UK not using aid to change region on death penalty

Developmental aid will not be used by the United Kingdom to attempt to force Caribbean governments to change their minds about the death penalty.{{more}}

Speaking to SEARCHLIGHT recently, Sandra Tyler-Haywood, Non-Resident High Commissioner of Britain to St Vincent and the Grenadines, said that while the UK and the European Union (EU) remain in direct opposition to the death penalty, developmental aid will never be used as ransom.

“We will look to persuade governments not to carry out the death penalty,” Tyler-Haywood said.

This as this country’s legislators have recently vowed to tighten the legal loopholes that allow convicted felons, sentenced to hang, to escape the hangman’s noose.

Tyler-Haywood, however, told SEARCHLIGHT that the UK and the EU, despite their strong objection to the capital and corporal punishment at all levels, can never affect a country’s development because of one policy in which there is disagreement.

“We will continue to be active, looking for countries to commute the sentences of persons on death row to life,” Tyler-Haywood said. She also stressed that it is also the UK and EU’s conviction that corporal punishment at schools or in homes only helps to perpetuate violence in the society.