I just read this article about a girl who is supposed to be beheaded in Saudi. It also discusses how a Saudi surge in beheadings could set a record high. Before we go up in arms about the brutality of women’s rights in the middle east, we should probably look to see how well we’ve been doing on the execution of human life in this country first.
Let’s be careful not to beat down Saudi Arabia with our high and mighty American Values just yet; apparently, we have only been civilized since 2004.
2002:
Only six countries, the United States, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, have executed juvenile offenders since 1990, with the United States executing more than the other five combined. The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Web site says 160 children in the United States have been sentenced to die since 1973; 80 currently sit on death row. Of the 20 executions that took place during the past two decades, the last six, all of which involved black males in Texas, occurred in the past three years. Two took place in August. The execution of juvenile offenders in the United States is an outrageous and shameful practice. The rest of the world, excluding the “evil” Iran, outlaws such an ultimate and unchangeable punishment, and the United States must follow its lead. Juvenile offenders, who do not have the capacity to fully understand their situation, do not deserve to die.
2003:
The United States remained virtually alone in the world in imposing death sentences on those who were juvenile offenders–under the age of eighteen–at the time they committed their crimes. Only the United States, Congo, and Iran have executed juvenile offenders in the past three years. Twenty-two U.S. states continued to allow the death penalty to be imposed on juvenile offenders; eighty-three–thirty-nine of whom were black–were on death row as of July 1, 2002. The state of Texas executed three juvenile offenders in 2002. Each was seventeen years of age at the time he was convicted. The executions secured Texas’s unenviable position as national leader in the execution of juvenile offenders. Of the twenty-one juvenile offenders put to death nationwide since 1976, thirteen were from Texas.
2007:
Only Iran, Sudan, China and Pakistan are known to have executed juvenile offenders since 2004.
In a 2005 gallup poll 74% of people polled were in favor of the death penalty, and when life imprisonment was an option 56% wanted the death penalty.
We are no more civilized than these other countries, in my opinion. Don’t mistakenly use the argument of women being beheaded in Saudi as a way to get people to look at the way women are treated in the middle eastern countries is completely the wrong route to go.
Here’s my question: Why are we outraged and saddened by women and juveniles being executed and not men? At what point did women being executed become a more important issue than men being executed in any country?
Be saddened by the whole of an issue. We should be saddened by humans being executed and humans that are being treated like second rate citizens all around the world, not just in those countries that we deem as “less civilized”.
And damn it! Demand human rights in our own country, as well as others!
