To ask if you know about the executions taking place today?

[kewtogetin]

I have been following the case of the 'Bali 9' for years but it seems today is the end of the road for Andrew chan and myuran sukumaran. They are due to be executed at 5pm UK time.
I have just watched their families leaving the jail for the last time after saying their final goodbyes. It was heartbreaking. This is not really a post about the rights and wrongs of the death penalty (although I am massively against) but I can't help feeling this is more of a punishment for the families than for those who committed the crime.
I believe death isn't the punishment but fear. Saying goodbye to your children/parents etc, being marched through the rain forest, tied to a wooden stake with a hood over your head and then shot through the heart. It's just barbaric.....
What do you think? And no 'if you can't do the time don't do the crime' spouters please. Two men (actually 2 of 11 I believe) will die today but glorying in it is disrespectful at best.

I thought they were murderers, sorry must have got the wrong story.
Please ignore my post upthread.

But I am not supporting the death penalty as the right punishment for these men. I can't imagine what it must be like to be in the position of those families. But I am saying that they made the choices they did knowing what the possible consequences could be. Those men chose to put their families in that position, to create a situation where they have to feel that desperate and panic-stricken. And they made that choice out of pure greed.

And everything that Orwell wrote about the man facing the death penalty is just as true of every murder victim.

All the 'it's simple''s.....exactly what i suspected when I started this thread. I despair, how great it must be to live in your black and white world.

I do have some sympathy towards them.

Someone earlier said should prison be viewed as rehabilitation or punishment? There's another view, that prison and/or execution is a deterrent for others. I guess this is the ultimate deterrent.

Indonesia seem serious about trying to sort out the heavy drugs culture over there. Executing drug smugglers is certainly one way of trying to reduce the number of drugs available. Which in turn will reduce drug related deaths.

Everyone repents of their sins when faced with the death penalty.

Why do you think it isn't simple?

Something can be simple and very upsetting.

You said it's not about the death penalty.

So what is your thread about? Indonesia has the death penalty for drug smuggling. They smuggled drugs.

They have been executing people for years. China does it regularly. I suspect it's because they're Australian is the fact that it makes the news.

Iran hangs people from cranes for being gay. Where is your thread about that?

Despair all you like, it is straightforward - if you don't want to face execution don't attempt to smuggle drugs in a country with the death penalty as punishment, what's not simple about that?

It's not black and white, and that is the problem.

Drug smugglers make a lot of money in Indonesia, like Lindsay Sandiford did, precisely because they face execution if they are caught. If the stakes were lower, more people would smuggle drugs, and the value would be less.

Brazil and France have both publicly condemned the executions, and pleaded for Indonesia to not carry out the executions tonight. It appears that they will go ahead anyway.

I do feel very sorry for the families who look so very, very anguished, and for those who are finding out the details of their execution now - Rodrigo Gularte is said to not understand, but is flashing between lucidity and delirium. Mary Jane Veloso has told her sons to be good, and knows that she will be executed third. Zainal Abidin will be last.

Indonesia clearly doesn't feel it has a choice though. Their prison system is hardly any better, it's corrupt and overcrowded, packed with disease and suffering. They have a drug problem that is getting no better and they are losing people. No tolerance means nothing if they never follow through. So they need another tactic entirely, and it seems they don't have one.

I have never been able to get my head around the death penalty. It doesn't fit anywhere in my worldview. It makes me a little bit dizzy to consider it. Like I can't get my bearings (although I do have a bit of a head cold, so that may also be contributing to this feeling...)

In any other context, the idea of a state (or state institution) lining up coffins to hold the bodies of people they are deliberately going to kill would spark riots and revolutions. It would create global outrage.

I just have no words. I am aghast that governments do this. I always have been.

This puts it into perspective.

Why doesn't the press mention this? It's because they're foreigners in Indonesia

I do feel some sympathy for their families and cannot imagine what they must be going through....

On the other hand, they knew the risks but were willing to take them in order to make huge amounts of money, whilst tearing other families apart and destroying them through the heroin.

No easy answer really. I have known and know of people now in prison abroad on drug related offences. Whilst I feel sorry for them, they knew what they were doing and were willing to take those risks.

The death penalty has been used for thousands of years, It DOES NOT WORK as a deterrent. Doesn't work. What it does do very well is be a mechanism for revenge and for states to give the impression of cracking down on crime without addressing the causes of crime.

Of course what Orwell said can be applied to murder victims. And to victims of drug overdose too. And that's the point - it's wrong. It's wrong in any context and for any reason.

We have an election going on at the moment. Look at the people you are considering voting for and ask yourself if you'd want your life in their hands as part of the justice system. Because that's how it is in the USA and countless other countries.

I absolutely agree with the OP. It suits some of you to describe this as a simple issue because then you don't really have to think about the barbarism and the terror and the wrongness that is capital punishment. And most of you will be able to keep thinking like that because you live in the UK and we put this behind us last century. But don't think this can never touch you. It happens on our planet all the time. Today it's Indonesia in the news, next week it could be the USA and wherever it is t diminishes us all.

I guess the British woman will be executed before long.

It is very sad.
Some people will do anything for money, they think they are clever, they think they can beat the system.
They made the wrong decision.

There are many, many people on death row in the USA, that is sad too.
Many of those have mental health issues, some are even innocent.
Guantanomo Bay is barbaric, but not a great outcry about that really.

And of course mistakes are never made in the justice system... The wrong people, innocent people don't go to jail or get the DP.

Viva - the consensus is that she will be in the next group of executions, assuming these go ahead.

If people are against the death penalty, then that's fine. What gets me is all the press this case is getting.

People are executed all the time. But do their stories get in the news? Not really. What makes this case more newsworthy than others?

If Governments oppose the death penalty, then they should stand up for anyone in that position.

That's why I can't get too excited about this case.

Saudi Arabia behead people publicly. Little condemnation from the West,
China - execute loads of people. Little condemnation
Indonesia - condemnation from Western Governments.

Crystal, so by your definition then we should be saying the same thing about drug addicts then? If you don't want to be an addict don't take drugs? Already an addict? Tough shit it's your own fault, you knew drugs were addictive.....

The men's families are innocent and are surely deserving of sympathy......

So are the families whose daughters/sons would have been taking the shit they smuggled!

I don't think anyone's saying 'tough shit.' Just that people know in advance what a huge risk they are taking by smuggling drugs.

So what you're saying 'Orlando' is that you only get het up about things your government choose to care about?

How very compliant of you.

Unless I read that very wrong indeed, she's saying the opposite. But I'm pregnant and stupid so I might have read it incorrectly.

What about the filipino lady, some people seem to think she was just a pawn - innocent. Don't know if it's true or not - but does an innocent person who gets caught up or framed or whatever - deserve the DP? That could be you or one of your kids on their gap year.

northern

I am not het up about this.

I think that if our Government is against the death penalty, it should try and intervene in all executions and not just ones that involve Westerners in certain countries.

But European countries seem remarkably quiet about executions in China and Saudi Arabia. Also in the USA as well.

Wonder why?

The issue of understanding and consequences is an interesting one. Actually there's ongoing research that indicates that during puberty and up to about age 25 the impulsive part of the brain develops at a much faster rate than the rational part of the brain - this is why teenagers and young adults are more likely to take risks - their brains simply aren't developed enough to process the consequences of those risks properly, and they are also much more susceptible to group/social pressure.

Bearing that in mind I think making an irrevocable decision to end their live based on decisions they made as young adults seems unfair. It's also unlikely to act as a deterrent, as future young adults are no more likely to be more capable of making better choices

Interesting interview with a brain scientist here
Http:www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05mrn29