By: Bikal Dhungel
“To
take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, it is not justice”
Death Penalty is the violation of
International Human Rights law, Article 5, which says “ No one should be
subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment “
. India and Nepal are being shaken these days by terrible rape crimes. The
offenders of Delhi rape case have been arrested and the overwhelming majority
is demanding a death penalty. Also the Nepalese in facebook are posting, liking
and sharing informations about the cruelty of men and also demanding for death
penalties for the rapists.
Death Penalty doesn’t exist in
Nepal, it has already been abolished. It is good that it has been abolished
because a state, a country cannot kill people. Its job is to bring the guilty
into justice and not to violate the rights of life, even of a criminal.
The crimes that have been
commited are disturbing, no doubt. Such crimes do not belong to a civilized society,
no doubt. The guilties should be punished, no doubt. But killing them is
definitely not a solution. It doesn’t stop crimes in the future. The US states
with death penalties have far higher crime rates than the states that do not. How
come?
I think this is the right time to
tell my fellow human beings that Death Penalty is wrong. As a long time member
of Amnesty International, a human rights organization that fights for human’s
rights, I strongly oppose Death Penalty because it is inhuman and hold the
motto ‘Killing in wrong’ whatsoever.
The United States Census bereau’s
report about violent crime in 2006 says that South Carolina, Tennesse and
Nevada were the most criminal states in the US. All of them have Death Penalty.
Whereas, Vermont, North Dakota and Maine ranked nr 48th, 49th
and 50th, all of these three states have abolished death penalties. If
you see in international level, crime rates are five times lower in Western
Europe than in the United States and in Western Europe, Death Penalty doesn’t exist.
This clearly shows that Death Penalty doesn’t reduce crimes, rather it
increases. Research about human psychology also shows that people fear life
imprisonment more than death. Life imprisonment means more or less suffering
the whole life but death means, you suffer for a while and then its over.
Hence, death penalty is always counter-productive.
Another FBI report shows that
since the Death Penalty was reinstated, over 100 inmates were already been
freed from death row, which means that these people taken to kill were infact
innocents. It is not easy to imagine somebody being executed and later
revealing the truth that he was innocent.
As long as we don’t go to the
root of the problem, these crimes will continue recurring in the future.
Dealth Penalty is neither philosophically correct nor logical in order to
reduce crime. Even though the majority of people demand this, it should not be
brought into existence. Lots of Indians and Nepalis today are asking for ‘death
to the rapists’ and it is not right.
Leaders and law makers should
sometimes ignore the opinions of the majority if it is not ethical. This is the
very time when it reminds us that democracy is not always the best system.
Democracy is also the tyranny of the majority towards the minority. Only when
the rights of minorities are secured, democracy becomes a fully acceptable
system. Many times in history, we encountered the tyranny of majority towards
minorities which seemed to be right at that time in the mind of people but
later turned out to be a terrible crime against humanity. The history of
Germany depicts the fact when Adolf Hitler became successful in manipulating
the mind of German people after elected Chancellor in 1933. He successfully
installed hate towards the Jews and other minorities in people’s mind who
inturn became ready to fight for Hitler’s cause. This eventually resulted in
history’s most terrible crime against humanity, the Holocaust which killed 6
million Jews in Europe and World War II, which cost the life of over 70 million
people worldwide.
Similarly in Rwandan Genocide,
the Hutus killed 1 million Tutsis within 90 days. The killers were not only the
Hutu Militants but also normal people who lived together for centuries. Neighbours
killed neighbours , expressed fantastically in Mahmood Mamdani’s book ‘ When
Victims Become Killers’. A leader who
posses power, could have avoided such massacres.
In the Balkan war in former
Yugoslavia, in the time of burning hate towards each other, the Croatians,
Serbians, Bosnians and Kosovans killed each other. A big war in the heart of
Europe took place and would probably take a long time to heal. War broke out
because of the angry crowd, brain-washed and manipulated. A powerful leadership
could have ignored the opinion of majorities and found other solution to the
problem without bloodbath and could have avoided all these events.
Angry crowd is a dangerous thing.
They are dangerous because human mind is irrational. Duke University
Psychologist Dan Ariely writes in his book ‘Predictably Irrational’ that humans
act irrationally in hot situations. We all have experienced this at least once.
Remember yourself in a time when you were so nervous for example in exams and
you could not write what you actually knew. Or remember a stressful situation
when your mind wasn’t in a condition of balanced thinking and you took stupid
decision. These things happen to everybody.
Hence, it takes a courageous
leader to stand alone and be against the crowd for the good cause of society. Death
Penalty doesn’t belong to a civilized world. A leader should speak this out
even though his people are angry, like today. Mahatma Gandhi once said “Never
apologize for being correct, many people especially ignorant people want to
punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you, for being years ahead of your time. If you are
right and you know it, speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one,
truth is still the truth. “ So, let truth and non-violence prevail.
In one side, such things forces
the society for change, hopefully for better. In the other side, we should
always take time to make laws so that we don’t regret later. But unfortunately
it always takes such dreadful events for change. Had we dealt with these issues
before, we could have avoided such terrible acts.
In the other hand, the people
accused of rape crimes also feel guilty about that. I am not supporting them; obviously
no crime is good to be forgiven. They deserve punishment but they should still
be granted fair trail and should be punished according to the law. However,
humans are wonderful creatures. They have the ability to change, to learn and again
to be a better person. Humans also have an immense power of forgiveness.
It is hard for the victim’s
family to forgive the offenders but what other option do they have? Let us more
focus on the future so that such crimes could be avoided. This time, let us ask
our government to grant a fair trail but not a death penalty. Again, Death
Penalty doesn’t belong to a civilized society. Let us forgive and move forward.
If there are some people who still believe that forgiveness is not possible, I
recommend you to read/research about Rwandan Genocide until you read about a
tutsi woman who married her hutu neighbour who killed four of her children in
Rwandan Genocide. This was how Rwanda healed itself from the genocide and
perhaps stands today, proudly, as the safest place in Africa.
