The Death Penalty – Neil Moran and Emily Walker

Once you die, that’s it. Game Over. You don’t get another chance. People don’t usually want to die; most are scared of old age and especially – Murderers

Death Penalty

Amnesty International describes the death penalty as the ‘ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment’.

This makes total sense. The death penalty is nothing more then the premeditated, and cold – blooded killing of another human being. And how can this method of punishment be justified? There is no statistical evidence to support the claim that the death penalty acts as an effective deterrent – in fairness gang members and drug dealers live under the daily threat of getting ‘whacked’ by the opposition. The death penalty is ‘legal murder’ – if such a concept can possibly exist.

There are so many problems with the death penalty that it is hard to contain them to one blog post. However, I have highlighted some of the biggest problems below.

1. What if an innocent person is executed? The death penalty is, by its very nature, final. There is no coming back, no issuing of an apology. Miscarriages of justice happen all the time, and at least if a person is found innocent whilst in prison they can be released to try and reclaim their life. No such option exists if the accused is simply killed.

2. What about rehabilitation? The criminal justice system, especially in developed countries, is based on three principles. Retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation. It is well established that social factors have a huge influence on the likelihood that an individual will offend. By executing those who do commit crimes the state is ignoring this third principle.

3. What about the right to life? Article 3 of the Declaration of Human Rights states that: ‘Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person’. Surely a practise of judicially sanctioned execution violates this most basic right?

4. Humane execution? This phrase seems like a bad joke. All known methods of execution cause pain, and problems have even been reported with lethal injections. This is supposedly the most humane form of execution there is.

In Indiana in the United States of America, in 1996, Tommy J. Smith took an hour and nine minutes to the be pronounced dead. Because the prisoner had very small veins he writhed in agony for over an hour before the state managed to finally kill him. .

The death penalty appears to be an unnecessary and unethical punishment. It goes against basic Humans Rights and in my opinion it should be abolished worldwide.

At the start of the 20^th century, only 3 countries had abolished the death sentence.

Today, ten years into the 21^st century, over half the countries in the world have abolished it in law or in practice. Over the past decade an average of 3 countries have abolished the death sentence per year, and it is seldom reintroduced. As mentioned above the death penalty is simply not an effective way to achieve the stated aims of its supporters, leading me to wonder why these people support it in the first place?

In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.

‘I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same’. Iris Murdoch

Well dear Iris should have known, being as she was both a woman, and Irish, and trying to make her way in the male dominated academia of Oxbridge.

If I asked you to define yourself, what words would you use? White? Black? Western? Eastern? Catholic? Protestant? African? Muslim? Female? Male?

Write the words down. Now look at them again. How many of them could result in you experiencing some form of discrimination, in some part of the world. None? All of them? Some of them?

There is one that guarantees you will never experience discrimination: Heterosexual. Wherever in the world you go, that is not only universally accepted, but often an absolute default setting.

For Iris was not only Irish and a woman. She was openly bisexual.

All over the world, to deviate from the ‘default setting’ that is heterosexuality, can often result in lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people being criminalised, tortured or ill treated because of their sexuality.

Amnesty International works to expose these human rights abuses. We challenge governments and state authorities to fulfil their responsibility to protect LGBT people from such abuses.
I am proud to be associated with such an organisation. However the news from home, and abroad, does little for my pride in humanity.

The happenings make for grim reading.

Recently Amnesty learned that two young Malawian men, in their twenties, had been arrested for holding a traditional engagement ceremony. If they are convicted, of this ‘crime’ they face up to 14 years in prison with hard labour.

Just this month a new Lithuanian law, came into force. It defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and effectively means that any public promotion of same-sex partnerships, or advocacy for equality in marriage, is prohibited.

Even here on our own Island, there have been vocal opposition to the Civil Partnership Act.

I, as a heterosexual (as far as I am aware anyway) can go out with whom I like, and I will be able, eventually if I so wish, to marry whom I like: whether that be once or ten times. It is not required that my marriage be a ‘bond of love’. I can marry someone for money, or status. If I wanted to I could get married because I’m bored, and fancy the party and a lot of presents.

The point is: no one will interfere with my choice. Whatever my choice and whatever my reason for that choice, I will not be jailed or persecuted for it. It wasn’t fought for; and it wasn’t earned. It is a right. Should all humans not be afforded the same ‘privilege’?

Equality is a difficult concept because in an absolute form, it has often been aspired to, but never achieved. As humans we crave power and that very instinct, perhaps, erodes the very possibility of complete equality.

But one thing I am sure of. Surely, if I can choose to marry for money, or cake, or presents, then so should anyone else. But what if two people, any two people, want to commit to each other for the most noble of reasons: love. Well then they should not only be permitted to do so. They should be revered.

Right to Protest: You're Not Welcome Here No More by Ciarán O'Carroll

On the 15th of March 2010 the Israeli Army, once again, raided the Palestinian West Bank villages of Bil’in and Nil’in. The soldiers went from one end of the village, to the other, posting a document on shop fronts and homes.

This document declared that Israeli, and international activists, were strictly prohibited from entering the villages between the hours of 8 am and 8 pm every Friday and declared them to be closed military areas until August 17th.

Israel’s illegal “Separation Wall” cuts through both villages, restricting the residents from their work, agricultural land, and water resources.

This declaration is a violation of the right to peaceful protest. It is an attempt to repress, and destroy, the village's resistance against the occupation and the annexation of its land.

Earlier in the day, Iyad Burnat, the head of the Bil’in Popular Committee, received a phone call from the Israel Security Agency. He was ordered to report to an office the next day for questioning which he refused to do, as he had done nothing wrong.

Despite the International Court of Justice finding Israel’s “Separation Barrier” contrary to international law, and saying it should be removed, its construction continues. Residents in Beit Jala have this week obtained an order to stop work on the separation wall.

Approximately 70 olive trees have already been uprooted. One families septic system was broken leaving raw sewage spewing out below their home; and a playground was bulldozed. If the wall is finished it will stand only several meters from some of the homes.

There is very little the Palestinians can do to change their situation alone. They are virtually unarmed, with a few rockets and some stone-throwing kids, and they face the fourth most powerful army on this earth.

With relations at a ’35 year low’ between Israel and the USA, International pressure at this pivotal moment could bring about monumental changes for justice and human rights in the Middle East.

Contact the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and demand construction of the “Separation Barrier” ceases and the removal of illegal settlements on Palestinian land. There has never been a more important time to take action.

Write to:

Benjamin Netanyahu
Prime Minister
Office of the Prime Minister
3 Kaplan St.
Hakirya,
Jerusalem 91950
Israel

*The Separation Barrier

Constructed by the State of Israel. It consists of a network of fences, walls and trenches. The barrier is built mainly in the West Bank and partly along the 1949 Armistice line, or "Green Line" between Israel and Palestinian West Bank.

The Israeli government prefer the name ‘security fence’; while for the Palestinian’s the preferred name is the ‘apartheid wall’

What does the term Human Rights mean to you?

We all know what Human Rights are!

An image or a word enters our mind whenever we hear the phrase. Wars; discrimination; genocide; nasty people beating up other people; people being put in jail for no apparent reason; religious prosecution; something about the UN.

What I want to know is: What do YOU think of?

You see, for the longest time, I didn’t think of anything more then: other people in some other country who had life rougher than I. I lived in a civilised country, and was educated, and I had nice parents. Humans Rights were the concern of other people. I never wanted to, or thought, I could save the world. All those things that happened in Israel and Palestine, Zimbabwe, Bosnia, Iraq: Well that was just unfortunate.

The child I once was watched, on her television, as the Berlin Wall fell. A few days later, a girl in her class brought to school, a piece of the wall. Her father had been in Berlin that night. The teacher stood over her class, telling them how this had been a momentous occasion; how lucky they were to see a piece of history. The children sat in front of the grey lump entranced.

A few months later Nelson Mandela was released from prison. People said that this was an historical occasion.

But that day the child had no idea who Nelson Mandela was. And the conversation that followed went something like this:

Child: Who’s that (pointing at television screen)?

Father: Civil rights activist who stands up for equal rights for black people in South Africa.

Child: Why are they all cheering

Father: Just been released from jail. The prison is on an island.

The child pictured Alcatraz and thought to herself. That’s good then. Being in jail on an island can’t be very nice.

And then one day, and I’m not quite sure how this happened, the child became an adult. And in the intervening years more wars had been fought; communist nations had fallen and were divided; planes had flown into buildings; bombs had exploded on trains; borders were taken down between North and South.

And while all of this happened on the periphery of her life, the child, who had become an adult, story had taken her to Peru.

One afternoon I was sitting at my kitchen table, holding a two-month-old baby; chatting away to the baby’s fifteen-year-old mother. The mother was talking about the baby’s father. He was in jail for killing a cow. She said she didn’t mind. She said she wouldn’t go back to him.

For many years she had lived in a children’s shelter. Determined always not to end up like her mother: alcoholic; physically, emotionally and psychologically abused by her husband. And then at 13, she had announced that she was leaving. Not long after she was living with a much older boyfriend.

She had explained to me many times, although I had never asked, that no one had ever loved her. He had said that he did. And as time went on he had started hitting her repeatedly and she had gotten pregnant.

She would go back to him of course, as we both knew, that day, she eventually would. With him she had a home, and food to feed herself and the baby. Without him she had nothing.

So that’s what it means to me. It’s the historical events, and the great, and the not so great, people; the news worthy wars and abuses. It’s the fifteen-year-old sitting at my kitchen table. Crying. Asking what she’s going to do? What’s going to happen to her? What chance is there for her? and who cares?

What does it mean to you?

Stoning and Women’s Rights in Iran - Philip Dalton

“In Iran it is legal to stone a person to death it is illegal to use the wrong sized stone”. A quote from the recent Amnesty International report, on the legalised execution by stoning in Iran. This judiciary “V-sign” to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights resonates with corruption of the state and religion putting common sense, basic human rights and a fair legal system in a stranglehold.

Whilst female activists had a successful and morally necessary role to play in the suffragette movement, women of the west have moved on to trivial matters that undermine the true battle for equality that the women’s rights movement was originally founded on. Trivial matters such as demanding to be referred to as actors, instead of actresses and other “monstrously important” matters. While their sisters in arms in the Middle East have considerably more pressing matters to deal with.

In a society where women cannot drive or sit in the front of a car and religious police enforce laws such as covering ones face at all times, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for women’s rights.

We must remember also that the complicated relationship between women and religion is not solely confined to the state of Iran. In Saudi Arabia recently, a gruesome story has emerged of a fire starting in a girl’s boarding school in the middle of the night. The two hundred young women fled the burning building in their pyjamas, but were met by the long fist of the law that is the religious police and were instructed to return to the inferno and retrieve their headscarves. Twelve young women burned to death and many more were seriously injured trying to adhere to moral practise.

The idiocy of a need for a religious police force may only appear to me, but surely religion is based upon the principle that you make moral decisions on your own behalf and in the “afterlife” you are commended or punished for your decisions in life, surely a religious police makes about as much sense as a karma police or an anarchist running for government.

At this point in my elitist “schpeil” you may be asking yourself what is the crime for stoning? And I am sure you will assume it to be a crime of horrific proportions, but nay, alas the crime for stoning this torturous punishment is not even illegal in most countries. The crime, is adultery.

In recent years the UN General Assembly has twice voted, with increasing support, for a general suspension of the use of the death penalty.

Women, of course, yet again draw societies short straw. A man may marry up to four wives, whereas a woman may only have one husband. The law also states that the person being stoned to death must be buried in a pit before the first stone is cast, but if during the stoning process the victim is to escape, they are freed and will not be killed. Male prisoners are buried up to their waste, and females are buried up to just before the neck.

Sentencing for adultery in Iran is a rather biased affair, do excuse the pun.

In Iran the decision on whether or not a person is to be stoned to death is completely up to the judge. In the western world to become judge you must join a documental “battle royale” and climb a steep treacherous ladder of law to reach the status of a judge. In Iran to become a judge you must have a secondary level education and then you must write to the heads of law in the state, these men will decide if you are eligible. As the state in Iran is founded upon religion, the people who are rich enough to have a secondary level education and have traditional religious backgrounds tend to get the jobs.

So from the outside the situation looks bleak, (well I suppose from the inside the situation looks bleak as well) but if you my dear reader feel it’s about time to stop this madness, don’t sit back, get involved, the world is a quiet place, if you raise your voice there will be a lot of people who will hear you.

In a world where young women do not have a life of equality and justice to look forward to, in a world where choosing the way you live, ends your life, in a world where one man thinks because he has studied law he can sentence another to death, then this is a world where we can make a change.