Justice in Death

I’m not very good with death. Who is? It is a tricky subject for anyone to contend with, and it is something that we are all going to have to face in life be it our own demise or the passing of a loved one.

Death hurts, or rather the feelings associated with death. Grief is epic. It is all-consuming. It lingers for years, rearing its ugly head in the most unforeseen of moments. The finality of life is alarming, which is why we should all try and live with compassion and consideration for all.

Life indeed is too short.

Can you remember your first encounter with death? Perhaps it was the death of a grandparent or a favourite pet? Some people argue that it is a good idea for children to have pets because it prepares them for death. It helps them to nurture their ability to care as well, but it is also an allegedly decent way of getting children used to the fact that every living thing will eventually die.

My first encounter with death was not that of a pet, though I do remember our third hamster dying on 4^th May 1979. My father said that the little mite had the right idea to pop his clogs on the day that Thatcher came to power.

My first encounter with death was earlier than that though.

It was a Saturday afternoon in January. We were having a big family do, possibly for my father’s birthday. All the men and some of the boys had gone to a football match and the women, girls and younger children were watching a film of sorts.

The telephone rang and my stoical mother answered the phone. It was my cousin, and she was explaining that my uncle had died, having had a massive heart attack in the post office that morning.

I was about seven years old and my four year old cousin, who really did not understand what was happening, marched into the lounge having overheard my mother recounting the news to her sister, and declared without an ounce of emotion that Alfred was dead.

My sister and I shot out into the kitchen in floods of tears to be greeted by my mother who was carefully trying to suppress her anger that we had found out so abruptly.

Uncle Alfred; a strange man who was so strict and harsh with his own children, yet was the most gentle of characters when it came to myself and my siblings.

It was Alfred who we always stayed with when we came to London, and because I associated him with London and London sites and sights, I was bizarrely perturbed that he died in the post office. I had assumed that he was at the Post Office Tower, and had visions of him falling to the ground on the top of this building rather than the reality of him dying at his local post office branch.

I still look up at it nowadays and think of him and my warped mind when confronted with death.

Death happens to us throughout our lives, even if we do not have immediate family that lose their lives. Death is ever-present in the news. Barely does a day pass when there is not some mention of death in the news. We have almost become oblivious to those initial feelings because of its omnipresent status. We watch fallen victims on dusty roads with a disconnection – almost forgetting that these are human beings with families and a life now exhausted.

Another childhood memory I have is of going downstairs early one morning. Everyone else was asleep but the newspaper boy had already done his rounds and the Guardian was sitting on the floor.

I picked it up and read the front page.

A man had been killed, murdered in Texas, USA. He had been sitting in a chair, and some anonymous person had switched a button that sent an electric shock right through this man as he was strapped and bound, unable to escape his state-planned fate.

I read the entire article with horror. How could anyone kill another person, knowingly? How could you live with yourself knowing that there was a possibility that the button that you pressed, in conjunction with others, could have been the fatal one; that you were responsible for the death of another human being?

I just didn’t get it, and it frightened me.

Nobody told me to detest capital punishment. Nobody had even discussed it with me. It was that article, read by the innocent child that formulated my view about state-managed death and I have never veered away from the abhorrence throughout my life.

There are some vile people in this world, and there are times when I have felt extremely passionate about particular people who have monstrously dismissed their basic humanity to murder one, two, thousands or millions of people.

There are other people who may not have physically pressed a button or fired a shot who have plenty of blood on their hands for the hopelessness that they instilled in others to the point that these human beings took their own lives out of despair.

Anybody who has watched films or read books such as “Schindler’s List” or “The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas” can hardly feel anything other than utter disgust at the waste of life and the appalling, almost inconceivable horror of what happened in those gas chambers established by the Nazis.

Surely the perpetrators of such policies deserved to die in the most horrible of circumstances considering what they had done to so many?

And yet, I still find it difficult to contemplate the thought of anyone’s death, or another person being responsible for the death of another.

Perhaps I might feel differently if someone murdered somebody close to me. I don’t know but I am still not convinced that I could cope with the responsibility of another person’s death, and I am not sure I would want “an eye for an eye”. What would be the point? It wouldn’t bring back the loved one.

There are some brutal people in the world both living and dead.

This year, we have seen the murder of Osama bin Laden – yes, an evil man who was responsible for the death of thousands. And today, we have seen Muammar Gaddafi murdered in his home town as troops loyal to the new regime in Libya finally found the dictator and dragged him out of his hideaway. They shot him in the leg so that he could not get away and then, on the way to hospital, the blurred picture seems to be suggesting that there was open fire and he was killed.

Was it an execution? Was it planned this way? Who knows?

The fact was the man died, and there are an abundance of questions that will never be asked and responses never given because with his demise went a whole lot of knowledge about what this bastard did to fellow countrymen and attacks on foreigners too.

Now, there is the possibility that we will never know.

What sort of justice is that to the people of Lockerbie, to the families of all those thousands found in unmarked graves in the middle of Tripoli, to the people who have fought against this dictator and lost their lives? Who is going to tell them what happened?

Are they really going to feel better knowing that this man has died? If they really wanted justice, then surely this man should have been locked up for the rest of his days, suffering the indignity of a fallen leader, having no books to read, no comforts of his Bedouin tents, no people to talk to.

There are other means of getting revenge that some may argue are less humane than a bullet in the head, but at least there would not be another human being with blood on their hands, responsible for the death of another.

I know that there are many who would disagree. I had this argument years ago with friends at college. On a trip down to London in a rackety old mini-bus we talked about this very subject.

I was shocked that friends who were either socialist or communist did not agree with my stance on capital punishment, when it came to the truly evil of the world. I couldn’t understand how they could see justice in another killing, especially when the brutal one had not been given an opportunity to explain themselves in front of a court of law, to the family of their victims for their atrocities.

I have no love for these people, obviously. It is evident that Saddam Hussein, Adolph Hitler, Muammar Gaddafi, Osama bin Ladan were all absolutely responsible for the deaths of many, many people but there is still a niggle within me that squirms slightly at the thought of their execution. Saddam had a trial and he did not reveal anything significant about his state-run murders, so one could argue that there is no point in having his day in court. Perhaps it would have been better if he had been killed in the course of his capture but do the Iraqis now feel so much better because of his death? Perhaps they do, I don’t know.

And will the Libyans in two years time, potentially still in a state of political fluctuation, remain happy that Gaddafi was killed when they have no concrete understanding of what the dictator did and who he did it to?

There are other evil people still alive who I would like to see brought to justice. Robert Mugabe is often quoted as the man that most people would like to see dead, and yes, I would concur. He has brought about violence and suffering to millions but I would like to see him die in another way, not through the intervention of international forces that seek him out like a fox. I want to see him suffering for what his has done, and maybe that is more vindictive.

Anyway, there is no chance of international intervention – there’s no oil in his country.

There are plenty of evil people around who could do with a long stretch of silence to contemplate what they have done to society, be it through the murder of innocents or the greediness of their grubby little lives. As Gaddafi died there were people throughout the world fighting their own peaceful fight against the tyranny of capitalism that is also responsible for death and misery.

Nobody outside St. Paul’s cathedral is brandishing a gun. Nobody in Wall Street, who has been camping out night after night in the fight for democratic economics, is out to kill a human being, just a warped philosophy.

There are peaceful means and there is justice that can occur without any more bloodshed.

The young girl who sat on the hall mat, reading the newspaper all those years ago, is still within me.

I am not convinced that murder and death of any sort provides meaningful justice or revenge.

There are plenty of people that I would like to slap or spit at but I could not be responsible for the death of another and I am not sure how any intelligent, thoughtful person could.

I know that many could not possibly agree with me, and I accept that my opinions might be somewhat bizarre considering the extent of evil from these dictators.

All I know is that yesterday, once more, I didn’t feel a sense of victory. I just felt a little uncomfortable – as I suspect most do with death, if they stopped and considered it in detail.