Killing is Wrong

                                     

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 48^th, 49^th and 50^th, 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.