THE LETHAL INJECTION, with which many condemned are put to death, can create extreme suffering during one’s final agonising seconds of life.
According to studies carried out by the Human Rights Watch, this is advocated in opposition to what those who defend the death penalty assert.
On the other hand, the United States of America and China are among the countries with the highest rate of condemned death penalties.
According to Amnesty International, there have been more than 2 000 executed death penalties in 22 countries, and more than 5 000 people condemned.
The death penalty and its application does not seem to worry too many political leaders. The practice does not seem to be censored.
Throughout the last 25 years, the number of countries that condemn the guilty to the death penalty has risen to 50 per cent. Mexico and Liberia are two countries that have eliminated the death penalty out of their legislation and rule of law.
However, in some countries the death penalty is exclusively adhered to for extreme cases. The death penalty is upheld and practised in almost all the new African, Arabic, Eastern and Ex-Soviet Union states.
Those against the death penalty assert that it is inhumane, and, that it should be a duty of the government to execute its mandate for its prohibition.
It should also be their duty to keep a close watch on judicial sentences; these can be irreversible.
While in some developing countries the death penalty has been excluded from their legislation, Japan not only refuses to follow such an example, but has renewed their practice of it during the last couple of years.
The reactivation of hanging the condemned – a cruel and medieval practice especially for a technologically advanced nation such as the Empire of the Rising Sun – has cost Japan censorship from various human rights advocacy organisations.
It is also upheld that the death penalty has been maintained by all nation-states throughout history.
This is not a valid argument, for slavery also existed, and today it is prohibited and denounced as an inhumane and immoral practice.
Last but not least, the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations ratified a resolution advising all countries to prohibit the death penalty, protect human dignity and our inalienable human rights – rights which are bestowed upon us from our birth till our death.
CLEMENTE FERRER
