[Deathpenalty] ---- worldwide
Death penalty: It needs to stay
(source: Vaatupura A. Jayaprakash, MeriNews)
FOR AGES, there have been arguments for and against capital punishment. Time and again, people come to the conclusion that life is God given, and no legal or religious body constituted by man is liable to take something god-given. A human life, whether it belongs to a criminal or cannibal, is the most precious thing in this world, and its loss is irredeemable.

When it comes to crime and punishment, capital punishment becomes a bone of contention even in international forums. But if we look at crimes alone, we can understand from around the world that most heinous of them are carried out in broad daylight, and the culprits walk away scot-free. The law of the land goes on pondering over evidences, witnesses and ridiculous-beyond-doubt-proofs of prosecution to stamp a criminal with what he deserves.

Whose stance get vindicated, the courts' or the criminal's? A case of pre-meditated criminal act that involves the death of an innocent should be seen through a different legal prism. Here it is to be noted that a premeditated act of violence does not justify any God's intentions. The person, who does such a crime, is the worst of all human forms, and such forms are potential threats to the rest of the creations of God.

When we realise that they do these things to achieve something material or monetary in their life, the gravity of the issue gets multiplied. One's life is taken to augment another one's life. It is the most ungodly of acts. So such elements, whatever creed they belong to, need to be eliminated by a court of law.

If a legal system is to safeguard the freedom and fearless co-existence of human beings, it has to have provisions to impose death penalty. This is to be executed with extreme caution, as death does not leave any room for second thoughts. It is a one-stop solution to the most heinous social malady called 'willful killing'. Willful killers need to be put to death willfully.

Therefore, the provision for death penalty in all legal systems around the world needs to stay. It is for the general well being of all beings in this world.

If a civilised person wills to kill another, the former does not deserve to be living. Here human conscience should prevail over the so-called divine 'commissions'. Only death deters death.

Killing a drug peddler, an impulsive aggressor on one person's modesty, a self defending innocent, an innocuous thief and the like do not augur well for any legal system, however divine that system claims itself to be. There are criminals who deserve death penalty. The law of the land must have provision to honour such ones. (source: Vaatupura A. Jayaprakash, MeriNews)






AUSTRALIA:

Capital punishment is never right
(Source: Sasha Shtargot is an Age journalist)

I READ with interest David Bernstein's opinion piece (The Age) that was critical of the Catholic Church's stand to oppose the death penalty in all circumstances, including for the Bali bombers.

Bernstein argued that the perpetrators of the most extreme acts of brutality, such as the Holocaust or the Bali bombings, deserved to be put to death. He gave Israel as a commendable example of a state that ostensibly opposed capital punishment, but was willing, in the case of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust, to execute people guilty of only the most heinous crimes. Bernstein labelled the Catholic Church's blanket opposition to the death penalty "fundamentalist".

I was stirred by the pronouncement of the pejorative word, "fundamentalist". Under Bernstein's label, Amnesty International, which has campaigned globally against capital punishment for decades, is a fundamentalist organisation. Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu, a staunch opponent of the death penalty, is also a fundamentalist. Indeed, the people who campaigned against the execution of Ronald Ryan in 1967 in an
ultimately successful bid to end capital punishment in Australia, all fundamentalists unless they believed that in certain cases it was justified.

And how does one define what is an extreme act that warrants execution? Bernstein lists the Holocaust and Bali bombings as examples. But do political leaders who launch wars that maim and kill not deserve death also? Should George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld be executed for the invasion of Iraq, which by some estimates has led to the deaths of several hundred thousand people? And why not the death penalty for mass murderers such as Martin Bryant and Julian Knight, or the beastly killers of Anita Cobby?

It seems to me that the most appropriate way for a civilised society to respond to heinous crimes is a moral way that recognises the crime and its impact, but does not go down the road of vengeance and barbarism as punishment. If we want individuals, communities or even whole nations to heal the traumas of past wrongs, then surely we need to set moral examples and point the way to a better future, rather than annihilate the perpetrators of those wrongs.

I draw on the late Holocaust survivor and psychotherapist, Viktor Frankl, in his book, Man's Search for Meaning. At several concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Frankl witnessed the worst that humans are capable of and experienced the dehumanisation and despair of the victims of brutality.

He also saw that some camp survivors, when liberated, sought to vent their vengeful fury. For Frankl, this was not the way. He believed that even in humanity's darkest hour, it was possible to choose the light, to do good: "It is just such an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself," he
wrote. And he thought that both perpetrators and victims were capable of good and evil.



It is a shame that the Rudd Government has followed the example of John Howard in stepping back from this country's total opposition to capital punishment and equivocating that it would never advocate for people who were not Australian citizens who faced execution. Though many of Mr Rudd's policies mirror those of Mr Howard, one would hope Labor eventually stepped well back from the populist mean-spiritedness that characterized the previous government.

The Catholic Church should be commended for its call to the Australian Government to adopt a universal stance against the death penalty and its opposition to the execution of the Bali bombers. I, proudly "fundamentalist", join them in their sentiment.

(Source: Sasha Shtargot is an Age journalist)