Church leaders said on Saturday, October 10 – World Day against Death Penalty – that the government should focus its efforts on social protection and economic recovery from the pandemic, instead of reviving talks on capital punishment.

A group of Church leaders collectively called One Faith, One Nation, and One Voice, slammed the renewed discussion to bring back the death penalty, especially as the country continued to reel from the effects of the coronavirus disease.

“In this time of pandemic, government would do better to prioritize alleviation of economic hardships, provision of health and social services, and support of community initiatives to cope, recover and rebuild toward better lives, instead of a return to capital punishment,” the group said in a statement.

“Social justice and respect for human and peoples’ rights will go farther in deterring crime and anti-social activity,” it added.

Given the history of police abuse and slow resolution of cases, Church leaders said the government should consider investing its energy in “cleaning up its operations than killing its own citizens.”

The group reiterated its call for a restorative justice system, than imposing death as punishment, in a bid to preserve the sanctity of life.

“People who engage in criminal acts should be expected to correct their behavior and account for their wrongdoing. Justice and accountability are not gained by imposing punishment by death,” it said.

In August, the House justice committee started hearings on the death penalty bills pending in the lower chamber, as President Rodrigo Duterte renewed calls for Congress to pass the measure in his 5th State of the Nation Address.

On Saturday, Church leaders said that they continued to oppose the administration’s moves to “further a culture and climate of violence and death.”

“Death penalty will become a judicial tool of murder which will surely victimize the poor who have limited or no access to legal defense and judicial process,” the group said.

‘We don’t need it’

Like the Church leaders, detained Senator Leila de Lima, in a dispatch from her detention cell, said that the country doesn’t need capital punishment.

“We do not need the death penalty, especially with a justice system that is full of loopholes. It will be an additional license to kill for a murderous regime that has been weaponizing the law against the poor and government critics,” the senator said.

De Lima, who had been in jail for more than 3 years now over drug charges, said that her case was the perfect example of what a populist president like Duterte can do.

“As I have said, my situation ought to serve as the best argument against capital punishment. Under a tyrannical regime controlled by a vindictive man, the possibility of persecuting and convicting an innocent is high,” she said.

What the country needed right now, said De Lima, were measures that would ensure the “swift delivery of justice, certainty of arrest, and assurance of punishment.”

“Time and again, I have always stood firm in my opposition to the death penalty. And I will never tire in advocating against the capital punishment as it is anti-poor, anti-Christian and has not been proven to prevent crimes,” she said.

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Duterte had advocated for death penalty since he was a presidential candidate. His support for the death penalty has garnered him criticism from European Parliament lawmakers and human rights groups both in the Philippines and abroad.

The 17th Congress failed to pass the measure before it ended in 2019. The lower chamber was able to pass the bill on final reading, but it was dead on arrival when it reached the Senate.

In the current Congress, lawmakers are divided whether it’s the right time to pass the measure.

Pro-death penalty senators, meanwhile, said that the death penalty bill could only pass if it would only cover convicted drug lords. – Rappler.com