The death penalty debate
To hang or not to hang?
THE European Union (EU) is reportedly opposed to the death penalty for, what it called, politically motivated cases. The head of the EU delegation in Bangladesh, Ambassador Dr. Stefan Frowein, said: "The European Union is paying close attention to the various judicial proceedings in Bangladesh this year concerning politically motivated murders." He made it clear that this EU statement "applies to trials for all such crimes, notably, the 1975 murders of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family members and others, murders committed during the 2009 Bangladesh Rifles mutiny, and potentially also war crimes committed during the country's struggle for independence." Capital punishment is a debated issue worldwide, and the arguments on both sides are equally strong. The proponents argue that the utter and deliberate denial of life and opportunity to others forfeits one's own claim to continued membership in the community. The preciousness of life in a community must be so highly honoured that those who do not honour the life of others make null and void their own right to membership in the community. On the other hand, even in societies where the judiciary can rightfully boast of being the finest organ of the state and the members of the community possess unflinching trust in its deliberations, the opponents of capital punishment argue that the denial of right of life is irrevocable, and the errors of justice cannot be rectified. If an innocent person has been hanged, the judge and the whole legal machinery involved have thereby been made a privy to the very crime they seek to punish. Their opposition to capital punishment in no way reflects any leniency towards the perpetrators of the crimes. In addition to the above assertions, both in favour of and against capital punishment, one has to perceive the socio-political aspect of the society to make an absolute standing on the issue. The EU has the moral right to demand enactment of a law for the abolishment of capital punishment to the government, not to the court of law, since only one out of its 27 member countries, Latvia, still maintains capital punishment for crimes during war. One has to take into cognisance the fact that it is only possible in Bangladesh, not in any member country of the EU, that a convicted cold blooded murderer of seven students at Dhaka University campus was freed from life imprisonment by the first military ruler of Bangladesh when he was running for president to obtain his (convict's) father's support in the election. Only a few years ago, a convicted killer got presidential mercy and his death sentence was commuted to acquittal, not even to life imprisonment. Does this type of socio-political scenario exist in any country of the EU? The astonishing part of the EU statement, as elaborated by its ambassador to Bangladesh, is that it has specifically singled out three murders as "politically motivated," and unambiguously said that death penalty in those cases should not be awarded. The cases in question are extremely sensitive ones, which have touched the hearts and emotions of the millions, and the government of the day has the unreserved and overwhelming mandate of the people to carry out the trials and award the deserving punishment as per the law of the land. Every first-degree murder has one or more motives and, quite contrary to the EU's observation, the depth of the crime is amplified only if it is politically motivated, not the other way around. Firstly, the killing of Bangabandhu and his family members, including children and women, was a crime against humanity; and the killers confessed, so wrongful conviction (a point against capital punishment) is absolutely ruled out. Secondly, it is yet to be known if the BDR mutiny was at all politically motivated. In any case, the brutality the perpetrators exhibited in the cold-blooded killing of 57 of our finest officers in uniform, in addition to torturing and killing some of their family members, does not deserve any leniency whatsoever, and the nation wants the perpetrators to face the ultimate justice. Lastly, if war crimes and genocide are considered as being "politically motivated," then Hitler's killings of millions of Jews in gas chambers was also one such crime. If the EU is advocating against the awarding of death penalty for war crimes, it first must self-denounce the Nuremberg trial and give back the lives of Hitler's 10 associates who were hanged on October 16, 1946. As an important element of the international community, the EU has every right to scrutinise the fairness and impartiality of the judicial of system of any member state. However, at this stage, most people of Bangladesh respectfully differ with the EU's observation that "the abolition of the death penalty contributes to the enhancement of human dignity and the progressive development of human rights." This difference is even greater for three of the murders that the EU has singled out in its statement as being politically motivated.
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