Capital punishment is legal in Papua New Guinea, but has not been imposed for over twenty years. Amnesty International currently categorises Papua New Guinea as abolitionist in practice.[1]
Under the Papua New Guinea Criminal Code, the offences of treason, piracy, and attempted piracy are punishable by death.[2] The death penalty for willful murder was abolished in 1970,[3] but reinstated in 1991.[3][4]
Papua New Guinea's chosen method of execution is hanging.[5] The country's last execution was before independence, in 1954.[3] Since 1991, death sentences have been handed down, but no executions have been carried out, due to an absence of regulations surrounding the process.[6]
In July 2011, five men were sentenced to death for the willful murder of eight people in a boat in the Duke of York Islands in 2007.[7]
In 2008, Papua New Guinea abstained from the vote on the UN moratorium on the death penalty.[3] In 2011, it opposed a similar moratorium.[3]
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