Abolish the savage states of America

originally by: TMP Online
published: 23rd September 2011

Tuesday night I, with around 300 others, answered Amnesty International’s call to hold a vigil for Troy Davis, outside the US Embassy in London. It seemed inconceivable that the world’s most powerful democracy could execute a man, especially a man whose conviction was appeared highly suspect.

Yet the inconceivable had happened. Troy Davis was murdered by the State of Georgia on Wednesday night. US County, State and Federal judicial authorities collectively ruled that evil should prevail resulting in a man being lynched.

We must soberly learn from these deeply devastating experiences in order to prevent these crimes from ever being repeated again. Lives like those of Mumia Abu Jamal, depend on it. Though Troy was failed by all, we can’t allow this brutal system to continue, the questions are for us now: what can be learned from this and what can we do next?

Here are a few thoughts:

What the death penalty tells us about the state of global civilisation

1. Human life is expendable not sacred.
   Though Georgia and other Southern US states have a long history of public endorsement of murdering black people, prejudice in the 21st Century won the day. Troy Davis’ case was especially tragic because he was probably innocent. But in opposing the death penalty, the question of innocence is completely irrelevant, no authority on this earth has the right to punish individuals by killing them. Governments can’t be trusted to adequately regulate the banking system or end hunger within its own borders. How can we allow them the horrific responsibility of deciding who should live and who should die?

1. State killing is popular
   Despite valiant protests in Georgia and across the world, popular opinion in the US and in Britain suggests a strong and growing appetite for the archaic and foul tradition of human sacrifice as absolution. In Britain there may enjoy the absence of capital punishment but many within the Conservative Right are relying on this grim populism to provoke a Parliamentary vote on the death penalty. This is at a time when British MPs including the Prime Minister encouraging the courts to hand out severe and rushed sentences typified by the conviction of teenagers who wrote the word “riot” on Facebook.

Posted by Gaynor Kuye on 25/09/2011. Filed under Capital Punishment,Human Rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry