There are a couple of arguments against the ruling of death for these men; first and foremost is of course the sanctity of life. It's not like you can un-kill someone once they're dead, either. Then the other argument was an appeal for compassion: these men were apparently reformed in prison, they made their mistakes when they were in their twenties (holy shit, that's like my age) and it's been a good 10 years. While I personally believe people should be held accountable for their crimes no matter how long ago that shit happened, I think this line of appeal makes sense as well. Then people bring up examples of how other criminals are given lesser sentences for crimes worse than drug smuggling, and how the death penalty on these men are unfair.
Having grown up in China, I never thought much about the death penalty. If you don't know much about China... let's just say it's never won any awards for respecting human rights. In my childish mind nothing seemed odd about killing someone for their crimes... I mean people died everyday for shittier reasons, so the concept of life and death had little meaning. I don't think China as a country was too far removed from its imperialistic roots, despite naming itself "The People's Republic".
Then I did the rest of my "growing up" in Australia, a nice, liberal first world country to directly contrast the values I've been given. Suddenly killing people for any reason seemed rather abhorrent, because it made little sense to end life if you had not given life in the first place. And even then the anti-abortion movement is strong. Then given my chosen profession I'm obviously a little bit more keen on this "preservation of life" thing than other people- granted most people would be very keen on preserving their own lives.
The bottom line is that I oppose the death penalty for anyone under any circumstance. I mean there are psycho killers and child rapists out there, and then you think maybe even a death sentence is too little. From an objective standpoint though, I just want to point out that killing someone doesn't really make anything right, and it doesn't fix your problems. Death does not equate to justice, at all. Death is just fucking death- like, you stop thinking, your body shuts down, nothing's left except a couple kilograms of carbon and whatnot. This is why Death Note didn't work out- Light couldn't actually make people decent people, he just ended up killing everyone. Not many people realize, but killing someone off actually costs a lot more money than keeping them alive...
The trigger than prompted me to write this post- last night on Facebook a "friend" of mine "liked" a post that was basically mad a news channel for calling the drug smugglers "our boys". It was like "real soldiers out there died and they don't get fame and you're calling a bunch of fucking criminals 'our boys' wtf". I think in light of the events which transpired the post was totally unnecessary and really salty... Like, are you jealous of these people's "fame and glory"? The legacy they tried to leave behind was one of solidarity; I think the ACU named a scholarship after them. I know it boggles some peoples' minds that it happened, and they think we're essentially glorifying a bunch of criminals and that dismisses the services of everyone else to this country... but like, grow the fuck up and get the fuck over it. It's honestly better to remember something positive than something negative. Maybe you wanted to use these guys to set an example to your kids- don't fucking smuggle drugs, right, but that's just fear tactics at work. Anyone can see that the story of repentance and spiritual salvation is better than "drug smuggling = death".
I'm not actually religious by the common sense of the word, but my beliefs do align with a lot of "Christian values". Actually a lot of those I think are fundamental to human decency- and I spoke a lot in the past about learning to forgive, though forgetting may be impossible. Yes drugs are bad and cocaine ruins lives- but where the fuck did society go wrong, to generate a demand for cocaine? Where in our education system did we go wrong, to encourage two young men to smuggle drugs? They were around my age back then- they could've been at university procrastinating and blogging, but instead they were out there doing something despised by society at large. It's so much easier to pin the blame down on an individual, but we are all sums of our circumstances.
Not that the drug smugglers aren't at fault- like I said, one bear the consequences of their actions- and what they did was fucking retarded. I just find it disgusting that people got upset about calling them "our boys" and upset about how others were sad for them. Yes, these technical criminals are "our boys", and at the same time they are "our shame", "our regrets" and "our failings as society". Claiming ownership for our citizen's wrongs doesn't seem to be over-stepping the boundary at all.
As to comparing the media attention of the drug smugglers to servicemen- look, the only thing these people have in common is that THEY'RE ALL DEAD. Remember what I said about death? Death is just fucking death, and that's it. Deaths only have meaning and value when the living decide to assign it. We honor the deaths of servicemen to this country by getting on with our fucking lives, because that is what they sacrificed for. We honor the deaths of two previous drug smugglers by acknowledging that the death penalty is problematic, that repentance is possible, that we as a society has made mistakes and raised criminals, and yeah smuggling drugs from Indonesia is a fucking terrible idea.
I'm not actually religious by the common sense of the word, but my beliefs do align with a lot of "Christian values". Actually a lot of those I think are fundamental to human decency- and I spoke a lot in the past about learning to forgive, though forgetting may be impossible. Yes drugs are bad and cocaine ruins lives- but where the fuck did society go wrong, to generate a demand for cocaine? Where in our education system did we go wrong, to encourage two young men to smuggle drugs? They were around my age back then- they could've been at university procrastinating and blogging, but instead they were out there doing something despised by society at large. It's so much easier to pin the blame down on an individual, but we are all sums of our circumstances.
Not that the drug smugglers aren't at fault- like I said, one bear the consequences of their actions- and what they did was fucking retarded. I just find it disgusting that people got upset about calling them "our boys" and upset about how others were sad for them. Yes, these technical criminals are "our boys", and at the same time they are "our shame", "our regrets" and "our failings as society". Claiming ownership for our citizen's wrongs doesn't seem to be over-stepping the boundary at all.
As to comparing the media attention of the drug smugglers to servicemen- look, the only thing these people have in common is that THEY'RE ALL DEAD. Remember what I said about death? Death is just fucking death, and that's it. Deaths only have meaning and value when the living decide to assign it. We honor the deaths of servicemen to this country by getting on with our fucking lives, because that is what they sacrificed for. We honor the deaths of two previous drug smugglers by acknowledging that the death penalty is problematic, that repentance is possible, that we as a society has made mistakes and raised criminals, and yeah smuggling drugs from Indonesia is a fucking terrible idea.
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