Right to power over Life

I know the blogsphere is probably overloaded with people on this one already but the recent execution of Van Nguyen has prompted some rather screwy debate from too many people that i know to let it pass.

Just to get this situated, i believe that capital punishment is ALWAYS wrong. No state should ever have power over human life in that way. Ever. Some of my reasons for this one include:

1. A personal belief in rehabilitative models of disciplinary systems. In an imperfect world and with a criminal justice system that has been known to get things wrong the risk is simply too high that an innocent life could be taken.

2. Historically, states (and sovereigns) have tended to use this power over death to regulate life in strikingly repressive ways, it is to open to abuse to have this at the centre of any understanding of justice.

3. The deterrent argument is quite a difficult one to propose when there are so many reasons that people might break the law and so many different ways that people relate to their punishments. The executions of the bali bombers is a good example of this where the bombers expressed satisfaction over the death sentence because it assured them (in their minds) of their place in paradise.

4. Practicing capital punishment provides a precedent of sorts (or is a corollory of) laws preventing abortion, suicide and euthenasia. These are cases in which women are deprived of rights over their own bodies and people are deprived of the right to make decisions about ending their lives. Surely if we do not possess even these rights we cannot then give them over to the state.

To clarify, I don't think the minutes silence really had any point but it did allow the 50% (so says the SMH) who thought he should not be killed to take some kind of group action. I don't care where the PM was. And i do believe that we have to respect the sovereignty of other country's laws although it can still be morally imperative to support interventions through international body's like the UN/world court into unjust systems.

It is simply the hypocrisy of jumping in on this one case and lobbying Singapore when we had not done so previously, we have not been to the UN over this and if i remember correctly lil' John was making moves *towards* the intro of capital punishment here. Sheesh.