Peter Espeut
I DIDN'T know the JLP was that desperate for votes! When Mr. Golding was with the NDM he was new and different, and did not favour the death penalty. He seems to be regressing.
In March this year, the Mexican Senate voted 79 to 2 to abolish the death penalty in Mexico. Two months ago, Liberia became the 139th country to abolish the death penalty. In the world, only 57 countries retain the death penalty, down from 61 in 2003 and 64 in 2002. Among the 57 countries that have the death penalty in their legal arsenals, only 25 conducted executions in 2004, compared with 30 in 2003 and 34 in 2002. The only country in the western hemisphere to execute anyone in 2004 was the United States of America, which put 59 people to death. And even in the U.S., the 2004 figure was down compared with the 65 executed in 2003 and 71 in 2002.
DECLINE IN AFRICA
Africa also showed a decline last year, with nine executions - in only three countries, Egypt, Sudan and Somalia - down from 56 in 2003 and 63 in 2002. Europe was virtually a death penalty-free zone except for Belarus where five people were put to death last year. Asia is responsible for most of the executions, with a total estimated at 5,450 in 2004. China leads with at least 5,000 (90.5% of the world's total), followed by Iran with 197, and Vietnam with at least 82.
As the world becomes more civilised, the drive to kill declines. In Jamaica it is not only criminals and political thugs who support killing.
Last week on the Breakfast Club I heard a supposedly Christian minister of religion try to defend the death penalty using the Bible. The Rev. Al Miller, who has started his own church with his own brand of Christianity, quoted not one text from the New Testament, the account of the New Covenant, to support his argument. Jesus, who Christians profess to follow, would not have been happy.
JESUS' STATEMENTS
In one famous incident, Jesus confronted a bunch of men about to legally administer the death penalty to a woman validly convicted of adultery. It didn't happen! In his famous Sermon on the Mount where he elucidated the ethics of the Kingdom of which he was Lord, Jesus proclaimed a series of "You have heard it said, but I say to you" statements. The New Covenant, which transcends the Old, has no clause about "An eye for an eye". In fundamentalist Jamaica, too many so-called "Christians" are still sons and daughters of the Old Covenant.
In the mean time, the State of Israel, the guardians of the Old Covenant, and for whom what Christians call the "Old Testament" is the whole Bible, abolished the death penalty decades ago. Our fundamentalist "Christians" are more Jewish than the Jews!
POLICE EXEMPT?
Not to be outdone by Mr. Golding in bowing to the fundamentalists, Prime Minister Patterson has called for a grand coalition between PNP and JLP to hasten the return of hanging. But do either the PNP or the JLP really believe in capital punishment? Maybe for people like me, but not for their cronies, e.g. the Klansmen and One Order gangs. Look at how an earlier grand coalition distinguished between capital and non-capital murder. The way they drafted the law, if a PNP or JLP activist (like I suppose a member of the Klansmen or One Order gangs) kills a citizen and is found guilty: non-capital murder; no PNP or JLP activist could ever be hung by a law agreed on by both parties! If a citizen murders a policeman and is found guilty: capital murder! If a policeman murders a citizen and is found guilty: non-capital! No policeman can ever be hung by a law agreed on by both parties! This law protected the PNP and JLP garrison gunmen from the gallows. Shameful! Do we need more evidence of support by politicians for their murderous henchmen? Thank God the Judicial Committee of the U.K. Privy Council rendered that law unconstitutional!
And as the political guns bark all over town and country, both parties have the gall to say they want to reintroduce hanging!
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.
