In 1981 in Bangladesh, twelve senior
army personnel were hanged for the assassination of their
President Ziaur Rahman. Twenty years later, a Parliamentary
Committee in Dhaka concluded that the trial of the accused killers
had not been conducted in accordance with the law. A member of the
Parliamentary Committee told the BBC that the committee had
concluded that they had been sentenced to death without valid
evidence. He said that the families of the twelve hanged men would
be compensated.
However infrequently the death penalty is awarded, one always
finds it shocking. Medieval practices of public lynching, stoning
to death, guillotining, public hanging belong to the same category
as the death penalty by lethal injection or electrification. In
all cases, the “guilty” person paid for some crime with his very
life.
Thankfully today, in non-feudal, civilized societies the legal
system is increasingly concerned with rehabilitation rather than
revenge. Our societies are troubled by a serious question: can a
murderer, a pedophile, a rapist or a serial killer ever be
rehabilitated? While many view the death penalty as a harsh and
irrevocable step, they also hold that a life sentence would do the
needful: it would protect society from the consequences of the
criminal’s destructive acts. Even if rehabilitation fails to bring
about a paradigm shift in the criminal’s way of seeing the world,
society is at least safe while the attempt is on. On the other
hand, the death penalty, as in Ziaur Rehman’s case, is often
woefully deficient since it rests on inadequate evidence. How can
we return to life somebody whose life has been taken by error?
But we are then confronted by other troublesome cases where guilty
persons walk out free. Should Hitler’s confidante, Albert Speer,
have been released from Spandau prison after he had completed
serving his twenty-year sentence? As a high-ranking official of
the Nazi party that led Germany during Hitler’s regime, could
twenty years be enough punishment for his involvement in the
deaths of over six million Jewish men, women and children? Did he
deserve the joys of liberty and fresh air even after having served
twenty years at Spandau? One justice system released a guilty
Speer, while another sent to death twelve innocent army officials.
Since our courts of law can err, can such an important power be
granted to them, the power to take away somebody’s life?
The spiritual world, like the liberal world, regards life as
precious and sacred. While the spiritually inclined person sees a
criminal not as “evil” but as “erroneous” or “ignorant”, the
liberal world, on its part, is inclined to concern itself with two
things, one his rehabilitation and two, the protection of the free
world from his future criminal acts.
Mother Teresa once recounted an incident she was party to in
London. “ One night in London I went out visiting people with the
Sisters. We saw a young boy with long hair, sitting in the street
with others. I spoke to him and I said, “You shouldn’t be here,
you should be with your mother and father, this is not the place
for you.” The young boy said, “My mother does not want me. Each
time I go home she pushes me out, because she can’t bear my long
hair.” We passed on. When I came back, he was lying flat on the
ground. He had overdosed himself. We had to take him to the
hospital. I could not help but reflect, “Here was a child hungry
for home, and his mother had no time for him. This is great
poverty. This is where you and I must make this world a better
place.”
The mother rejected him because his hair annoyed her, and the
child, unable to handle rejection, attempted suicide. It is easy
to reject and punish a child for straying from our ideals. But
rejection scars the victim and the society sooner or later.
Mother Teresa has called this “poverty”. For Mother Teresa,
loneliness and an unforgiving heart are signs of the greatest
poverty.
The desire to rehabilitate through compassion requires spiritual
understanding. Daughters are killed the moment their sex is known
in some villages; teenagers sometimes jump from tall buildings
because they failed in the exams and let their parents down.
Rejection is dangerous, what’s more, it is tragic. Crimes against
both oneself and society are rooted in rejection.
In the public realm, too, the facts are horrifying. In the USA
according to the 1992 statistics the total population comprises of
83.5% White Americans and 12.4% Black Americans. The statistics of
those on Death Row are as follows: White Americans: 46.27%, Black
Americans: 42.89%. Evidently, Blacks on Death Row are present in
disproportionate high numbers when one looks at their total
population. Do American juries award the death penalty more easily
to Blacks than to Whites for similar crimes? We reject somebody
who is not like us. We then condemn him for being different.
Biases apart, the question is, can we ever be a hundred percent
sure that we know all the facts when we sit down to judge another?
Facts are always being uncovered as time goes by. Can the death
penalty then ever be awarded? Not only the twelve condemned men
but even their families suffered the consequences of a grave
miscarriage of justice. They went through both public ignominy and
deprivation. No matter how hard the government tries it cannot
untangle this knot, it just cannot bring a man back to life. And
there is no compensation adequate for a life deliberately cut
short.
Similarly, how can we condemn a child for growing long hair or
failing in the exams? By rejecting we destroy the very life we
need to nurture and protect from destruction. Having destroyed his
self-esteem we push him towards crime or suicide.
To encourage and to be compassionate rather than to frighten and
terrorize is required not only by parents and teachers but even by
justice systems all over the world. To condemn and reject somebody
when one’s own knowledge is limited or shallow is to be unjust.
Rather, a compassionate analysis would help us have a society of
well-adjusted human beings. Social problems begin first as
domestic problems. An unforgiving climate at home breeds
tomorrow’s criminals. We have all been forgiven and gently
motivated; we must all learn to forgive and rehabilitate.
Civilized nations must protect the innocent from the dangerous and
also work towards the rehabilitation of the criminal in positive
ways. The introduction of Vipasana at Tihar Jail in Delhi, by
Kiran Bedi, threw up miraculous results: hardened criminals
admitted that they changed after they went deep inside themselves
and reached their true selves. Rehabilitation, according to Dr
Bedi, is always possible. If that is accepted, can we condemn
anybody to death?
Boloji.com is owned and managed by
Boloji Media Inc Privacy Policy |
Disclaimer No part of this Internet site may
be reproduced without prior written permission of the copyright holder.
