Yesterday was the European Day against the Death Penalty.
The International Day for the Abolition of the Death Penalty – 10th October – has also since 2007 been the European Day against the Death Penalty. As someone who has always been passionately opposed to the death penalty, I regret that it continues to be practised in one European country, Belarus. The death penalty is nothing short of judicial murder and more suited to medieval despots than modern democracies.
The death penalty is also, of course, still used in the United States. I, for one, would like to appeal to every country still applying the death penalty to abolish it or establish, pending its abolition, a moratorium on executions and death sentences. The absence of the death penalty is, of course, one of the criteria for joining the European Union.
I am against the death penalty, but mainly because life in prison is the superior option. I would like to see the EU and other anti-death penalty organizations focus on promoting life in prison. This would, in effect, move to eliminate the death penalty. Like the semantics of the abortion debate, where everyone is pro life and choice, but differences remain concerning abortion…society should find less polarizing methods to debate the death penalty.
And where is Amnesty when horrible miscarriages of justice occur, such as the Scotland Lockerbie bomber’s release and return to Algeria or the Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman being given conjugal visits and marrying while incarcerated in Peru. Life in prison allows the innocent to have a chance of overturning their sentence, but also guarantees that the worst of the worst stay in prison and never have a chance to harm others. It also sets a concrete message to the world. And life in prison cannot give absurd privileges. Amnesty expresses outrage about the execution of even the obviously guilty, but are less concerned about issues with greater human weight. Change focus, that’s all I’m saying.
The death penalty is very unnecessary. Thanks for writing this article, because it seems lobbying against capital punishment hasn’t been as vocal as before. I hate to leave links, but I just wrote this article examining flawed arguments in favor of the death penalty.
http://southpawreport.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/3-arguments-against-capital-punishment/