The world behind our ignorance

Amnesty International has released it’s report on the use of the Death Penalty across the globe during the year 2007. It estimates that official executions claimed the lives of 1252 individuals with the largest amount of executions taking place in the People’s Republic of China. The official count in China stands at least 470 but there is strong evidence that there have been executions carried out in secret and China jealously guards the true figure. The worst offenders after China were Iran (317), Saudi Arabia (143) and Pakistan (135).
Saudi Arabia, whose Monarch was invited for tea with the Prime Minister and the Queen, has been responsible for the execution of people younger than 18 years of age, a gross violation of International Law. It is joined in this dubious distinction by Iran and Yemen.
Some of the people who were executed were convicted on charges that don’t even have the pretence of justification

“Ja’Far Kiani, father of two, was stoned to death for adultery in Iran in July.

A 75 year-old North Korean factory manager was shot by firing squad in October for failing to declare his family background, investing his own money in the factory, appointing his children as its managers and making international phone calls.

“Mustafa Ibrahim, an Egyptian national, was beheaded in Saudi Arabia in November for the practice of sorcery.”
(Amnesty International)

The use of the death penalty is unjustified in any circumstance but it becomes even less defensible when individuals are losing their lives on the most spurious of charges, and it stands that whilst the UK may have done away with it’s ‘bloody code’ there are plenty of states around the world that refuse to do so.
The guise of moral crusader has never been credibly worn by the United States and it continues to undermine it’s own justifications for figureheading (at least ostensibly) the spread of ‘western, liberal democratic’ values by appearing as the 5th worst offender in the Death Penalty rankings.
So here we go again and undoubtedly people get bored of reading my repeated complaints that the UK government does not stand for the principle of Human Rights unless it happens to have some ulterior motive for doing so. I’m not going to apologise and I’m not going to stop repeating myself on this matter because like it or not it is of the utmost importance, that anyone can determine that the injustices propogated by a cynical administration can be ‘boring’ is frankly beyond me.
As the death toll of British troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan continues to rise, this country has slowly come round to the alleged benefits of military intervention in two states who had previously been ruled by tyrannical regimes in which human life was cheap and human rights an alien concept. We seem to be happy about turning a blind eye to the continued abuses within these states that take place with the full consent of the Coalition supported authorities; last week in Iraq, 28 people were executed after hastily convened and unfair trials, hundreds of people have been executed since the reintroduction of Capital Punishment by the Iraqi Authorities in 2004. It’s reasons for being reintroduced? To curb violence within the country and act as a deterrent, I think it would be fair to say that it has failed miserably.
In Afghanistan, the treatment of women continues to be as near to atrocious as it was under the rule of the Taleban with women being denied equal access to education and justice as well as suffering as a result of the prevailing cultural attitudes and societal codes, according to the the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) 165 women committed suicide in 2007 in order to escape abusive situations. As the figures might suggest they are still provided with little to no recourse by the Afghan authorities, indeed women have been imprisoned for transgressing societal codes which maintain their basis in the middle ages.
However the prevailing mood in the West appears to be that we brought democracy and freedom to these countries and we’re all tiring of the old arguments that these were political dirty wars sold to the public in the name of furthering Human Rights. It happened and, yes there was some nastiness involved but it’ll all come out in the wash eventually and at least the administrations are ‘our bastards’ not someone elses.
Yet this government refuses to condemn the actions of states that trample Human Rights with merry abandon, China, Saudi Arabia being the most notable examples, it evades it’s own lack of logic and provides an incoherent front in which clearly Human Rights are not an absolute but something to be weighed against practicality and efficiency and dealt out when the conditions may or may not be right. They can also be retracted or ignored altogether so whilst the UN votes 104 to 54 to end the use of the death penalty, Western backed administrations continue to use it whenever they feel like it.
It is not just the major and high profile cases in which states execute their citizens but in the widespread lack of Human Rights and the repeated violations against the Articles across the globe. Too many to list but the treatment of individuals and groups in countries across the world is abhorrant and yet largely ignored by Western governments unless there geopolitical interest and an excuse is needed.
The aggressive overtures of the USA toward Iran are frequently backed up with criticism of Tehran’s Human Rights record, which is particularly atrocious, but when it comes to Saudi Arabia, or China, when it comes to the use of the Death penalty in Iraq or the degrading treatment of women in Afghanistan the US remains strangely quiet. Commitment to principle is not a matter of only making it an issue when it is expedient to refer to it, it is something that remains a central directive and catalyst of change. To only make an issue of a principle in order to apply as much garnish to a turd so that people might eat it, is not principled but oppurtunism masquerading as a moral mission.
For more information on struggle for Human Rights across the globe take a look at the Amnesty International website
Sign up, get involved, make a difference and don’t let the Government and it’s affiliated cynics drown you in apathetic acceptance, it is within the power of society to make this world a better place to live and that is a principle worth upholding.