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Friends,
The coming December 10, the Human Rights Day, is going to be observed as Anti-Capital Punishment Day in India.
Any punishment in a civilised society is meant to discharge three functions: deterrent, reformative and retributive.
For self-evident reasons, the capital punishment doesn't have any reformative role.
A comparative study of actual crime/murder rates in countries which have this punishment and which have abolished this and also in individual countries before and after abolition indicates no additional deterrence effect.
Hence, for all practical purpose, the sole rationale for this measure is to whet retributive passions.
As over time human civilisation is expected to graduate to higher and higher level, it is also expected that the element of compassion will occupy larger and larger space in our collective psyche displacing the elements of elemental rage and retribution. Humans must turn more and more humane, and not less.
As per a recent report of the Amnesty International:
* 86 countries and territories have abolished the death penalty for all crimes;
* 11 countries have abolished the death penalty for all but exceptional crimes such as wartime crimes;
* 24 countries can be considered abolitionist in practice: they retain the death penalty in law but have not carried out any executions for the past 10 years or more and are believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out executions, making a total of 121 countries which have abolished the death penalty in law or practice.
* 75 other countries and territories retain and use the death penalty, but the number of countries which actually execute prisoners in any one year is much smaller.
Over 40 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes since 1990. They include countries in Africa (recent examples include Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal), the Americas (Canada, Paraguay, Mexico), Asia and the Pacific (Bhutan. Samoa, Turkmenistan) and Europe and the South Caucasus (Armenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro, Turkey).
There are also other reasons why death penalty must be opposed.
One, human beings are always fallible and in case of a death penalty erroneously awarded there is no scope for reversal and rectification.
Another reason has been recently highlighted by the Indian President himself. It is (almost) only the poor and the marginalized, who can not arrange proper defence before the law courts and pull strings in the appropriate quarters, face the hangman's noose.
Moreover, the abolition of death penalty goes to delegitimise violence as a mode of civilised social transaction and in turn is expected to have a positive effect on the crime rate by bringing about a change in the social psyche.
Any punishment in a civilised society is meant to discharge three functions: deterrent, reformative and retributive.
For self-evident reasons, the capital punishment doesn't have any reformative role.
A comparative study of actual crime/murder rates in countries which have this punishment and which have abolished this and also in individual countries before and after abolition indicates no additional deterrence effect.
Hence, for all practical purpose, the sole rationale for this measure is to whet retributive passions.
As over time human civilisation is expected to graduate to higher and higher level, it is also expected that the element of compassion will occupy larger and larger space in our collective psyche displacing the elements of elemental rage and retribution. Humans must turn more and more humane, and not less.
As per a recent report of the Amnesty International:
* 86 countries and territories have abolished the death penalty for all crimes;
* 11 countries have abolished the death penalty for all but exceptional crimes such as wartime crimes;
* 24 countries can be considered abolitionist in practice: they retain the death penalty in law but have not carried out any executions for the past 10 years or more and are believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out executions, making a total of 121 countries which have abolished the death penalty in law or practice.
* 75 other countries and territories retain and use the death penalty, but the number of countries which actually execute prisoners in any one year is much smaller.
Over 40 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes since 1990. They include countries in Africa (recent examples include Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal), the Americas (Canada, Paraguay, Mexico), Asia and the Pacific (Bhutan. Samoa, Turkmenistan) and Europe and the South Caucasus (Armenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro, Turkey).
There are also other reasons why death penalty must be opposed.
One, human beings are always fallible and in case of a death penalty erroneously awarded there is no scope for reversal and rectification.
Another reason has been recently highlighted by the Indian President himself. It is (almost) only the poor and the marginalized, who can not arrange proper defence before the law courts and pull strings in the appropriate quarters, face the hangman's noose.
Moreover, the abolition of death penalty goes to delegitimise violence as a mode of civilised social transaction and in turn is expected to have a positive effect on the crime rate by bringing about a change in the social psyche.
Peoples' Media Initiative (PMI), along with many others, is actively involved in the campaign for abolition of capital punishment. So it has organised a conference in Mumbai against death penalty on December 10 at the Press Club, next to the Azad Maidan, at 3.00 pm.
Justice (Retd.) Hosbet Suresh and noted journalist and the editor of ‘Mahanagar’, Nikhil Wagle, will speak on this occasion.
A short film, ‘One Day from a Hangman's Life’ will also be screened. The film deals with the experiences of Nata Mallik who had hanged Dhananjoy Chatterjee in Kolkata, the last person to suffer the hangman’s noose in India.
Brief discussions will follow.
Justice (Retd.) Hosbet Suresh and noted journalist and the editor of ‘Mahanagar’, Nikhil Wagle, will speak on this occasion.
A short film, ‘One Day from a Hangman's Life’ will also be screened. The film deals with the experiences of Nata Mallik who had hanged Dhananjoy Chatterjee in Kolkata, the last person to suffer the hangman’s noose in India.
Brief discussions will follow.
Pl. do join and spread the word.
Regards,
Jatin Desai Ramesh Pimple Sukla Sen
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