Not in my name

My husband told me yesterday that Chemical Ali has been sentenced to death. You can follow this link to the story on BBC News if you want. I find it very disturbing indeed because I thought the whole idea of the "liberation" of Iraq was so that the Iraqi people could have a Western style democracy. I can't see where hanging, or any other form of execution, comes into it at all. Now, I know the US has a federal death penalty and that 38 of the 50 States have the death penalty bu then I really am unable to think of the US as a true democracy because of it.

I am proud to be part of the EU because of its unequivocal opposition to the death penalty. No country can become part of the EU unless it has first abolished it. I could not live in a country which executes its criminals, no matter how heinous the crime. People sometimes asks me how I would feel if my daughter had been murdered by, for instance, Ian Huntley. I cannot even begin to imagine how that would feel but I do not believe that it is a valid argument for the death penalty. My opinion would not count in such circumstances, anyway. How could I possibly have a balanced opinion if my daughter had been murdered?

Some of these people have told me that they would happily pull the lever, administer the lethal injection or pull the trigger on child killers. That always puts me in mind of a story I heard about Heinrich Himmler. He had gone to watch the mass killing of Jews in Poland. At that point, they were still being shot and he was said to have vomited after some brains from one victim splashed onto his coat. So, don't say "I'd happily execute them" until you know what it entails.

My opposition to the death penalty is not well thought out anyway. I simply believe that nobody has the right to take the life of another human being for any reason whatsoever. We're only on this planet for a very short time. To terminate a life before it has been completed is a dreadful thing to do. I don't believe in any form of afterlife. I don't believe that there is retribution waiting for "evil-doers" in some kind of firy hell or reward for "good" people in heaven. As far as I am aware, you are born, you live, you die. Full Stop. So how can we possibly justify the killing of anybody.

So to get back to Chemical Ali, he had no right to order the killing of the Kurds in 1988 but neither does anybody have the right to order his killing. He is on this earth for his short allotted span and, no matter how bad he has been, he should be allowed to complete it.