I feel sick, yet its like watching a train wreck. I’m transfixed. I’m reading about execution on Death Penalty Info, an american website about the death penalty. They go through all the methods, and means of death. I suppose the americans think they’re so superior because they no longer have beheadings or stoning. A small concession that’s quite meaningless.
An australian is about to be executed tomorrow in Singapore. We’re all talking about it in the media and in the lunchrooms because he’s an Ozzie, and that’s more meaningful than all the other executions that happen every day. He smuggled heroin. The argument is that his death is required to mollify the 2600 other possible deaths that herion might have caused had it found its way to the street. There’s been a division in the Australian popular media about whether he should die or live. On the one hand, australians are eager to demonise asians. On the other, we despise heroin sellers even more than we despise herion addicts.
What resonates with me is how awful, how barbaric and deliberate execution is. How can we treat death like its politics? How is it fair to cut a life short? Whether its a ‘humane’ method or not doesn’t matter. Most people don’t want to die if they can help it. The very concept of execution is inhumane. I can’t understand how it can be argued that killing another person can be worth it.
