INTRODUCTION
Observed every 10 October, the World Day Against the Death Penalty mobilizes civil society, political leaders, lawyers, and public opinion to support the call for the universal abolition of capital punishment. The day encourages and consolidates the political and general awareness of the worldwide movement against the death penalty. This year the World Day will be dedicated to challenging the misconception that the death penalty can make people and communities safer.
THE DEATH PENALTY IN PRACTICE
(Statistics from Amnesty International)
- 112 States have abolished the death penalty for all crimes
- 9 States have abolished the death penalty for common law crimes
- 23 States are abolitionists in practice
- 55 States are retentionists
- The 5 States that executed the most in the world in 2023 are, in order: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and the USA.
- At least 27,687 individuals are known to be under a sentence of death around the world at the end of 2023, of which less than 5% are women (statistic on women sentenced to death by Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide).
More than 70% of the world’s countries have abolished capital punishment in law or practice. However, the death penalty continues to exist in many parts of the world, especially in countries with authoritarian rule. In recent decades, there has been a clear trend away from capital punishment, as many countries have either abolished the death penalty or discontinued its use. While international law does not prohibit the death penalty, most countries consider it a violation of human rights.
Countries with the Most Death Sentences in 2023**
| Country | Number |
| China | 1,000s |
| Egypt | 590 |
| Bangladesh | 248+ |
| Nigeria | 246+ |
| Iraq | 138+ |
| Kenya | 131 |
| Thailand | 123 |
| Vietnam | 122+ |
| India | 120 |
| Indonesia | 114+ |
| Pakistan | 102+ |
| Yemen | 81+ |
**Death-sentencing totals unknown for Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, and Syria.
*Note: Minimum execution totals are unknown for China (estimated in the thousands), Afghanistan, North Korea, Palestine, Syria, and Vietnam. The + indicates that more executions are suspected but unable to be verified.
Security is commonly understood as freedom from danger or threat, but its interpretation varies considerably. It is a term rooted in political discourse and often used as a tactic to influence public opinion and justify security policies. The determination of who are considered threats, and who are to be protected is often influenced by power dynamics, discrimination, and inequality. When applied to criminal justice, security offenses are in many cases broadly defined and can be open to abuse. Using the “security argument” at best politicizes a judicial procedure that is supposed to be impartial and fair, and at worst provides a context for human rights abuses in the name of State protection. Public calls for the death penalty are often expressions of fear and despair, triggered by rising violence and crime rates that States seem unable to address. In such situations, politicians frequently present the death penalty as an easy solution, justifying it with the deterrence theory.
The deterrence theory is based on the idea that the object of punishment is not only to prevent crime to be committed a second time but also to set an example to other persons who have criminal tendencies. According to this theory, people would refrain from committing murder, or any other crimes punishable by death, out of fear of execution. At its most basic level, deterrence is typically understood as operating within a theory of choice in which would-be offenders balance the benefits and costs of crime. In this theory, as capital punishment is worse than any other penalties, it must lead to fewer crimes being committed, but what does empirical research tell us? The current application of the death penalty is inconsistent and haphazard, and fails to achieve its intended deterrent effects.
To create safer societies, we need to move from methods that focus on deterrence to approaches that address the root causes of violence and crime.
References:
Introduction by Farah Ahamed.
Thoughts on the Death Penalty
By Farah Ahamed
At the end of 2023, at least 27,687 individuals globally were known to be under a sentence of death of which less than 5% are women (statistic on women sentenced to death by Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide). The countries that had the most executions in 2023 were, in order: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and the USA.
In his essay ‘Reflections on the Guillotine,’ written in 1957, Camus made a strong argument for the abolition of the death penalty. He called it, ‘the most premeditated of murders,’ arguing not on grounds on sympathy for the convicted, but on logic, that it was ineffective as a punishment and in The Outsider, Camus tried to illustrate his point.
I first read The Outsider in Nairobi, when I was eleven years old, on a warm and lazy Sunday afternoon. My father was a barrister and I was at his chambers waiting for him to finish drafting the pleadings for a murder trial. After being humoured with Beezer comics and been told to wait for another hour, I wandered into his library to see what I could find. Running my fingers through the vast volumes, I came across a slim tome. I scanned the first sentence and finding it simple enough to understand, I took myself to my father’s large chair to read it. Later that night, I finished Camus’ The Outsider.
For many days after, the story haunted me. For the first time, I worried about what would happen if my mother died. I became anxious about the meaning of love, what it meant to love someone, and the implications of lies and truth. It was my first exposure to murder, being alone in prison, execution, and death. I realised that adults did terrible things. Most of all, I felt guilty for reading the book; I knew I had accessed some kind of ‘forbidden knowledge,’ before my time. The realisation of the impression The Outsider had left on me only came to me after thirty later while watching a theatre performance in Lahore. Through the experience of viewing No Time to Sleep, I connected across the years with a younger memory.
No Time to Sleep, isa twenty-four hour, live-performance based on the final hours of Prisoner Z or Dr Zulfiqar Ali Khan who was charged with murder in Pakistan. Although Dr Zulfiqar’s lawyers argued that he had acted out of self-defence during an armed robbery, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. He spent seventeen years incarcerated and seven years on the death-row during which time his execution was scheduled and halted more than twenty times. He was finally executed in 2015. The playwas part of the Justice Pakistan Project on World Day Against the Death Penalty (2018). Like life, there was no rehearsal; the production had no cuts, edits or retakes and it captured in real time every hour of Zulfiqar’s agony in solitary confinement the day before his hanging. Watching No Time to Sleep was excruciating; how strange it is that one feels more alive in the face of death and becomes acutely aware of every passing minute.
Dr Zulfiqar had been a thin man. He had black hair, a beard, and kind, intelligent eyes. If you saw a photograph of him in his youth, you would see a man ready to smile and enjoy a happy life. However, it was not to be; the only colourful thing in his life for many years, was to be his orange prison uniform. During his time in prison, Zulfiqar completed two Masters and a Diploma. He also taught three hundred fellow inmates to read and write. Eight even went on to do their Masters. Zulfiqar had been a generous teacher.
In the play, against the sobering, backdrop of the pending execution, there are poignant moments of humanity. In one instance, Zulfiqar asks the warden to share his cigarette with him. This simple, ordinary gesture connects the two men separated by the bars of the cell just for a brief moment. Another example is when after performing his ablutions, Zulfiqar put on the skullcap, unrolled the prayer rug, and went down on his knees. What difference could prayer at that hour possibly make to his destiny? As I watched the play, hour after hour passing, the word meaningless came to mind and the memory of The Outsider came flooding back.
I returned to the well-thumbed copy of The Outsider whichI’d taken from my father’s office. As I turned the pages, renewing my understanding of Mersault, I found my childish squiggles in pencil under the following sentences:
‘I’d realised that the essential thing was to give the condemned man a chance. Even one in a thousand was quite enough to sort things out.’
The words felt familiar and resonant, as if I had been saying them to myself across the years. The emotional significance of them on my young mind, and the visual impact of No Time to Sleep triggered my memory, giving the play and the book renewed meaning.
In No Time to Sleep, the role of Dr Zulfiqar was played by the actor Sarmad Khoosat. In preparation for the role and so that he could bring into focus the psychological trauma of the different individuals involved in executions, Khoosat interviewed ex-prisoners and their families, as well as executioners, lawyers, court bureaucrats and guards. The research served him well as he movingly portrayed how Zulfiqar passed through the darkest night of his soul. He showed him biting his nails, pressing his fingers, and kicking his feet, almost unconsciously, against the wall.
The other actors in the play were equally effective. The warden guarding Zulfiqar portrayed his own emotional torture. He sang a Sufi qawwali where the lyrics are about the sorrow of separation, ‘maayin ne main.’ But music cannot provide an escape from the reality of his occupation.
In No Time to Sleep, the minutes and hours continued to tick.
Over twenty-four hours, Zulfiqar continuously paced his cell. His restless state of mind are made apparent through his silence and actions. Sometimes he lay down on the rough mat and gazed up at the ceiling. Other times he just stood, staring into space. He never slept. He sat on the floor to drink tea and eat biscuits, while on the other side of the steel bars of the jail door, the warden enjoyed his paratha.
After twenty-one hours of theatre, and three hours before the scheduled time for his execution, the warden checked Zulfiqar’s blood pressure. He is told, ‘All is normal, you are well enough to proceed.’
In response, Zulfiqar showed the warden his wrist. ‘Look at my pulse,’ he said, ‘see how it beats irrespective of everything.’
He highlights his realisation that the breath and body continue relentlessly, or peacefully in spite of all external circumstances, even in the face of death, which his mind is fully aware of. There is a separation between knowing and being- one is not affected by the other.
Two hours before his death, Dr Zulfiqar was given his last meal which he ate without ceremony. His family comes to say good bye in a scene of understated climax; it was the day his family had been dreading for seventeen years. Zulfiqar told his brother to make sure his daughters, Noor and Fiza, finished their studies and were not forced into marriages. Zulfiqar’s wife was not with them because she had died earlier of cancer; he had not been by her side.
After their departure, the stage was enveloped by a heavy silence. There were no sounds coming from outside. Zulfiqar lay down prone on the mat, his head buried in his folded arms.
At twenty-three hours, with just an hour to ago, a sudden flurry of activity. The lawyers are there to check the paperwork and the warden tested the ropes. Zulfiqar is told:
‘Sab acha hai. Everything is ready and good.’
An everyday comment, as if it were an ordinary statement about a commonplace matter. Zulfiqar did not reply.
Through the small window with thick steel bars now there are noises from the external world, which feels alive and full of energy; the raucous cawing of crows, children laughing on their way to school, the call to prayer and the cheerful ring of a bicycle bell.
As the curtain fell, I was taken back to that Sunday evening, sitting in the back seat of my father’s old, white Renault, with my Beezer comic on my lap, The Outsider hidden between its pages. My father drove us home from the office through the streets of Nairobi. The radio was on, we listened to golden Bollywood oldies with my father singing along, as he often did. At the traffic lights, just before we turned onto the highway, my father said I could have an ice cream with chocolate sprinkles from the Sno Cream Parlour, because I had been a good girl. My guilt at reading what I felt was forbidden knowledge in The Outsider increased, and I said no, angrily, I just wanted to go home. My father, surprised at my reaction, but probably putting it down to my being tired, nonetheless bought me an ice cream. Rather than soothing me, it made me feel worse. All of those memories came rushing back to me, watching No Time to Sleep.
Camus believed art ought to translate ‘the sufferings and happiness of all into the language of all,’ so that it was ‘universally understood.’ As a piece of theatre, No Time to Sleep did that admirably. Camus also explained, ‘The heart has its own memory,’ and argued that it forgot nothing. My recollections of my first reading of The Outsider, brought on by watching No Time to Sleep confirmed this to me. It also highlighted to me how very early my aversion to capital punishment was formed without me knowing.
Experiences of art, first in the present moment and then from later memory recollections, either through an involuntary trigger or a deliberate recalling, are dependent on the initial emotional significance we attached to them, knowingly or unconsciously. Without us knowing they shape our views and values on living and life, death and dying.~End
An earlier review by Farah Ahamed of the play No Time to Sleep appeared in The Dreaming Machine in 2021
https://www.thedreamingmachine.com/no-time-to-sleep-a-theatre-experience-farah-ahamed/
Farah Ahamed is a human rights lawyer and writer. Her essays and short fiction have been published in anthologies and journals including The White Review, Ploughshares, The Massachusetts’ Review and The Mechanics’ Institute Review. Her short story ‘Hot Mango Chutney Sauce’ was shortlisted for the 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. You can read more of her writing at farahahamed.com.
A poem written in 2000 by Pina Piccolo that appeared in her personal blog Pina Piccolo’s blog
When A Man Will Not Go Gentle…
for Shaka Sankofa[1], on June 22, 2000, the night of his execution
When a man refuses to go gentle
Into “that good night”
What does his first walk
Freed of the body
Look like?
Not the spasmodic dance of resistance
Nor the gliding step of angels.
Yet, the shadow of the black man
Does walk the Earth tonight
Not a deadman walking-
That would not be his style.
Wrapped in a mantle of light.
Unshackled now he sets off,
After a hasty dispatch
By a slithery Governor
Slinking his way to the crown.
Unfettered, finally now
In this season
When the night does not wed the day
In peerdom,
When a solsticed triumphant sun shrinks
The night into a corner
With the piercing light
Of an overextended, never-ending day
He, cocky young robber of liquor stores,
Ambushed
By a decrepit
Robber of lives
Crouched on a high throne
With feet of clay.
The shadow of the black man
Haunts the corridors of power tonight
Taunts them with the noose
Wrapped around the neck
Of a strange fruit of memory.
Or maybe his gait
Resembles that of
A fly on the wall
Witnessing
Dirty laundry
Blanched to pure white
By the Word of politicians
Spoken, inked or etherized
Justice, licking its wounds
In a fourth class motel
Nature fleeing the arachno-goat
Just to stare in the face
Of the defiant scapegoat
The black goat.
Maybe he struts now, light-gaited
On the familiar path
Of a Chicago high security tenement
That tames black cubs
Into subservient adulthood.
Lighter than air now
He ascends the four mile
Of low income high rises
Separated by a freeway,
Separated by chain-link
Fencing off magnolias
From plantations.
Nineteen years of confinement
Erased
By single stroke of a needle.
You learn, in a single night,
What they kept from you
From birth.
Don’t let that weight
Plunge you down, ungentle walker,
Lend us the cockiness in your step
Turn us from mere witnesses
Into walkers of the talk.
[1] Shaka Sankofa was the Swahili name chosen by Gary Graham, the 36 year old African American man who was executed on December 22 2000, in the state of Texas, after spending 19 years on death row. The name Shaka refers to the famous warrior Shaka Zulu and Sankofa means “go back to past and bring to the present”. His execution order was signed by George W. Bush, then Governor of Texas, one month prior to becoming president of the USA. Shaka, maintained his innocence to the very end and fiercely resisted being taken into the execution chamber. He had been active for nearly two decade in the movements opposing the death penalty an to secure better opportunities for black youth.
Pina Piccolo is a translator, writer and cultural organizer. She is the founder and editor of the transnational literature and visual arts journal The Dreaming Machine.
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