Last week, Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister said he intended to abolish the death penalty. And yesterday, he did it, with all existing death sentences commuted to life imprisonment.
This leaves Tonga as the last death-penalty state in the South Pacific. They last murdered someone in 1982, and have been considered "abolitionist in practice" for decades. Its time now for them to make that practice a legal reality, and make the Pacific a death-penalty-free zone.
