The death penalty is back in the headlines. China is set to change ‘its ways’ by excluding the death penalty as a possible punishment for those who try to smuggle cultural relics, precious metals and rare animals out of the country, as well for those that are found guilty of a number of fraudulent activities, and Iran is again showing its dark side in a court judgment that condemns a woman to death because of adultery and being an accomplice in murder. In the case of China, there is not much that we can do to make justice gain more momentum, in the case of Iran the European Union should step up and lead.
Not many people have been murdered as a result of the existence of these murderous Chinese laws, so it is not a revolutionary change, but at least forms a positive sound that – together with an optimistic speech of China’s prime minster Wen Jiabao that called for democratic change in the communist party’s structure, lest internal forces don’t turn into its own downfall – makes us slightly more hopeful that not even the rising force of China is immune to the collective power of its citizens. Not that Wen Jiabao’s speech is a good cause for getting your hopes up: The party has a habit of grandeur, promises and keeping hope alive, yet it seldom undertakes steps to materialize anything that undermines a centralized power.
Iran is very different. A core part of our daily newspaper mostly for their nuclear program – a topic that shows little progress and practically no good prospects – it is also notoriously infamous when it comes to the enforcement of harsh laws. This year an Iranian woman’s ruling was the full penalty of law, because she committed adultery and had a role in the murder of her husband. Loud protests arose on the international scene, and as a result, the verdict was overturned. However, rather than facing death by stoning, she now faces death by hanging. Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani – the woman in question – confessed the crimes on Iranian television in August, but no one knows whether or not she was forced to do so, which is not an a trivial scenario at all because Iran would want the world to know that – despite the nature of the penalty – she at least had a guilty conscience.
I oppose the death penalty as a legal instrument, regardless of the nature or extent of a crime. Kouchner (France’s foreigner minster) called for sanctions against Iran were they to press on with this legalized form of murder. And I think he is right in his demand. Though for obvious economical – definitely not moral – reasons we cannot always do so. China would roar with outrage were the European Union to meddle with their ways, and they would in any case be unimpressed, as we were able to see after they put to death an English ‘drug smuggler’, but Iran is already burdened with other sanctions for their lack of transparency in their nuclear enrichment program, so weighing the economical factors against the moral ones should in this case be much easier.
Those aren’t pretty words. Doing away with moral dilemmas because of possibly endangering your economy is just what any moral principle would forbid you from doing, but it is pragmatic at best and possibly sensible from any other perspective. When it comes to exerting influence on issues like these, the European Union should in my opinion not hesitate to impose more economical sanctions. Best is, of course, when other countries are in on it, but the EU is a sufficiently powerful economical and political entity to get things done on its own. To Eurocrats, this is old news; in reality it is scarcely seen.