Capital Punishment and the State
by From an Australian perspective, we do not support capital punishment. How should we feel when our people are executed overseas? This article might challenge you.
A few Australians have been executed in recent times in foreign countries mostly for reasons associated with drug trafficking and, this moment, six sit in death row in Indonesia. Not only is this bad, it’s also strange that our government always declares itself unable to do anything for them.
And then, you can hear the Prime Minister, John Howard, reveal on TV that his friends sort of lobby him hard to re-instate capital punishment in Australia.
Every time someone is sentenced with capital punishment, whatever the crime, whatever the country, I feel shocked and anxious. You will agree with me that death by execution is an extremely tragic and humiliating destiny to have.
In pain, I always ask myself, from where does the State derives the power to kill one of its Citizens, whatever the reason?
I see the Citizen as the basic unit in a State and its basis. The Citizen makes the State possible.
The State is an abstract entity whose mission is to cater for the well-being of the Citizen. It does so by providing public services such as education and transportation, a free-market, defence and law-and-order, etc.
Now, not ever being the Citizen allowed to kill another Citizen, just because the one is no greater than the other, the State, not being also greater than any of its Citizens, cannot kill one of them.
Therefore all these terrible executions we hear about from time to time are no more no less than State-sponsored murder.
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Post CommentShergill
On September 26, 2006 at 6:08 pm
G’Day Fernando,
I agree with your views. Here’s another compelling reason for banning capital punishment.
My father was sentenced to be hanged in India, during British rule, for a murder he did not commit. His crime: He was caught running away from the scene. In those days, whenever there was a crime in a village, the police would take all young men into custody. My dad came to know of the murder and was running away from the village when the police arrived.
All the family’s limited resources were spent defending “Dad”. We the family members were often singled out as beloning to that “……”.
For reasons I do not quite uderstand my Dad’s sentence was commuted to “life imprisonment.”
For more reasons which I do not understand, the British Recruited my Dad from the Prison, to join the British Army. My father served in the British Army for about ten years. After his service he was declared a “free man”.
Until very recently, our family was discriminated against and we had no resources because everything was sold, pawned or auctioned.
Though this story has a good ending, I know, first hand the emotional trauma that families suffer.
My view is that the judicial system cannot be right 100% of the time and even sending one person to the gallows is not acceptable.
Therefore, there is no place for the death sentence in the modern world.
ladybaby
On April 20, 2009 at 10:07 am
The state commits “legal murder” by way of executions. Murder is murder, legal or illegal. This makes the state just as guilty as the person they put to death. It is even more sinful when the state kills a person who never even took another life. Who kills the killer of the condemned? I guess that will be answered at the last judgment. The state wants to act as God, and they often follow the God of Evil.