| Yawning
Bread. December 2006
Abolishing death penalty: understanding the challenges by Charles Tan
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The Governor of Florida (Jeb Bush – the President’s brother) recently
stopped all executions after it was found that the lethal injection
procedure "lacks both reliability and transparency". It was
discovered that the executioners had difficulty trying to insert the
intravenous lines to the condemned killer, resulting in a difficult and
tortured death. This was despite the fact that lethal injection was argued
to be more humane than any other form of execution. This method of
execution is currently used in 37 US states but has been halted in some
states recently including California and Florida that found the claims of
it being more humane dubious.
While this decision could be perceived as a measure of success of the anti-death penalty movement, abolition is still a far cry. It is because death penalty advocates will jump at the chance to lobby and reinstate executions once they discover a supposedly more humane way to end lives. While we can make arguments that state-sanctioned murder can never be non-demeaning or humane despite the best of intentions, the basis of arguments against the death penalty should often be linked to international norms, which is in contravention to the third article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person". This ties in to my argument in a BBC Generation Next Poll on teenagers from 15 to 17 year olds from various cities, which recently discovered that 50% of New York respondents agree with the death penalty with as many as 28% replying "don't know". Judging from the findings of the survey, respondents from most other cities seem to endorse the death penalty even though the trend is believed to be one of abolition. Cairo and Baghdad posted highest pro death penalty with up to 76% and 66% respectively while Lagos posted lowest at 17%. Rio, Delhi and London scored 37, 38 and 39% respectively when it comes to agreeing with capital punishment. On an aggregate front, of the 10 cities polled, 46% agreed while 44% disagreed with 10% saying 'I don't know'. It seems the anti-death penalty movement still has much awareness and education work to do on a global basis. In Singapore, a migrant worker, Took Leng How, was executed on 3 November 2006 after being sentenced to death for murdering a eight-year-old Chinese national Huang Na in October 2004. This was despite a clemency petition to the President that garnered 34,000 signatures and the fact that one of the three judges in the Court of Appeals found that the prosecution failed to prove conclusively that Took had smothered Huang Na. One psychiatrist had also found Took to be suffering from schizophrenia. Another two high profile prisoners on death row in Singapore are 19-year-old Nigerian Iwuchuku Amara Tochia and 33-year-old Okele Nelson Malachy. The former was found with 100 capsules of heroin weighing 727.02 on 28 Nov 2004 at the Changi Airport transit lounge. The latter was arrested at a coffee Bean shop at the Changi airport. Mentioning the Singapore situation in this comment piece is crucial because we need to understand how far we are away from the global situation and how different compared to the USA. Unlike the United States, executions here are performed by hanging. This is an archaic and barbaric method that involves more pain for the prisoner on death row. More disturbing is the fact that our executions are done behind closed doors and without third party inspection unlike United States. The argument here is not about an easier death for the prisoner but rather to highlight how non-transparent the situation is in Singapore. With executions carried out in utmost secrecy, the degree of cruelty and inhumanity of the executions cannot be measured. Took's case is described to reveal how even reasonable doubt by one of the presiding judges cannot be used as a mitigating factor to save him from the gallows. This highlights the arbitrariness of the court decision process, which should aim to be fair and just, and not subject to majority rule (in this case, two out of three judges finding him guilty). Even the professional opinion of a psychiatrist on his mental state was not valid in reducing the charge from murder to manslaughter. In the US, the death penalty can only be applied to murderers; and not drug traffickers as in the Africans' case. In fact, most on death row in Singapore are sentenced for drug possession. This means that those executed are for mainly for non-violent crimes. The Amnesty International article on the death penalty in Singapore is a great reference and provides a start to understanding the imperviousness and seriousness of the local situation. The tiny island state is believed to have the world’s highest per capita execution rate, relative to its population. Saudi Arabia, Belarus and Sierra Leone trail behind. It also estimated that the number of foreign nationals on death row makes up more than half of the total, with many believed to be migrant workers. This table below is taken from the Amnesty International report:
* as of October 2003
(Square brackets indicate the number of foreign nationals executed, according to information disclosed by the Ministry of Home
Affairs - as indicated by Amnesty Internal, the source of this table) Yet, despite the silence, there has been
a weak but growing movement in Singapore. A temporary anti-death penalty
committee was formed to lobby for the Australian Van Tuong Nguyen who was
executed for transiting in Singapore with marijauna [Addendum
1]. Think Centre, another
Singapore-based NGO, has been calling for a moratorium on the death
penalty. Otherwise, debates are stifled as the
state-controlled media endorses the official line that the death penalty
is essential to maintaining internal state security and social order. In a letter addressed to the UN Special
Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and
circulated in 2001 at the 57th session of the Commission on Human Rights,
the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Singapore to the UN stated "...the death penalty is primarily a
criminal justice issue, and therefore is a question for the sovereign
jurisdiction of each country [...] the right to life is not the only
right, and [...] it is the duty of societies and governments to decide how
to balance competing rights against each other." Because of the lock on information
access, the lack of debate, anti- death penalty activists are unable to
use instruments such as polls to reveal how much the population truly
understands about the death penalty. This is why public opinion polls such as
the BBC poll can highlight issues that could prove useful for anti-death
penalty activists when it comes to gauging the amount and type of work
that is needed to change public opinion. For example, questions can be
asked to find out if people agree that the death penalty should be applied
to murderers or drug traffickers. This information will help advocates
create and strategise campaigns to address underlying misinformation. In conclusion, the Singapore government
remains very much adamant on the death penalty. In fact, in its recent
public consultation exercise on amending the penal code, it introduced the
death penalty on a whole section for "genocide". This is in
contrast to the movement towards abolition. The authoritarian nature of the regime
means that the anti-death penalty movement needs to engage not only the
government; but also needs to educate the public about the fundamental
issues on the death penalty. This is coupled with the urgent need to
work on halting current death penalty cases. More often than not, many of
these cases may help anti-death penalty advocates gain experience in
highlighting the unjust or unfairness of the court adjudication process,
the transparency of executions, amongst other controversial issues
surrounding state-sanctioned executions. On a global scale, the BBC poll seems to
indicate that the anti-death penalty movement still has much work in
educating youths about abolition. This is crucial as it means the death
penalty can make a comeback if the future generation of leaders and policy
makers are not thoroughly educated about the issue. There is still work to be done if
we want to get there.
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References
Addenda
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