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Mauritius capital punishment was a subject debated on March 2010 when the Mauritius prime minister announced that he was thinking about reintroducing the death penalty as an attempt of reducing the drug trafficking on island.
If the Mauritius capital punishment proposal would have passed it would have brought a disaster of the public health and an increase of the injected drugs use cases in a country where 90% of the HIV infections are caused by the injected drugs, according to the IHRA (International Harm Reduction Association). Subutex, also known as Buprenorphine is the principal injected drug in Mauritius, being estimated that 2% of the adult population of the country injects drugs, which is a very high rate.
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The executive director of Harm Reduction International said that the prime minister should have looked at the evidences before thinking about the Mauritius capital punishment, since the international experience shows that the criminal justice to such a public health problem will not work.
The problem of the injecting drugs has been recognized by Mauritius in the recent period, the programs of syringe and needle exchange being extended in order to reduce the harm.
The island voted pro Mauritius capital punishment at the historic moratorium for three consecutive years, 2007 and 2008, at the United Nation General Assembly.
One year later, the government announced the UN Human Rights Council member states that the Mauritius capital punishment was abolished.
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The island is bound by ICCPR (International Convent on civil and Political Rights). The treaty’s articles 6 stating that the Mauritius capital punishment can be used for most serious crimes only. The international law established very clear that the drug crimes don’t enter this category. More, the island is party to the Convention Against Torture that bans the degrading, inhuman or cruel punishment.
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The HRIHR senior analyst Damon Barett said that the government of Mauritius can not say one thing for the international forums to have a good image about the human rights and then to say another thing in your country to give a tough image about the fight against the drugs. He also added that talking about the Mauritius capital punishment may put the island on the wrong side in a world wide movement for more effective but humane systems regarding the criminal justice. The high officials also said that is not right to consider the drugs using punishment increasing a wise thing since the clampdowns are not a good solution anywhere in the world and more, they are doing worse. The Mauritius capital punishment reintroduction would increase the HIV transmission risk and would send people away of the health services and, the curb trafficking would not curb.
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The capital punishment is applied in many countries of the world. 68 states retain the capital punishment even if they don’t use it, according to the Amnesty International. The countries with the biggest number of executed people are China, with 1.010 people in 2006, Iran with 177, Pakistan with 82 and Sudan and Iraq with 65 each and USA with 53 people.
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