victims of sexual violence do not have access to justice in the first place”.
This was due to a range of factors, including “stigma, fear of reprisals, entrenched gender stereotypes and power imbalances,” she said, noting that handing over the death penalty to perpetrators would not remove these barriers.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
