Henchmen Are Obsolete in Democracy

Over the past century, more and more countries in the world have abolished the death penalty, holding it as incompatible with the status of democracy. Nearly 100 nations around the globe have completely renounced this form of punishment, which amounts to about half of all those in existence today. However, the Asian continent, as well as some portions of Africa, seem to have an insatiable appetite for human blood, which makes Asia, for instance, accountable for 90 percent of the world's death sentences.

The situation is not looking too good for the Unites States either, where there are still states that have yet to abolish their legislation regarding the punishment of criminals. However justified a killing may be, human rights activists say, it's still a murder, and it doesn't bring back the victims of a killer, for example. The main issue with death penalties is not necessarily that they are a must in some Asian countries, but that they are part of the tradition, and governments do not want to risk removing them only to have the general population protest the measure, maybe even violently.

“The basic difference in our approach [to the death penalty] springs from our traditional Asian value system, which places the interests of the community over and above that of the individual,” the first Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, stated in 2002. China, North Korea, Vietnam and Singapore are among the countries that register the most executions in the world today, and some observers opine that it's not a matter of culture, but of politics.

That is to say, authorities in these regions fear that dropping the death penalty could signal people the fact that they accept the values of democracy in the nation, a thing they would have none of. Also, no death penalties would mean an ease in authoritarianism levels, which might give citizens in these countries the idea that the government is weak. And this kind of regimes can only rule through fear, by making individuals aware of the fact that any mistake they make could cost them their lives.

There is still hope for the citizens of those countries, observers maintain. As more and more of these states let in the basic values of democracy, their inner laws will become incompatible with these values and would have to be changed. It's either that, or no imports and exports, which means that the economies in these areas could collapse, except maybe for that of China.