In December anger erupted in India after the public rape and beating of a woman by several assailants. She later died, despite receiving treatment for her injuries (Jones, 2012). Since then, there have been massive, and spreading, protests demanding a drastic change in attitudes towards women and in the legal response to the crimes against them (Burke, 2013).
However there have also been calls, in response to the attack, for use of the death penalty (Burke, 2012).
Amnesty International has issued a calm response that warns against 'cruel and unusual punishment', like the death penalty, to guard against the risk of perpetuating a 'cycle of violence' (Guruswamy, 2013). The Director of Amnesty International in India, Ananth Guruswamy, stressed that:
'There is no evidence to suggest that the threat of execution works as a special deterrent. This is reflected in a clear global trend moving towards the abolition of the death penalty. Today, 140 countries in the world have abolished executions in law or practice.'
Furthermore, not only does the death penalty merely meet violence with violence and fail as a deterrent, but it is also a dangerously final response. In Britain, where capital punishment has recently resurfaced as an issue, Private Eye editor Ian Hislop (2011) addressed some of the arguments on BBC's Question Time:
'For 50 years Private Eye has, pretty much in most issues, exposed a miscarriage of justice and a lot of them have been murders. Over the years these cases have been found to be entirely wrong and the men convicted... have been found innocent. So, we would have killed those people.'
If we are to get beyond violence and aggression we cannot be consumed by it. We cannot keep meeting violence and aggression with wrath and vengeance. Those responses fail to solve the ultimate problems and are illogical - and rising above it is something Mark Pagel (2012) has described as humanity's 'inexorable' advancement in our increasing ability to cooperate:
'Cooperation can normally win out over endless cycles of betrayal and revenge, because there's always a sort of seduction of competition and killing your enemy - because then you get to occupy those lands - but you have to live with the fear of that enemy trying to kill you. And so it seems to be an inexorable part of our history that cooperation has had greater returns than competition.'
If we are to avoid the death spiral that 'an eye for an eye' logically invites - rejecting revenge even in the face of horrific crimes such as that committed in India - we must find more complex ways to address the core problems and not just the symptoms. These kinds of questions have begun to be asked of our cultures in India (Hundal, 2013). Now the rest of the world has to follow suit.
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References:
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For some statistics on and analysis of the death penalty, see:
- DPIC: 'Facts about Deterrence and the Death Penalty'.
- ACLU: 'The Case Against the Death Penalty'; 11 December 2012.
- Amnesty International: 'Death Penalty'; 10 October 2012.
+ Cass Jones' 'Indian victim of gang rape dies in hospital in Singapore'; in The Guardian; 28 December 2012.
+ Jason Burke's 'Rape Protests spread beyond India'; in The Guardian; 4 January 2013.
+ Jason Burke's 'Indian gang-rape victim's family calls for attackers to be hanged'; in The Guardian; 31 December 2012.
+ Ananth Guruswamy's 'Indian rape debate: Why death penalty is no solution'; on livewire.amnesty.org; 3 January 2013.
+ Ian Hislop on BBC's Question Time; 22 September 2011.
+ Mark Pagel's 'Wired for Culture: The natural history of human cooperation'; (Quote at 11:01); March 2012.
+ Sunny Hundal's 'India's bitter culture of rape and violence'; in The Guardian; 3 January 2013.
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