When the revenge hungry demand for their Pound of Flesh
I heard about
Rizana Nafeek’s beheading on Twitter: a friend of a friend who saw a tweet by Aljazeera
had retweeted the grim news. I’m finally
getting the hang of twitter and it’s an amazing tool: a real-time, round clock the
information sharing platform, a news network, almost; powered by hundreds of
thousands of users from around the world. There is always the danger of
misinformation but that’s the double-edged sword that is Twitter. The news of
Rizana’s death shocked me. Living in a country which has been through one of
the most brutal civil wars in history; the news of death, for us Sri Lankans
doesn’t come by surprise. We are used to hearing incidents of claymore bombs,
suicide attacks of murder etc… on the news on a daily basis. But somehow, the
thought of this girl, just years older than myself, being publically executed,
in a desert far from home disturbed me. After all, it’s the stark, abject
poverty that is plaguing our communities that would have forced her to migrate
for work. The story of Rizana has received a lot of attention on the media and
particularly on social media, in the recent days and has also led to
international outrage.
Capital Punishment Backgrounder
Although many
nations have abolished capital punishment, over 60% of the world's population
live in countries where executions take place, such as the China, India, the
USA and Indonesia, the four most-populous countries in the world, which continue
to apply the death penalty (although in India, Indonesia and in many US states
it is rarely employed). Scholars point out that Islam on the whole accepts
capital punishment as a deterrent to serious crimes. Mercy, however, is
considered preferable, and in Sharia law the victim's family can choose to
spare the life of the killer, which is not uncommon, although in Rizana’s case
the family of the infant refused to do the same. Amnesty International says
some 82 executions were carried out in Saudi Arabia last year. It is unknown as
to how many of them were women or carried out by sword, but the majority of the
condemned were foreigners, like Nafeek; and more often than not, from
developing countries.
Executions are
conducted in public, typically in town squares or near prisons. The condemned,
as well as the executioner, typically wear white. The convict is blindfolded,
handcuffed and often given a sedative. The heads of the condemned can sometimes
roll several feet from the body. Bodies are sometimes put on crucifixes to be
observed by the public as a warning. In one case in 2011, when an Indonesian
maid was beheaded, her body was reportedly displayed by being hung from a
helicopter.
Activists claim
Rizana was a minor when she perpetrated the alleged crime. Executing those convicted of juvenile offence
is not permitted under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Saudi
is party to. Furthermore,the Asian Human Rights Commission has confirmed that
Rizana spoke only Tamil and the inquiry conducted by the Saudi police was in
Arabic. The letter allegedly signed by Rizana is written in Arabic, a language
that Rizana does not speak, read or write. Rizana later claimed the confession
was extracted under duress and intimidation. There is a report that the translator provided
to Rizana, at some stage of her trial or investigation, is a person from
Karnataka, India, who speaks only Kannada and not Tamil.
On a recent blog
post, I read the story of Mrs Nimalaraja, a Sri Lankan whose husband was killed
by a 14 year old boy in the UK last summer.
Following the sentencing of her husband’s assailant last week she said:
“I am not angry any more. Before, I was angry because I lost my husband, but I
am not angry now. The boy is a child and
he didn’t mean to kill Nimal – it was an accident.” Just
as accidents happen by the convicted, accidents may also happen within courts
of law. However, unlike imprisonment, the mistake of a capital punishment
sentence maybe too late to be corrected.
A fact that is often overlooked is the torment the innocent family and
friends of criminals must also go through in the time leading up to and during
the execution. It is often very difficult for people to come to terms with the
fact that their loved one could be guilty of a serious crime and no doubt even
more difficult to come to terms with their death, let alone a public beheading.
Many argue that
Capital Punishment is an effective deterrent to crime. And there is reason
enough to believe that it is in fact an effective deterrence: What if Capital Punishment does deter crime? Should
the state encourage the ‘eye for an eye’ kind of revengeful attitude that forms
the very crux of Capital Punishment? Does it make murder any right, if it’s
perpetrated by the state? Criminals deserve to be punished, but death penalty
is a perversion of justice: and a mockery of human dignity.
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