Finality

It has been reported this week that a man from Britain has been convicted of supplying cannabis in the United Arab Emirates; he is now facing the death penalty. Regardless of whether this man is innocent or guilty, and regardless of the issue that perhaps people shouldn’t really be travelling to countries with backward legal systems, I fundamentally oppose the death penalty. As a civilised human being I do not believe it is my place, or anyone else’s, to take another human life against their will. Even for those criminals who have taken a life themselves by committing murder, I feel it is important for a decent society to rise above those criminals by not performing similar acts. If an enraged relative or close friend of a victim took lethal action against the perpetrator of a heinous crime, I would have a significant degree of empathy, but for a country or state to sanction killing outside the confines of warfare / self-defence is, in my opinion, taking things to a lower level of morality that we should all be trying to avoid. I am proud to say that in the United Kingdom nobody has been executed since 1964.