I have often wondered whether it is right to execute a person for his/her crimes. There are groups in the world who have severely opposed the death penalty. There was the famous case of Dhanonjoy Chatterjee in India, when many anti death-penalty champions took to the streets. In USA this week, a similar chapter was repeated when Stanley Tookie Williams was executed by lethal injection earlier yesterday.
On one hand, I believe a criminal must face the results of his crime. No-one can justify what Dhanonjoy or Williams did. Ever. No action of atonement can bring back the lives that were lost, nor subside the pain that was caused. On the other hand, punishing death with death, makes 'Us' just like 'Them'. When Williams died yesterday, the death was witnessed by a group of fifty people. He was put on a table in a glass chamber and people sat around the chamber and watched him die.
Watched him die. It gives me a feeling of civilized murder. Criminals act as per their wrong ideas, follow their cruel intentions. The system that does justice to them, acts no better. It murders them in cold-blood, at a given time and place.
I understand the perspectives of both groups. I understand the need for revenge, the need for 'closure' that a victim's family wants. My views therefore swing between two opposite ideologies.
Perhaps, this is one of the most complicated issues of our times. Various nations have differing opinions regarding this.
Here is a
link to the report about the death of Stanley Williams. Its depressing.
I read this when I was a kid. The story of Pandora. How the world was once a beautiful place and there were gardens and orchards all around. And there were no hard choices to make. I wish Pandora hadn't opened the box and the world had remained just like that : beautiful, peaceful.
