The Death Penalty, Social Escapism? My word against Capital Punishment.

Hey Ryloggers.
Merry Christmas, to those readers who might celebrate. And I wish you all an auspicious New Year 2013 too. Also, world didn't end, so glad that the poem wasn't my last post. I'd like my last post to be my own. Die in style you know. xD. And before we start, I apologize for the lack of activities, I've been kinda caught up. And I m also starting to write this novella, which I hope to publish in a few years. So yea, wish me luck.

Anyway, This is the fourth in the series of blog posts I've been writing. The first ones being, 'My word against JFK,', 'My rant on Society,' 'My word against Paulo Coelho,' and this one would be followed by, 'My word against Democracy.'hopefully.
I realize that capital punishment is a sensitive issue in moral, social and religious grounds so i ask you guys to keep an open mind and bear with me and I'd try my best to prove my point. So okay without further ado:

MY WORD AGAINST CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Since its slightly larger than the average blog post, here are the contents, incase you just want to read some bits of it.
Contents:-
Introduction
Small History
Why people believe in death penalty
Negativity and how we as a society have failed
Real problems leading to capital punishment
Religious Perspective - Islam
Alternative solutions.

What is Capital Punishment?The definition of Capital Punishment, itself becomes a matter of perception.

Capital Punishment as defined by Google, is 'The legally authorized killing of someone as punishment for a crime.' What I see in this definition is, 'The legally sanctioned murder of a murderer, in order to punish murder by murder.


We humans were born only with our animalistic instincts, just like any other meek animal. We knew nothing, but to satisfy our basic needs. Then as time grew we formed groups, we built institutions, we wrote down moral codes, we evolved into social beings, we decided what is socially acceptable and what is not, we defined the boundaries of organized social life. Time progressed and these small moral codes became legal codes, we built judicial systems, we developed penal codes, punishments were instilled on those who go against these codes.

None of these codes have remained constant, for one simple reason. Justice, as we know it has no definition. My justice is injustice for you, my freedom fighter is your terrorist, your scholar is an indoctrinator for me.  But the death penalty or the capital penalty has been ever present in our societies, some form or the other. If we think about how this concept originated, I don't know what you may thing ryloggers but forgive me and correct me, if i m being one dimensional  here but i see one simple reason behind this. And it is not peace, it is not justice, it is not safety and law and order. It is our innate, insatiable desire for revenge. blood for blood right? It was mainly done, so that the second murder, the murder for revenge occurs in a controlled environment, sanctioned by the state, sanctioned by the seat of power; once again society's little way of making sure its in control and giving us the illusion that we just got what we want. But the question that comes to my mind, is what would the family of the dearly departed gain from this, would the aching, gaping hole left behind by their loved one disappear because we killed the one who killed him? Would their loneliness, their misery brought about by the loss of a friend, of a brother, of a sister dissipate because we have given the same loss and loneliness to another family, maybe? And what does this speak about our humanity?

When, the whole Maldives cried for revenge when an MP was killed recently, my best friend updated this in his facebook status.

"As for death penalty, yes it will make the murderers afraid to commit another murder. But killing another human being will not bring back the loved one that died by the hands of the murderer, nor will it give you the satisfaction for getting rid of the person who killed your friend. It will not comfort you. And you will not care that the murder has got the poetic justice that he deserved later on. You will still miss them and feel the same emptiness. Sentence killers to life imprisonment and let them regret doing the deed for the rest of their life while they slowly rot away inside a cage :)"   - Saif Saeed.

 Thank you Saif, Thanks a lot, I had started to finally give up and accept that society won't change and maybe an immediate relief is what we need, but that day when I saw your status I realized that everyone is not blind and there might be still hope. So despite what I said, in 'The Chair of Justice the only solution?' I won't support the death penalty. Here's why.

Okay, lets talk about why PEOPLE believe Capital Punishment is inevitable in the present day scenario.  And I'd try to be as general as possible but forgive me, my experiences are much limited right now in the region I was born in. We live in a world where everyday a girl gets raped, for no apparent reason. We live in a world where there are a billion childhood child abuse cases, both sexually and physically. We live in a world where those who look at the society objectively has to accept the fact that most of the unregistered cases are actually about boys. We live in a world where eve teasing has reached to a point where girls can no longer work alone safely on the road, because of the fear of being harassed. We live in a world where we must fear our own family members because they turn out to be the perpetrators. We live in a world where one can not honestly hope to identify a predominant reason for murder, a world where you get killed for no good reason at all. But then again, had there ever been a good reason to get killed? The world has reached the year 2013 now, and people are tired of waiting on things to change, hoping that humanity would awake from their mistakes and live in tranquility. Even, if our own efforts towards that end has been limited, at kindest.

This has created a feeling of negativity among the masses, which is utterly disheartening. Negativity towards, the perpetrators, It has become common belief in most our societies, that these 'brutal murderers,', 'these despicable monsters' deserve to be killed in the most brutal way possible. And if we make an example out of some of them, these crimes would miraculously stop. but if we claim to be the evolved species, the homo sapien sapiens, before evoking the law of the jungle, should we not sit back and think about the finer points here. The first being Who on earth are these brutal murderers and despicable monsters. Did they come in a space shuttle from Mars? Or are they a part of a frankenstein experiment, or are they a new type of evolved beings?

No, Harper Lee has already answered this question in the words of Atticus Finch, much better than I can ever hope to answer it, in a slightly unrelated matter though.

'That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they are still HUMAN. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children. You made Walter Cunningham stand in my shoes for a minute. That was enough.'

'First of all, If you can learn a simple trick, Scout you'd get along better with all kinds of folks. You never understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb onto his skin and walk around in it.'

Yes, at the end of the day, they came from us. It is our societies who created these people. If there is a monster here, it is our society. If our society, is considered to be the good father who teaches good morals and good ethics and good values but has also created a bunch of children, who he has neglected enough to turn out to become 'bad' in the traditional sense, at least for me it says much more about the father than the children.  If we are to truly stop, these heinous crimes, we must think from the point of view of the heinous criminals too. What made them who they are? How can we stop others from becoming what they have become? Don't believe for one second, that killing a bunch of people would set an example so deep that others would stop committing these heinous crimes. No, that is never going to happen simply because of the fact that we are not dealing with a mob here, where you arrest the ring leader and the mob becomes scattered.  Believing that some sort of revenge killing would ever solve this problems. I refuse to believe the cliche', kill one and they'd all learn. Its stupid. Its not about teaching a person a lesson. Hasn't religion and law been trying to do that for decades, instilling fear? has it worked. no. No, we are dealing with real issues.very real problems. These murders, rapes, violence is just the outlet we see. Behind each murder, behind every rape, there is a hidden social problem, a social disease corrupting the very essence of our social structure, which has lead to these outlets. And as I always say, if a tree is diseased, we may hack off the branches all we want, the new branches that grow out of it will still be diseased, the problem is within the roots and we have to cure the roots in order for the tree to be healthy.

The fact of the matter is this friends, Ryloggers: Every time a person is raped or murdered, all of us come together. All of us 'normal' people come together, we protest, we scream, we weep, we blame the government, we call out to kill that evil monster, we wonder and ponder how someone can be so inhumane, we demand the government to hang that monster and while we are busy about what violent things we can do to the monster, how many of us actually discuss what has to be done to the victim? Especially in rape cases and child abuse cases, No we do not give a damn about the victim. We are just here to punish the perpetrator, the essence of all evil. And once all the hue and cries down, and normal life is ensured how many of us wake up from our day to day problems look at the society, reflect and see the problems within the society that has CREATED this monster? No WE DON'T. We just eat our delicacies, drink our worth, love our beloved and wait for the existing problems in the society to create another monster, wait for another case to appear, so we can kill another person and get along with our lives. This is a vicious cycle. Brothers and sisters, the truth of the matter is that we are not doing anything for the victims or the society at large, we are just fulfilling our gut instinct for revenge, we lead by animalistic not humane need for revenge, we offer the criminal, to put in the words of one of my facebook friends, 'as a a blood sacrifice to the society to abate it.' Thats what we do, that's what our governments do. To abate the angry masses, we kill the perpetrator. But at the end of the day, friends, this is escapism from the real problems. This is state and social escapism. And how long can we go on like this.

I think I've vaguely mentioned, real problems, real issues long enough for you to wonder what real problems, what real issues I'm talking about here. My sister, (Her Beautiful Blog.) the other day very appalled (bless her), at the situation of Maldives, randomly wonders out, 'What is wrong with our country?' and my answer to her, is the real problems that I talk about. My answer being:
"There is a serious problem with our penitentiary and education system, our moral codes are hypocritical and our social system diseased. "

There are more problems today, than I can hope to write in a meekly blog post or you could be bothered to read. So here are some highlights off the top of my head in no particular order.

QUESTIONING FORBIDDEN
We live in a society where questioning is forbidden. With sex a taboo, when a child first starts questioning about sexual issues, sexual drives, impulses or even basic sexuality or the simple question, how he comes to the world he is met with repression. And I m not talking about what is traditionally regarded as a bad type of repression, this is the simple, 'Don't talk about it. You'd find out sooner or later.' One must understand is that a childhood is the most curious age, a person can ever go through. And at this age, if questions are not answered at all, if questions are completely neglected, the child does not simply withdraw his impulses and his curiosity, he seeks other means in which he can find answers. So first of all our one sided morality and taboo is making sex itself an enigma. One does not have to be a genius to figure out, that once someone is forbidden something with no proper reason, they are more prone to do it. And our sex drive, doesn't disappear. But we are making the essential part of it disappear. the human part of it. the very thing that differentiates man's sexual behavior from animalistic sexual impulses. - our common values about sexuality making the ill advised child ignorant to what is acceptable form of sexual behavior and what is not. And this is not just restricted, with parents. We have an education system, which does not allow proper sex education.  So basically, in the development stage of man, a sexual being essentially, is given no proper information on the ethical or the better ways to deal with his sexual drive. And nobody, is more dangerous than an ignorant man. Can you honestly say, that this unawareness towards sexuality has nothing to do with increase in rape cases? Lets deviate from Maldives, for a minute here. If you take other countries where slums are more predominant, brothers and sisters all grow up together, maybe sleeping in the same room, using the same facilities, Isn't it natural to develop a curiosity and in the formative years, when the sexual drive is being developed, if this curiosity, is not abated properly, man is left with no cultural values just his raw sexual impulses and this is the case in some of our more rural islands too.

FAULTY MORALS CREATE LACK OF CONSCIENCE.
The next moral system I have a huge problem with is our very values. From day one, we are taught whats good and whats bad. And if one has the audacity to question, Why? Why is this good and why is this bad? The answer he would be met with is because we (parents/teachers) are telling you its good and bad. Or my favorite reason. Its bad because if you do that, you d go to hell. Its good, because when you do that you d be granted heaven. So basically, we grow up having a set of ethics, a bunch of social dictates and no understanding why we follow them. So, as he goes on with life and through the course of time when he is given the choice to do whats supposedly good but he doesn't know why its good, or whats easy and an immediate solution to his problem, he takes the easy way out. The point I m trying to make here is we do not tell our children what is right and what is wrong and we don't try to instill on their young minds why it is right and why it is wrong, instead we give them a hard and fast rule that something is either good or bad. Its the difference between a child knowing that if he plays with a knife, he'd cut himself and that would cause him pain and a child just being told that he must not play with a knife. It is incomplete morals that we teach our children. A person growing up, whose parents have through experience and advice instilled in him, in his conscience basic ethics would understand that he should not kill a man, because he does not have the right to take another life while a person growing up just with the dicta that it is wrong to kill a man, wouldn't have the same moral solidarity. You might say, that despite this when the person grows older he should have the common sense to know that taking a life is wrong. Yes, he should. But the fact is, he does not have the same value for life. We can see this in Maldives right now. In the gang violence, killing people just because they can. Cutting up a human being has become as simple is cutting your toast for breakfast. So it is high time, we instill upon our kids whats right and wrong, not dictate to them whats good and bad. And yes, there is a difference.


NEGLECTED SOCIAL ISSUES
Another problem I find is that we are making this whole murder/rape problem we have a political issue. It's not. It might have political basis at the face level but take it to the grass root level, and it is a bunch of social issues we have chosen to neglect.  For instance, take domestic violence. Until recently, we have not even seen that this is a problem. In some households, children as young as three to four years are beaten black and blue with broomsticks or pans for small mistakes, and if one questions the parent, Why did you just beat your kid up?, The answer would be along the justification of disciplining. Yes, disciplining. Domestic Violence, physically beating up their children in our societies is a socially accepted form of disciplining. In an island, if a woman comes out with her child and beats the living hell out of each other infront of all the citizens in the island, there wouldn't be even 25% who thinks its wrong and its doubtful that there would be even one person who would oppose it. Why should they? She is the child's mother. The child misbehaved, so she is disciplining it. But at the end of the day, the fact of the matter is this. This is violence too. This goes against human rights too. But you can't even exactly blame the parents. Its what they have learned from their parents, who disciplined them in a similar manner. It has created a vicious cycle, And we don't even see how wrong it is. These small things accumulating over the years, has lead to the mentality, the decorum in society which has lead to the violence we see today. For the love of god people, we did not develop a sudden disease of rape and murder over night. This has been a long lasting process. So stop blaming any particular government for it.

NEGLECT OF THE ABUSED - OVER EMPHASIS ON ABUSER.And here, I m talking more about rape than murder. In an year, thousands of people get molested and hundreds get raped. From this comparatively speaking, only a very few cases get reported. Why? There could be many reasons. A lot of guys, for instance do get sexually molested, some in more patronizing and impactful ways than others but the 'male ego' or 'pride', among other reasons often causes them to voluntarily not talk about it ever again because of the fear of getting ridiculed or repress these memories.  Another reason, is those who get abused by family members are coerced into keeping their mouth shut in the name of family name. There could be many reasons, but the fact is irrespective of the degree of the incident, it always leaves an impact. And people are different, both in their biological and social make up. People deal with things differently. A lot of these children who get abused in their young age, without given the proper care and counseling grow up to become the 'monsters' we talk about. As much as I don't like the book 50 shades of Grey, (god this is the third blog post I'm mentioning it. But it's just a good example. I really don't like it.) it portrays a very good example. The guy, Trystan Grey was used in a bondage relationship as a child by his mother's friend and when he grows up, he who was the submissive, wants to be the dominant in all his sexual relationships. So nothing really works for him other than Bondage. Its what gets him turned on sexually. And this is a very real reason a lot of people become child molesters. Mainly, those who are abused as children are left with a complex where they have to exert their dominance over the opposite gender, sometimes even the same gender sexually. This is a reason why a lot of them actually abuse children, who will be more innocent and submissive than a child? I do not say all this to justify their action, there can be no justification but to merely explain why people become what they become. And the drastic action we must take to prevent others from becoming the same. As I mentioned earlier in the post, people do not bother about the one who really needs their attention, care and love but are too bothered in trying to punish the perpetrator. But the truth is, twenty years from now these very people become the perpetrators, I don't say all of them do. But some, do. So to prevent them, they should be given the necessary care and psychological therapy.

IGNORANCEIn direct relation, to the above point, we are also very ignorant to the plight of the abuser. We must understand, that he too is the product of the system we live in. Something must have gone wrong, in our own values and social structure, to create such monsters. He did not emerge from somewhere else, it is our society that made him the person that he is. And that is why i call it social and state escapism. Instead of, dealing with the problem we choose to send him to the chair. Commit state sanctioned murder until the next person emerges, also created by the same system. Is this the empathy and sympathy that us normal people brag about. Should we not wonder, why these people become who they are and not just end their lives, without reflecting on it. Doesn't this reveal a lot more about our humanity than his? Food for thought.

NEGLECT OF YOUTHThe heinous, sick, twisted truth is the youth of our country has been not only neglected but also used by two regimes for their political motives. Our youth population consists, of a huge chunk of people, who are not aware or does not give a damn about the social and political problems prevailing in our societies and another chunk who had fallen to the prey of either extremist beliefs or drugs and alcohol. And both extremes have been used by political power players to commit their crimes for them, as their personal hit men. We heard a man who is credited to bring democracy to Maldives, a champion of so many people, a president our beloved country on audio tape, claiming that he wants a bunch of youth who can beat up the cops and thats the only solution. What do these politicians think? We are their stooges. This has gone on for too long. In Maldives, the country where basic education is guaranteed to each man and woman, we are so politically unaware that the youth and even the supposed intelligentsia among the youth are being used by religious figures, by political figures to get their dirty work done for them by bribing them with money, drugs or heaven, I don't know what is worse.

FAULTY PENITENTIARY SYSTEM
Our Penitentiary system is despicable. I can't understand how the people who had such a big problem with  Maumoon's torture cells, don't see how wrong this whole system is. First of all, our biggest mistake is we classify drug addicts as criminals, they are not. They are patients. They should never even be sent to jail. We are creating that mentality not only in ourselves, but within these patients and within the society that they are criminals and that they need to be treated as such. This is when they become criminals, ryloggers. At the state in which Maldivian jails are in, a person who did nothing wrong other than use drugs, after fulfilling his sentence in jail, would have a hundred more issues with him. This is not helping them to be rehabilitated. This is making them worse. Jail itself has a bigger market for drugs, than the open public. What is happening here. And because these patients are not properly rehabilitated, their thirst for drugs becomes so high that they would do anything to get the substance, and this is where another reason for murder comes into play.
Another huge problem, in the penitentiary system is, drug patients and criminals taken for petty theft or fraud etc, are put into jail cells with child molesters, murderers, highly damaged individuals. They do not deserve that, it is dangerous for them. And we must not impose that upon them.

For these reasons, among many I claim that it is our society who creates a lot of these so called monsters and we are responsible for them as much as we are responsible for ourselves. And we can't shake our hands of these responsibility by committing, yes committing, capital punishment. If the bill for capital punishment is passed, Maldivian society, all of us have failed. We have failed because we are admitting defeat. We are admitting that we can't fight the problems within our social structure, so we are just going to appease the society by paying a blood payment. The society has failed because we still don't understand. Cause, the average Maldivian is still ignorant to all the social problems that we do have. They think the problems we are facing erupted yesterday, after the democratic movement. That all of this are political murders, political reasons behind everything. That the rapist, is a different person from who we are, its just the way they are and the society would be better off, if we just did off with him.

There is one more very important reason why we as a society, condone capital punishment.

RELIGION.
This just deals with the Islamic attitude towards Capital Punishment, so any non muslims who might read this may choose to ignore this section.

The biggest slap on the face of those of us, who are against the death penalty by religious men, is that how can we while claiming that we follow Islam and we believe in Allah and his messenger (PBUH) go against such a fundamental of Islam as the death penalty.  My answer to them is simple, I do not agree with your brutal interpretation of this principle. Islam has always promoted the medium standard, to accept both dhunya (world) and the ahirat (After world) Muslims are not supposed to be extremist or brutal in anything, the basic principal by which our prophet that we claim to follow as an example, lived day in and day night was forgiveness. Can any of us claim to have faced as much torture as he faced in Mecca? As his sahabas faced in Mecca? In the hands of his own people? They finally made him flee from his own home. And when he got support from other people in Medina, they came looking for him to kill him, just because he claimed that he worships a god other than the gods they worshipped. Despite all this, when he got success over these people and he entered Mecca and his rule established, what did he announce? He announced that he forgave all of them except a handful, most of whom he ended forgiving too. Or have you forgotten that? Is this not the Islam we believe in? Islam that has stood for peace and solidarity, or an abridged version of Islam given to you by Salafis and Preachers and Extremists? Is Maldivian muslims following the Sheikh Imran version of Islam now?


Yes, I agree despite all that, religion does give the right to the victim's family to allow the person to be murdered. But look closely on this verse.

[42:40-43] The recompense for an injury is an injury equal thereto (in degree): but if a person forgives and makes reconciliation, his reward is due from Allah: for (Allah) loves not those who do wrong. But indeed if any do help and defend themselves after a wrong (done) to them, against such there is no cause of blame. The blame is only against those who oppress men and insolently transgress beyond bounds through the land, defying right and justice: for such there will be a grievous penalty. And whoever is patient and forgiving, these most surely are actions due to courage. - Holy Quran

Allah, almighty has praised those who choose not to invoke capital punishment, as courageous and don't we claim that it is his love and admiration that we all seek, at the end of the day? He has also said, that those who forgives and makes reconcillation would be rewarded by Allah. Subhan'Allah. Isn't his reward, that all of us seek? Then I ask this question back to the Sheikhs and the preachers, why not  promote forgiveness, when religion too says its the better way. Religion teaches us, that forgiveness is much better if we understand? Why do we not understand, brothers and sisters?

The Prophet Muhammad (SAW), who we believe to be the greatest man to have ever lived, his sunnah shows us that if he was given the choice, he had always chosen to forgive than to punish. I don't know why some of you choose to only accept, the more seemingly brutal parts of Islam and neglect the loving grace of god and his messenger.

For me, in my own personal belief, having been given the choice to either kill for kill or pay the blood payment, is a test our humanity by god. It is left for our choice, so that we will choose to forgive our brother. And that is why Capital Punishment will never be in my good graces.

Now, to be honest I m not particularly well versed in the penitentiary and legal system. But from my little knowledge, here are some alternative ways I think we can deal with this.

• First and foremost, when a person is raped, murdered we must give immediate professional counseling to the victim (in case of rape and torture) and the victim's family.
• We must identify the social problems we face and bring about better awareness at grass roots, so not only intellectuals but the average maldivian would understand how this could be a problem.
• Educational reforms. We must give more attention to civic studies and sex education too.
• Penitentiary and Rehabilitation reforms. Drug addicts, should only be given a rehab sentence not a jail sentence. better penitentiary laws can be drafted so that each crime has a punishment in par with the crime in nature and degree.
• Instead of giving everyone a jail sentence, community service can also be an imposed punishment on more mediocre crimes
• Improve the quality of jails.
• Prevent Youth brainwashing, engage youth in productive activities, try to change the mindset Maldivians have on superior and inferior jobs. So that more job opportunities can be opened giving the youth less time to decay wastefully. (This could also in the long run, help reduce expectorate workers. but major mindset change needed.)
• Punish indoctrinators and political figures who use youth for political motives, severely.
• Rapists and Murderers to be segregated from the average criminals and special regiment camps to be created for them consisting of heavy physical labor, professional psychological diagnosis and counseling etc.
• But first of all, we seriously need to stop associating everything with a political reason and stop dealing everything with a political bias. We need to treat each problem as it is not as we are in order for this country to change.
  

Lewis Lawes, warden of Sing Sing prison in New York once said, "As if one crime of such nature, done by a single man, acting individually, can be expiated by a similar crime done by all men, acting collectively." And that is what at the end of the day, death penalty really is. A crime. Because of our own incapability and social problems, a man is created who is ready to take another man's life and instead of saving him from himself, we kill him. This is not acceptable to me. But thats just my opinion. I m as flawed as the next guy. So I just ask you all to think twice on this. And if thats not enough, think thrice. One may claim, that I am against death penalty because I do not have had someone who i know who got murdered and that claim would be wrong. My direct maternal uncle, was the first person to be murdered in the series of gang murders. And I've known someone who is really very close to my heart, who got molested and nearly raped. I do not say, what I say because I don't understand. I do not say what I say inspite of the pain of the victim and their family. I say what I say about capital punishment, because of the pain of the victim and their family and our pain as a society. Until next time, Ryloggers. Be safe and Merry Christmas.