Comment: An eye for an eye

In times of huge social stress, societies look for extraordinary solutions to growing social problems. The economic and social collapse in the Weimar Republic, after the First World War, helped the Nazi ideology to flourish in Germany.

In the post-coup Maldives, the issue of escalating violence and violent murders have encouraged many to look for quick fixes that may reverse this frightening trend.

The death penalty is gaining ground as a proposed solution to the current problems of the Maldives. The media reports that the government has announced its intentions to introduce a bill ‘to guide and govern the implementation of the death penalty in the country’.

But, before we resort to such drastic measures, it may be prudent to pause and consider if capital punishment would prove to be the miracle cure that the nation is looking for.

‘An eye for an eye’ or ‘a tooth for a tooth’ has a comforting simplicity. It seems an elegant equation which promises unequivocal justice. But, here’s the rub: capital punishment is an ethical quagmire and justice, in any comprehensive form, may be the last thing it is equipped to deliver.

Justice and the death penalty

The question of justice is an appropriate starting point when considering the death penalty. It is often argued that life imprisonment is not an adequate punishment for a killer, that the crime of taking a life should forfeit the killer’s own fundamental human right to live.

However, the sentencing of the death penalty works on the premise that a fair, transparent and comprehensive process of justice has preceded the verdict. This pre-requisite must surely raise alarm bells in the minds of thinking Maldivians.

The Maldives is not a just state. There is a general consensus in the country that the justice system needs drastic reshaping for it to function in a fair and just way. The long list of human rights abuses in the last 30 years through to the present time has been well documented. In the name of law and order, people are beaten, pepper sprayed, and tossed into prison with impunity. Amnesty International reports the existence of ‘a human rights crisis that has gripped the country’ since the February 7 coup.

Selective justice is the other complicating factor in considering the death penalty in the Maldives. Justice has become a political game. Trials of the regime’s political opponents are given prominence, while thousands of more vital cases pile up on the scrap-heap that is the present justice system of the country. Meanwhile crimes committed by police officers who went on a binge of destruction and violence on February 7 are tidily packed away into the background. There is a general acceptance that the agenda of the regime, in collusion with the MPS (Maldives Police Service) and MNDF (Maldives National Defence Force), is perilously political. The possibility of this regime adding the death penalty to its arsenal is a daunting thought indeed.

The judiciary in the Maldives is the embodiment of all these perversions of justice and more. Controlled by the iron grip of an authoritarian regime for over thirty years, the judiciary has not even allowed justice to be seen to be done. In a country where people boasts about having the highest ratio of doctorates per head of the population, and one of the highest literacy rates in South East Asia, the competence and qualifications of Maldive’s judges remain akin to the apothecaries of the Dark Ages.

No doubt it is easier for a government to influence the course of ‘justice’ if the judiciary is kept in a state of perpetual ignorance. But, in the process, it has lost any credibility in the eyes of Maldivians and international observers. A litany of wrong doings, including frightening ethical and moral lapses, hangs around the neck of the Chief Judge of the Criminal Court, Judge Abdulla Mohamed. Notwithstanding, the regime has seen it fit to keep him in his job.

However, in issues of the death penalty, even the world’s most advanced legal systems risk fallibility. This is why many of them reject the death penalty as a solution to societal violence. In the case of the Maldives, multiple reports, including the work of legal expert Professor Paul Robinson, have shown the legal system to be ‘systematically failing to do justice and regularly doing injustice’.

The country also lacks the trained personnel and the technology that underpins reliable criminal investigations. One of the gravest dangers of capital punishment is its potential for miscarriages of justice. With the justice system so compromised, legalising the death penalty in the Maldives would be as dangerous as giving a box of matches to a toddler in a room packed with gun powder.

The death penalty as a deterrent

The jury is still out on the question of whether the death penalty acts as a viable deterrent for murder and other violent crimes. The screeds of research and literature regarding the pros and cons of the death penalty match the strong emotional responses that the issue evokes.

However, a wealth of research indicates that the death penalty can contribute to more violence through a ‘brutalization effect’ on the public; it desensitizes people and increases the chance of the general public accepting violence as a way of solving problems. In this context, it is pertinent to note that murder rates in death-penalty states in America are consistently higher than the murder rates in non- death penalty states.

Research also suggests that there is an ‘imitation effect’ where people believe that if their leaders can legitimately kill people, through legalising capital punishment, so can they. This is extremely significant to the Maldives. The present surge of violent murders has taken place since the February 7 coup where members of the security forces participated in what many commentators described as ‘widespread brutality’.

There is a wealth of evidence to bring the culprits to justice, but nothing has been done and it would seem, can be done – if the status quo is to remain. In this atmosphere of state – condoned violence-and the moral and ethical disorientation it creates – is it any wonder that the criminal elements of the society are thriving?

Changing the paradigm

When governments are faced with harrowing internal problems, for which they have no creative answers, their first reaction is to shift the public focus away from the real issues. This is often done through the introduction of contentious topics of debate either in parliament or the media. The intention is to shift the focus from the real problems and engage the populous in heated debate which diverts the energy and attention from the real problems that the government is not equipped to cope with.

It is important, therefore, that we identify where the focus of our debate should be. Experience teaches us that ‘miracle cures’ for entrenched societal ills do not exist. It is convenient to think that capital punishment will halt the escalation of violent murders, but at the very best, it will turn out to be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. Positive change requires more than a law. It requires more than political rhetoric. It requires more than clever manipulation to hide egregious social issues, by highlighting others.

Rather than a law legitimising the death penalty, our society needs the rule of law. The rule of law in the Maldives has been described by one cynic as ‘a cancer patient kept alive by drug.’ When the law enforcers who have promised ‘to protect and serve’ wear balaclavas to beat and brutalise people, it is not hard to surmise that Maldives, especially Male, is a ‘frontier town’ where the rule of law has been hijacked by the rule of might.

We need the leaders of the nation to show the people that they are honest, just and capable. The economic collapse of the country is not the only sign of the regime’s inability to lead. The murder of Dr Afrasheem Ali is a huge tragedy, regardless of what side of the political divide we have positioned ourselves. It is an execution style murder, accomplished with such brutality, that even the young and the able-bodied are questioning their safety; the old and the disabled having long blockaded themselves behind doors. These are all tragic, but the greater tragedy is the lack of an appropriate response by the government.

We need justice to function as a powerful and active force in the daily lives of our people. The most stable and safe societies in the world are those where the people feel the presence of a strong sense of justice. This stage of stability is not achieved overnight, nor is it arrived at by the threat of more punishment. It is the end product of enlightened and fair governance, which in turn produces a strong sense of nationhood based on shared values and aspirations. When justice falters, society collapses.

More than ever, we need to realise that a nation cannot function effectively, if its wealth is monopolised by a privileged few. Discounting a short period of time between 2008 and 2011, the state Maldives had grievously failed to address the needs of it citizenry. Research shows that a low standard of living is not as socially damaging as a huge disparity between the ‘have’ and ‘have nots’. When we view the dystopia we have created, it is important to remember that a community is only as strong as its weakest link. Social problems such as crime, violence and drug-abuse often surrounding the disfranchised and the alienated, affect the whole society. This is especially problematic in a geographically small place such as the Maldives.

The people and the society they live in are entwined in a complex web of interrelationships. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that, ‘Society is inside of man and man is inside society… The fish is in the water and the water is in the fish’. We need to examine the water that is inside the fish in Maldivian society. When we do so, how can we escape the gloomy conclusion that the water inside the fish is exceptionally murky? The lack of honest leadership with a view for the betterment of its people, the collapse of the justice system, the lack of personal freedom and democratic rights, as well as the abuse of human rights with impunity, have all contributed to this.

Until the water clears, the death penalty is simply another dangerous tool in the hands of the wrong people.

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