02 June 2006

Lynching Amnesty Over the Death Penalty

Earlier in the week I posted “All roads must lead to Euston” from Nick Cohen’s Observer column (scroll down my blog). I was quite pleased to receive comments from Crowsdell who put forward some very valid concerns about aspects of the Euston Manifesto. In one of his posts he pointed to an article on the Harry's Place . Quoting analysis undertaken by Brett Lock
the author proceeds to lambast Amnesty International for lumping the USA along with Saudi Arabia, China and Iran as the world’s top executioners in 2005.

According to the author, Brett Lock shows that if the bald figures are analysed, then the per capita death penalty rate in the USA is not only much lower than the other three states listed but also many other nations that executed criminals last year

The author also points out that the USA does not execute people for political dissent, or for minor crimes as other executing nations and casts doubts on the reliability of the Amnesty’s statistics given that while the USA is open about the number of people it kills other nations are not so forthcoming.

In addition the author puts forward the idea that Amnesty ".. can’t be seen to be condemning gross human rights violations anywhere without having a dig at the US too" as possible reason then quotes a section of the Euston Manifesto which berates the left’s tendency to portray lesser abuses with far greater abuses elsewhere including a reference to an earlier statement from Amnesty where Guantanamo was equated to the Soviet gulags.

I have read this article several times and as someone who analyses figures for a living I know full well that raw figures can be misleading. Looking at the Amnesty report (see below for link) it is also clear that by far and away the biggest executor is China and that the figures provided for this country and others may well be considerably understated. All in all the author of the Harry’s Place article may have a point and including the USA in with the worst offenders may indeed be an exercise in America bashing on Amnesty’s part………..

And then one has to consider that Amnesty is using the best available figures and while it admits they may not tell the full story, the USA is the fourth biggest executor on the planet (60 executions, number three was Saudi Arabia with 86 while Pakistan was at number five with 31). While that does equate to a far lower execution rate than other nations and it is very true that the USA does not execute political prisoners, petty criminals or gays, the fact remains that the USA, (the same applies to Japan too) is utterly out of step with other developed nations by retaining and using the death penalty.

While it was certainly ill advised to equate Guantanamo, bad as it is, with the horrors of Gulag I feel that all Amnesty has done here is to stop its list of worst offenders at number four which happens to be the USA. Neither Brett Lock nor the Harry’s Place author seem to consider is that if the USA did not execute people it would not be on that list in the first place!

Not to condemn one nation for committing an act yet condemning another nation for doing so is akin to the cultural relativism that is quite rightly opposed in the Euston Manifesto.

I do not support the gratuitous condemnation of the USA that is spouted by all too many fellow leftists. However, I utterly the oppose use of the death penalty and the USA is to be condemned on this point and in no way gives other executing nations a get out of jail free card.

Death Penalty in 2005 Amnesty International

6 comments:

elasticwaistbandlady said...

This is a source of contention in my own home as my husband who still holds Mexican citizenship follows along with the anti-death penalty stance of his birth country. I support criminal execution in limited circumstances based upon evidence and the crime committed. We've decided to not broach the subject with each other as it always ends in a heated argument.

Funny how Amnesty International overlooked the fact that an inordinate amount of Chinese citizens are condemned to die and then their organs are harvested for a very lucrative International market. I'm not surprised. Amnesty has a history of slanting things their way in making the U.S. look "evil".

? said...

You are quite right to suggest that “official” figures for executions are “misleading” yet it may also be the case that such figures represent the “tip of the iceberg” for the respective countries, after all its not something one would want to be widely known or be proud of and therefore it may be more worrying to consider the number of executions that have taken place that don’t find their way into “official” statistics.

Advocatinbg the use of the death penalty itself is bad enough but if we also consider the number of legal murders carried out by the respective countries armed forces/regimes, it really dosent bear thinking about.

Moreover, there are many disgraceful examples of countries who do not carry the death penalty, whose repressive governments nevertheless carry out executions such as Nigeria’s Saro wiwa who was publicly hanged for standing up, on behalf of his people, to a corrupt government.

Rather than argue one nation is not as bad as another, it has to be said that any nation who excutes persons for whatever reason should be open to public and not political or academic debate.

Perhaps the figures for those who oppose and reject it may be more revealing than wasting paper trying to defend its use in the first place.

jams o donnell said...

I do appeciate it is a very divisive issue elasticwaistbandlady but luckily in casa de notwife y jams there is no disagreement.

I'm not sure Amnesty is quite as anti american as it is portrayed. I would imagine that in china AI is viewed as a bunch of sinophobes and so on. It doe do a lot to highlight human rights abuses in China but it certainly would not hurt to do more

jams o donnell said...

Hi obokun, thanks for your post.

You are quite right to point out that the official stats for executions are misleading in terms of under reporting and the absnece of extra judicial killings:For example, the junta that ruled Argentina in the late 70s and early 80s would not have counted the many people tortured to death at the Navy School of Mechanics and elsewhere in their official stats. They certainly were not carried out under the auspices of the Argentinia judiciary!

While the Argentinian junta is consigned to the cesspit of history we still see the same sort of abuse perpetrated time and time again.

I agree@ any country that executes should be open to public scrutiny, regardless whether the number killed is one or one million.

There is one crumb of comfort though: Abolitionist nations outnumber retentionist nations but there is a long way to go.

Agnes said...

"Perhaps the figures for those who oppose and reject it may be more revealing than wasting paper trying to defend its use in the first place."

Yes. Very good point.

Jams, the link doesn't work.

And I think there is a difference between democracies and the rest, isn't it? Or, at least, there should be....I am against death penalty, and would like to execute those who support it...

jams o donnell said...

Thanks for the heads up Red, I really did cock up the links but now they are fixed