Former Andy Warhol chum and model turned activist Bianca Jagger took a break Saturday from protesting war in Iraq to set her sights on another foe: the death penalty.
She joined about 800 people at the first Pittsburgh-based Amnesty International USA conference, leading a march last night from the Omni William Penn Hotel, Downtown, to The Andy Warhol Museum, on the North Side, where she spoke out during a candlelight vigil against capital punishment.
The longtime Amnesty International activist remains convinced that the death penalty -- legal in 38 states, including Pennsylvania -- will one day be abolished.
"If I didn't, I would abandon my struggle," Jagger said from her hotel room. "The death penalty is a barbaric act of state- sanctioned murder. What is most disturbing is the fallibility of humans. We cannot risk executing those who are innocent."
Point Breeze native William Schulz, 53, Amnesty USA executive director, was in Pittsburgh in January to launch a national campaign against capital punishment.
The issue has come under close scrutiny in Pennsylvania, where a state Supreme Court committee has called for a moratorium on executions until the impact of race on capital punishment sentences can be studied. Although minorities constitute about 12 percent of the state's population, they made up more than two-thirds of death row inmates as of last March, according to a high court committee report.
Jagger became deeply involved in the fight against capital punishment in the mid-1990s, when she lobbied then Illinois-Gov. Jim Edgar on behalf of Guinevere Garcia, who was scheduled to be executed for shooting her husband. Edgar in 1996 commuted Garcia's death sentence to life in prison without parole.
Jagger also witnessed the 2000 lethal injection of Huntsville, Texas, inmate Gary Graham, whose murder conviction was built largely on the testimony of a single witness.
Racial profiling since the Sept. 11 attacks and the AIDS crisis were among other issues covered during the Amnesty conference, which began Friday and ends today.
Rising concern over human rights has driven up the number of participants in the group's national conference in recent years, event organizer David Yu said. During the mid-'90s, the events usually drew about 400 people, he said.
Speakers yesterday also included Arn Chorn-Pond, a survivor of Cambodian labor camps and the brutal Khmer Rouge regime that killed nearly 2 million people between 1975 and 1979. Chorn-Pond at age 12 was one of 500 orphans sent to a labor camp where they were forced to work from 5 a.m. until midnight, often witnessing the executions of other prisoners. Only 60 of the orphans survived.
Chorn-Pond, now 36 and living in Lowell, Mass., said he survived because he learned to play the flute and perform Communist songs. A Boston film company turned Chorn-Pond's story into a documentary, "The Flute Player." He now works to preserve traditional music nearly destroyed under the Khmer Rouge.
"They tried to destroy our culture and our identity. My best revenge is through keeping our music alive," Chorn-Pond said.
It is estimated that 90 percent of Cambodia's artists were killed during despot Pol Pot's reign.
"I believe in making peace by making music," Chorn-Pond said. "I know war firsthand and have seen enough hate, bigotry and killing. War is not a solution and there is never a winner."
