Dear Friends,

Hello to my friends and colleagues in the death penalty abolition movement from Seoul, South Korea.

I have had a few long hard days here, but feel a need to share a bit of my experience with others. So through the magic of the internet. and a local computer I write this cybernote.

For those of you who don't know I am out of New Hampshire, I was recently invited to speak on the topic of Victims and the Death Penalty at a conference on the abolition of the death penalty that was held yesterday (November 22) at the Korea National Assembly (the equivalent of the Congress or Parliament) Building. The conference had been a couple years in the making, and was intended to give a boost to efforts to abolish the death penalty in Korea. My profile as someone who was a former lawmaker, a survivor of a homicide victim, and a death penalty abolitionist fit a need identified by Korean Human Rights activists for a voice to counter claims by supporters of the death penalty that it was a law necessary to help victims.

A bill to abolish the death penalty has been introduced into the Korean Assembly and as of yesterday it had over 150 sponsors out of the 299 members of the Assembly. What is particularly interesting about this legislation is that the sponsor, Assemblyman Yoo In-Tae, a member of the majority party in the Assembly, is a former death row inmate. When I met him and we shared a bit of our respective personal histories and swapped the kind of anecdotes and insider stories of that are kind of part of a universal legislative culture, I could not help but try to imagine a Congressman Kirk Bloodsworth from Maryland or Congressman Juan Melendez from Florida or any other US death row alumni speaking on the floor of the US House on behalf of a bill they were sponsoring to abolish the death penalty in the United States.

Yesterday morning my hosts, the Pan Religious Council for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, arranged a press conference for me at the Foreign Press Club. It was very well attended. I think the reason for the press interest was not simply because it was about the death penalty, but because of larger political issues. The fact that I was from the United States and opposed the death penalty, in contrast to the internationally recognized doctrine of the Bush Administration support for serial executions, attracted some press interest. (Though I must admit that I was unable to explain to people in Korea that I met why the American people had voted for George Bush for President----and I had to clarify time and again that my inability to provide the answer to the question was not because of a language barrier between English or Korea, but because I really did not understand it myself---I didn't vote for the guy). And then of course there was my victim identity -- as in the US, the presumption in Korea is that all family members of murder victims wanted a killing of the person who killed their loved ones, and I was the first voice the media had heard to rebut that presumption, and they had lots of questions.

After the press conference I met with the Speaker of the Korean Assembly. Despite it being in Korea, in a way the Assembly Building had very familiar feeling, almost like walking into the State House in Concord or any other Capital Building in any state or DC. But when I attended a meeting with the Speaker, the Korean leaders of 7 religious denominations , and legislative sponsors from different parties who supported the bill to abolish the death penalty, I knew I wasn't in the United States. Sitting in typical overstuffed fancy chairs that were arranged in a circle, the Speaker, faith leaders, and sponsors of the abolition bill had a discussion that included not just the pro forma philosophy of the abolition legislation, but talked legislative strategy on how to move the bill forward, and exchanged thoughts on dealing with concerns raised by members of the public who might oppose the legislation. As I told someone afterwards, I don't think that any time soon Speaker Dennis Hasert is going to be inviting Diann Rust-Tierny and other abolition leaders in to sit around in a circle and figure out the way to move an abolition bill through Congress. What really struck me about the meeting with the Speaker though, was how much Assemblyman Yoo In-Tae carried the conversation. He was the face of the death penalty, and though the Catholic Bishop and other religious leaders and members of the leadership of the political parties in the Assembly were in the circle.  When he spoke, it resonated. He had been a student leader under the former Dictatorship 30 years ago when he, along with 16 others, had been sentenced to death. Eight of his fellow students were immediately hung. It was for those eight people, as much as himself, who he spoke for at the meeting with the Speaker, and later when he spoke at the conference, when asking his Assembly colleagues to join him in abolishing the death penalty.

As he put it, abolishing the death penalty was one more step in consolidating democracy.

I am inspired.

There is more to tell, including a meeting with a man whose mother, wife and only son were murdered a year ago by Korea's first identified serial killer, and who opposes the death penalty and wrote a letter to prosecutes asking that they not seek the death penalty for the killer. He had never met another person before me who had a loved one killed and opposed the death penalty, and he now wants to be part of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights and link up with other family members of murder victims, but that is a longer story for another time.

Below is a copy of the text of my presentation to the seminar.

Best,

Renny Cushing, Executive Director
Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights

 

 

Human Rights, Victims' Justice, Abolishing the Death Penalty
Remarks of The Honorable Renny Cushing, Executive Director
Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights
Seminar on the Abolition of the Death Penalty
Conference Room of Assembly Hall
National Assembly Building
Seoul, Republic of Korea
November 22, 2004

 Annyeong.

Good afternoon. Thank you for the kind welcome and thank you very much for the privilege of speaking here today at this historic meeting about the death penalty.

I am very sorry that I do not have the good fortune to speak Korean, but I am grateful for the help we have today from our translators, and I thank them. Although there are obvious differences of language and culture and traditions between those of us in this hall, as there are between our respective nations, we share many things in common. I hope, and I believe that much of what I have to say today will transcend the language barriers between English and Korean, and we will communicate in that universal language of the embrace of the spirit of human rights, and of the common language of the human heart.

I am the Executive Director of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights. I am also the vice-chair of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, (NCADP), the umbrella organization uniting groups in the United States fighting to abolish capital punishment, and a member of the steering committee of the World Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, (WCADP) which plays a similar role on the world stage. On behalf of those organizations I bring to you greetings and support from the USA and global abolition communities, whose members are with us here today in hopeful spirit as we talk about ending the death penalty in Korea. One hope I have for our meeting today and my few days in your country is for an increased sense of solidarity and connection between people doing human rights and death penalty abolition work here on the Korean Peninsula and those doing the same work in other parts of the world.

At the outset, I would like to express my thanks and appreciation to the Pan Religious Council for the Abolition of the Death Penalty and the other organizers of this seminar for the invitation to visit Korea to share my thoughts with you and to listen and learn from you. I also want to thank Amnesty International for helping to make a link between conference organizers and myself, a bridge building role that Amnesty plays so often in the global human rights movement. I know this conference is the culmination of a couple of years of preparation, but making history is hard work. As I look around this room, in this solemn building where the laws that govern modern Korea are made, I know I am in the presence of people who symbolize the best of Korea's 5000 years of culture and tradition and who will help lead your nation to a new level of respect for human rights with the abolition of the death penalty. I am honored to be a guest in your country and humbled to be here today.

I am mindful that at this particular moment of time Korea represents a small beacon of hope for the global abolition movement. With a de facto moratorium on executions for the past 6 years, with a vibrant human rights community and leaders and lawmakers who embrace human rights, and with legislation pending before the National Assembly to abolish capital punishment, many eyes are upon this building, hopeful that before the end of the year Korea will make a firm commitment to permanently end executions.

I am honored to speak today with Mr. Yoshihiro Yasada and Assembly Member Yoo In-Tae.

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Yasada this is past spring in Tokyo, when I spoke about victims and the death penalty to the Diet Members League for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, and to the Japanese Bar Association. As a founder of Forum 90, as an internationally recognized lawyer for death row prisoners Mr. Yasada is a person of wisdom and courage, a hero in the struggle to abolish the death penalty.

As a former two-term member House of Representatives in my home state, I have a special appreciation for the challenges and demands that must be addressed by those who, like Assembly Member Yoo In-Tae, serve as parliamentarians in a democracy, and who help enact the laws that govern a society. Like him, I sponsored legislation to abolish the death penalty. I was a lawmaker who was the son of a murder victim. Mr. In-Tae is lawmaker who was once sentenced to death. I think it can be said that I, as a survivor of a murder victim, and Mr. In-Tae as a survivor of death row both have interests in the debate about the death penalty that are not that common among legislators anywhere. It has been very moving to meet Assembly member In-Tae and see his leadership on this issue, and I felt a great affinity with him.

It must said that dealing in the public arena, in the political arena, with the subject matter of death, of homicide and executions, is crucial human rights work, but it is not easy. For a lawmaker to take on the abolition of the death penalty as a cause means that inevitably he or she will touch upon real pain and devastation, and I know that to rise to the call of history to shape human rights policy in this area is a trust that, on some occasions, can weigh heavy upon a lawmaker. I salute you Assembly Member Yoo In-Tae, and I salute all your assembly colleagues who are hear today, and who are cosponsoring you bill, for your work. I hope in some small way that what I share with you today will be helpful as you work to craft legislation that meets real needs of victims and is respectful of the human rights of all people.

I am here to speak about victims and capital punishment, and to say that in the name of victims, to honor victims, the death penalty should be abolished.

Victims and the death penalty are linked, and that should be acknowledged and embraced. During my time as a lawmaker I was an advocate for laws for benefits for victims of crime at the same time I was a proponent of ending the death penalty. I believe for an individual, for a society, to have a consistent human rights ethic, it is a necessity to be both pro-victim and anti-death penalty.

I want to tell you about the organization I represent and the people in it, and a little bit about myself.

Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights is a newly formed international organization opposed to the death penalty. It is inspired by a recommendation made by the Victims' Roundtable at the Second World Congress Against the Death Penalty that took place last month in Montreal, Quebec, Canada that an international network -- surviving family members of victims of homicide, victims of criminal murder, state executions, extrajudicial killings and disappearances who oppose the death penalty -- be established to represent and raise up loud the voices of victims in the global death penalty debate.

There is widely held belief in many countries, many cultures, that all people who have had a family member murdered want the death penalty for the killer of their loved one.

This retribution paradigm is part of what, in my country and I suspect also here in Korea, prompts calls for the death penalty. There is a presumption that another killing is the response to loss that survivors of murder victims need in order to be happy again, find what some call "closure". It is sometimes asserted in public debate that policy makers have a moral obligation to enact or maintain laws that provide for more killing in retribution for murder.

Members of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights refute the premise that all victims need or want capital punishment. We have had loved ones killed, but we reject the notion that society and the government's response to a killing, to the violation of the most fundamental human right, the right to life itself, of one person by another, should be for the government to in turn violate the human rights of the murderer by putting him or her to death.

Members of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights know the pain, and the emptiness that comes from a homicide. There are not words in any language that can fully explain the experience. How we respond, in the aftermath of murder is not an intellectual exercise for us. It is part of the reality of our daily lives. It is what we do when we wake up each morning wishing that we could change our personal history and bring back our loved one. As survivors of crime we are reconciled to the fact that much as we wish that we could, we can't change the past. What we can do, what we strive to do, is try to control and shape our future, and do so in a way that honors and celebrates the lives of our loved ones lost to violence.

My personal journey to my appearance before you today was shaped by the murder of my father, Robert Cushing Sr. On June 1, 1988, two blasts from a sawed off shotgun turned his chest into hamburger before my mother's eyes. They were alone together as he died on the floor inside of their own home where they had raised their seven children. From that instant members of my family entered that world of pain that words can't quite capture. It's a world of autopsies and funeral ceremonies, of fears and questions and investigations and police and prosecutors and sometimes arrests and trials and juries and verdicts and sentences and appeals. But it is mostly about emptiness -- empty spaces where someone once sat, empty sounds in the wind, empty hearts.

The act of murder may be over in an instant, but that does not mean the hurting ends. For survivors, inevitably, events follow from the murder that cause new harm, additional trauma. This reality of new instances of pain is something that is not often known, not often understood, but it is the process we call revictimization.

Several weeks after my father was murdered, my mother received an envelope addressed to her in the mail. When she opened it up it was a bill from the ambulance company for transporting my father's corpse from her home to the hospital. Her hands were shaking as she read it, and she said to me "I cannot believe I have to pay for your fathers murder." Think about it. What kind of a society, what kind of a world is it when we send a bill and collect money from a widow who watched her husband murdered in front of her in her home? But that is the story of many victims -- the mothers who child is killed who can't afford a funeral, the child whose parent is murdered and who has no rent, no healthcare. It is revictimization, pain that follows from the original murder, with society seemingly insensitive to it, unwilling to take steps to minimize its impact, abandoning victims.

Those of us who are concerned about human rights need to be concerned about victims, about preventing further harm, about victims' rights. We need to not just abolish the death penalty, we need to help victims.

Much of the concern over and opposition to the death penalty that we hear about is offender oriented. The focus on what the death penalty does to those upon whom it is imposed and the many flaws in the system and other compelling arguments against the death penalty are important to consider, but I will leave those points for others to make at this time. In this discussion, I want to focus on what the death penalty does to surviving family members of murder victims.

As I said members of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights don't fit that retribution paradigm. Our parents and our children and our siblings and our spouses have been murdered, but we oppose the death penalty. Our reasons for opposition are many and varied -- some out of religious teachings, others out of personal moral code, others because of the values of family members. But whatever the origins of our individual reasons for opposition to capital punishment, our opposition is grounded not so much upon our concern with what the death penalty does to killers, but because of what the death penalty does to us, to society. It coarsens us. It makes us become that which we say we abhor. We believe that a replication by the state of the deadly violence that took our loved ones from us makes us all killers. And from our victim identity, we do not want to be killers.

I will share something with you about being a survivor of a murder victim who opposes the death penalty. In my culture, some people think that if you don't want the death penalty for a person who killed your family member you must be either a crazy person or a saint. While there are times when I am playing with my three daughters that they tell me I act a little crazy, I can assure you that there is never a time anyone has accused me of being a saint. I, and others like me who have had a family member murdered, are ordinary flawed human beings who have experienced a horrific loss and who, after going through layers and layers of pain, have come to conclude that another killing will not bring back our loved one, it will only add to the pain in the world. And as victims, we don't want more pain.

When my father was first murdered, I knew how devastated my family was. It was easy for me to see others who had been affected or hurt by my father's murder -- our neighbors and friends, members of the community. It took a while though, for me to fully understand how many lives had been touched by my father's murder. It was a particular challenge for me to see and understand that those whose lives were forever changed by my father's murder included the family members of my father's murderer.

I did not know the man who pulled the trigger that took my dad's life before he was murdered. Learning about him was part of the process that unfolded in learning about the murder. I came to know that he had a son. One day the son and I met in the parking lot outside of the courthouse where my father's killer was on trial. We introduced ourselves to each other, and shook hands, and as we stood before each other I had a sense that we were both standing on the edge of a black hole between us, and we were both trying to brace ourselves lest we be drawn down into that hole. This man, this son of my father's killer, began to speak by apologizing to me for his father killing my father. I gently interrupted him to say that he did not kill my father, his father killed my father, and he had nothing to apologize to me for. I said we both lost our fathers on the day of the murder. My father was dead and in the ground, his father was in a jail cell.

I am sorry my father was murdered. I miss him, every day. But I celebrate his memory, and all that he gave me. And I can talk about him and his life, and honor him with this work I do hear today. And though people might not want to get too close to me because my father was murdered, I am accorded some respect, as the innocent victim, the son of a murdered man, and I am extended sympathy by people who know me, by strangers.

But for the man I met that day in the parking lot, it is a different story. He is the son of a murder. He cannot speak of his dad. He wears that stain, he carries that burden. He is, in ways that no one will recognize, another victim of my father's murder. And so, what does a society that has the death penalty tell me, the son of the man his father murdered, that I should want for this man? I am told I should want this man to go the prison and watch while his father is taken from a jail cell and put to death in a ritual killing by employees of the government, so that he can feel the ache and emptiness the homicide of his father. But that does not bring my father back. It only adds new pain, makes new victims. It dishonors my father's memory. As a victim, I oppose the death penalty.

As Korea considers changes to laws concerning capital punishment, I'd like to briefly share with you some thoughts on crime policy from the victims' perspective, or the perspective of victims who, instead of embracing the retribution/execution solution to pain, aspire to healing for both individuals and society in the aftermath of violence

I believe that people who have a family member murdered, and I think all victims of crime, need and deserve three things: Truth. Justice. And Healing

Murder is about power. It is about one person exercising ultimate power over others. That is most obvious for the victim who loses his or her life. In a different way, though, for those who are the surviving loved ones of a homicide victim, murder is also incredibly disempowering. The first step to reclaiming power taken by killers and regaining control over ones life in the aftermath of the killing of a lived one is finding out the truth of what happened.

When I say victims want or need to know the truth, I mean a person needs to know, almost in a chronological way how it is that someone they loved could be taken from them by another human being. That information, that truth, helps put the moment of horror in context. One needs an understanding of what happened in an historical context to help make the journey to the present from the past. That doesn't mean that one will necessarily think that the killing made sense in a rational way. To this day I can hardly believe my father was murdered, it doesn't make any sense. But victims need to know what the truth is in order to claim control over their own future. It is kind of simple. If one knows what happened, one gains a sense that one can try and figure out ways to ensure that the pain of murder, the disempowerment, does not happen again.

When I speak of the second need, justice, I realize that is a word cherished by many, but not readily defined, particularly in the context of murder. I think in the instance of homicide, justice would be the exchange of the life of the one that was put in the grave with the life of the one who still walks the earth. But, we can't do that. What we can and must do is protect ourselves, as individuals and society from violence and predators, and hold people accountable for their actions. We can and should do that, and we have the ability to isolate people in prison. Without violating their human right and killing them, we can hold them accountable and isolate them, put them in prison.

Part of the function of our democratic government, part of society's policy on crime and social order, involves both the search for truth, and in the securing of justice that protects people and holds wrongdoers accountable. I know that the laws of Korea, like that of the state of the United States, try to foster the search for truth and the securing of justice.

But after finding a little bit of truth and after fashioning a little bit of justice, something remains wanting. At the end of the day what we really want, what we really need, as individual victims and as a society, is to heal.

Healing is a process; it's not an event. One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that those who offer up executions as the solution to a victim's pain, offer up an event. The reality is that a single event won't heal. You can't kill the murderer enough times to bring anybody back. When you raise the expectation that an event will heal, you create, interestingly enough, an impediment to healing.

To me it seems that too often criminal justice systems end up being about winning and losing, and about punishment. That's limited, and does not meet the needs of victims, offenders, and society as a whole. What we're looking for, in its place, is a new paradigm. And that paradigm is an aspiration to heal. I use the word aspiration because it represents a hope; it recognizes that healing is a process that goes on. I don't think we ever heal; I think you're always healing.

To me, one of the saddest things that can happen is a victim being abandoned by everyone and everything but their own pain. They end up spending so much time focusing on how their loved one died that they end up forgetting how their loved on lived. Two lives get ended by one murder. We need to do all we can to prevent that, to help victims heal.

How do we heal? By supporting victims. By empowering victims to claim control over their lives again. By helping to meet their emotional and material needs. By taking steps to eliminate or minimize events that revictimize them. By giving meaning to the loss of the life of a loved one not by replicating the act with another killing, but by preventing further violence and honoring human rights.

The most widely translated document in the world is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is a document that was inspired by victims, demanded by victims. It grew out of the experience of the suffering, the denial of the life to millions of civilians under brutal regimes of the Second World War. I know here in Korea the denial of human rights under the period of Japanese occupation is not a distant memory. You feel it today. The adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948 was a way to honor the loss of millions of lives, a way to give meaning to the loss, to help heal if you will, by asserting that such violations as were not humanly moral, were not permissible under any nation or regime. That Declaration establishes that human rights are not granted by governments, they can not be denied or abrogated by governments, they are an entitlement of ones humanity.

The most fundamental of all human rights, is the right to life itself.

In 1985, arising out of the cries from across the globe of those who had suffered from criminal behavior that violated human rights, including the right to life, as a result of disappearances and extrajudicial killing, and the victimization that came about from common crime, the nations of the world, through the United Nations, passed the Declaration of Principles of the Rights of Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power. This was a promise the world made to victims. It was a challenge to the nations of the world to adopt and implement for their citizens.

And what do those principles of the rights of crime victims consist of? The right to information, to be informed. The right to assistance, after the crime, and to have an advocate through the criminal justice process. The right to restitution, to have material help to try and make one whole.

Those rights enshrined in that document are intended to help meet the needs of victims that I spoke about earlier, the need for the truth, for justice and for healing.

Nearly 20 years have passed since that promise was made to victims, but, sadly, the nations of the world have not acted to fulfill the promise. But one area where there has been support for the adoption of those principles has been by human rights advocates who oppose the death penalty.

Again, due to the diligence of victims, in the mid 1980's, under the auspices of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, a Special Rapporteur on Summary, Arbitrary and Extrajudicial Executions was appointed as investigator and arbitrator in those deadly matters. That mandate has grown now to where the Special Rapporteur is charged with monitoring executions and being one of the point persons in the global human rights community to challenge that violation of human rights. It is important to note that the first time the report of the Special Rapportuer was transmitted by the Secretary General to the United Nations General Assembly, the leading official spokesperson on the planet on executions called for the nations of the world to implement the recommendations of the Declaration of Basic Rights for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power.

As a guest in your country, I do not presume prescribe to you or tell the people of Korea what to do. I want to praise the people of Korea, and the government for the de facto moratorium on executions that has been in place since President Kim Dae-Jung came to office in 1998 and that has continued under president Roh Moo Ryan. In the United States, the governor of one of the largest states, Illinois, recently commuted the death sentences to life in prison for 168 death row inmates when he concluded that the death system was flawed and innocent people were being sent to the gallows. It would be a significant act for your President to issue a similar order for the people currently on Korea's death row, and to issue a formal decree for a moratorium on executions. The National Legislature should act on the bill presented by Assembly Member Yoo In-Tae and others and abolish death penalty, and at the same time it should adopt the recommendations of the UN Special Rapporteur on executions, and make good on the promise to victims, and adopt comprehensive programs for victims' rights, advocacy and support, and restitution.

This is an international moment, when the eyes of the world look to Korea and the Korea Assembly for leadership in human rights. I know it is a challenge. Abolishing the death penalty as a way to honor victims would have a positive impact the death policies of your neighboring countries of China and Japan as well as North Korea and the US.

It is in the international spirit that I want to close my remarks with a comment made by a great leader for human rights, the South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela. Mr. Mandela, as many of you know, once faced the death penalty for resisting racial apartheid in his county. Instead he was sentenced to life in prison, and served 27 years in jail, When he was released from jail he did not look back at his years of incarceration in anger or rage or retribution. He was too busy, he had more important things to do, he had to help free a country from the burden of apartheid. And he went on to become President of a new South Africa, a free and democratic South Africa, a country that, out of its apartheid experience and its victimization and the denial of human rights, abolished the death penalty.

When President Mandela was asked what he thought about countries that still used the death penalty, and political leaders who still embraced capital punishment he said: "Those leaders, those governments who support the death penalty have not yet fully evolved." Let us work together to help the leaders in Korea, in the United States, throughout Asia and the rest of the world to fully evolve. Let us build a world where human rights for all are celebrated and respected, where victims are supported and embraced, and where governments abolish the practice of the ritual killing of human beings by the state.

In the name of victims, to honor victims, abolish the death penalty.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Gamsa Hamnida.

 

 

Renny Cushing, Executive Director

Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights