1000th execution.  In the U.S. that is since it became legal å henrette (to execute) prisoners in 1977.  Wow.  That is 1000 in 32 years.  Seems like a lot to me.  I still don’t know what I think is the best method for punishing serial killers and rapists.  Who am I to know if they can be rehabilitated and one day give back to society.  Perhaps those thousand people didn’t deserve to live after what they had done.  I cannot venture to say.  I do know two things though:  the number of U.S. citizens who support dødsstraffen (death penalty) has gone significantly down (from about 80% to 60% in the last 20 years and the United States is “det eneste “såkalte” vestlige landet” (“the only “so-called western country-according to the article in Aftenposten online the other day) that practices dødsstraffen.  While it is true that 60% of the world’s population live in countries that practice the death penalty, isn’t it strange that dødsstraffen, something most people would agree is quite barbaric, is practiced by the United States, the superpower of the world?  Seems backwards. 

To be clear, 15 states in the U.S. and the District of Columbia now ban the dødsstraffen.  This brings me to abolitionism.  Most people today are abolitionists in terms of the dødsstraffen, meaning that they do not support it and wish to avskaffe (abolish) the death penalty.  Let’s go through a list of some countries and when they abolished dødsstraffen.  It was Grand Duke Leopold II who was the first in modern times to ban dødsstraffen in the (then) independent Grand Duchy of Tuscany (in the late 18th century).  The Roman Republic banned it in 1849, followed by Venezuela in 1863.  In Portugal, 1867.  In the United Kingdom, 1969 (the last took place in 1964).  France in 1981, Canada 1976, Australia 1985.  Togo, Africa,is the most recent country to have avskaffet (abolished) dødsstraffen on June 23 of this year.  What about Norge? 

In Norway, 300 people were burned in the 16th and 17th centuries during the witch hunts.  In 1815, the cruelest forms of dødsstraffen were avskaffet.  In 1876 the last execution during peacetime was committed.  In Norway the last execution in peacetime was carried out in 1876.  During World War II, Vidkun Quisling’s regime brought dødsstraffen back into the picture.  In 1988, Norway signed protocol 6 of the European Convention for Human Rights banning the death penatly in peacetime.  Norway opposes dødsstraffen at home and outside of the country.  In fact, Norway will not send Mullah Krekar (a Kurd from northern Iraq who was the original leader of an armed Islamic group) back to his homecountry, Iraq, because of the potential of being charged with crimes punished by capital punishment there. 

Norway is avidly against the practice of dødsstraffen because it violates the sanctity of human life. 

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