The first I heard of it was on the Radio 1 news report that woke me up today, though I get the impression that I’m rather late to the game. This morning, a British man called Akmal Shaikh was executed in China.
He’d been caught at an airport in 2007, carrying 4kg of heroin, which he’d apparently smuggled in from Kyrgyzstan. He may or may not have been an unknowing pawn of the real drug traders’ cruel machinations, as I believe some have claimed. He also may or may not have suffered from some significant mental illness; the courts refused to allow a mental examination. I don’t think either of those things is desperately relevant.
Well, they’re certainly relevant to some broader, more general questions about the ethics of capital punishment, and its application here. Mental illness is hugely relevant to the question of diminished responsibility, as is the extent to which the evidence implicates Shaikh himself in the crime, and the nature of his role in it – as hapless victim, low-level drug mule, or monstrous kingpin.
These are valuable questions, and for the most part I’ll spare you my unqualified musings. They tie in to a deeply controversial debate about the death penalty, and while my fundamental feelings on the matter can be quite neatly summed up with the word “against”, it’s not an entirely one-sided issue. Sometimes, somebody on some other part of the spectrum (and it is a deeply complex spectrum) than the extreme “against” side will have some compelling arguments to make.
But amidst all this vagueness, there’s one thing I’m pretty damn sure of.
And that’s that, when China executes a British citizen, whatever your thoughts on capital punishment in general might be, the correct response is not “I’m glad he’s dead, and the rest of his lot should all go the same way.”
I’m paraphrasing, but that’s pretty much the gist of this Daily Mail article by Leo McKinstry.
It’s really worth a read. If you do, it should be clear that I’m not just having a go because someone dares to disagree with me on the basic matter of whether executing people is ever okay. I’m really open to arguments in favour of the death penalty. I’m against it, but I know people who aren’t, and we get on okay, partly because they don’t characterise my position as “liberal wailing” and their position doesn’t ever strike me as, say, “bloodthirsty and primitive sadism”.
There’s plenty of room for differing viewpoints. But this is just bullshit.
In what I understand is a typical angle for the Daily Mail to return to, it’s explained why it’s pathetic and whiny of us to object to China’s refusal to listen to the UK government’s pleas for clemency: “Ordinary citizens are constantly bullied through a plethora of bureaucratic regulations, yet violence, burglary, theft and drug abuse carry no consequences.”
Read that last bit again. He’s saying without qualification that there are “no consequences” in this country for violent crimes, burglary, and drug abuse. Never has my tendency to forego rational argument for sarcasm and personal abuse been more appropriate. If McKinstry honestly thinks that what he wrote there is literally true, then he’s a fucking retard.
Again, I really don’t object to a discussion about, say, whether crime victims get the help they need, or whether certain measures introduced with the aim of securing people’s human rights actually have a beneficial effect, or how various forms of penal retribution affect recidivism rates. That sounds like a useful and important debate, in fact, on which I have some tentative views, but on which I could probably learn a lot by talking about it with someone who wasn’t a colossal prick.
The case of Tracy Housel is also mentioned in this article. He was a British man executed in the US a few years ago, to the “hysteria” of liberals in the UK. He was brain-damaged and mentally ill, but we’re told that “this hardly explained his record of extreme violence”. I can’t find the bit of this article where it details McKinstry’s medical qualifications and doctorates that would justify him in such an analysis, and give any authority whatever to such a sure statement about the effects of a brain injury and serious medical condition on the behaviour of a person he’s never met. I’m probably just not looking hard enough.
And anyway, this Akmal Shaikh guy was “amoral, selfish, and irresponsible.” Everyone knows it’s okay to kill the selfish and irresponsible. Have we really forgotten what Jesus taught us? Doesn’t someone remember his parable about the state murdering people if they were carrying drugs and acted like kind of a dick to someone in the past? I’m pretty sure he was cool with it.
If you’re still not convinced, look, there’s a big picture of Kate Moss. Checkmate, liberals.
Okay, I’m all out of anger. I’m feeling good about being back in the saddle, words-wise, and I’m off to get some fried chicken.
Oh, one more thing before I go: Demi Moore’s lawyers have sent a threatening letter to Boing Boing, demanding that one of their posts (which raised the question of whether a magazine cover picture of her had been digitally manipulated) be removed. Xeni’s response is pretty awesome. Right, now I really am hungry.
