Death penalty is becoming more controversial

The death penalty, once a common practice throughout the entire planet, has now become extremely controversial in many areas. In fact, the majority of the countries have now shunned the practice of using the death penalty as a punishment. However, there are several nations that continue to use the death penalty in order to deter crimes. The list of nations that permit use of the death penalty is made up mostly of developing nations such as Afghanistan and Nigeria, but there are also several developed nations such as the United States, Japan and South Korea, present on the list. The majority of nations that have abolished the death penalty have done so on the basis of human rights. Such nations tend to consider the death penalty a violation of what they define as a basic human right to life and liberty. For example, when Spain abolished the death penalty in 1995, its reasoning was that there was no treatment more "degrading or afflictive" imaginable than the death penalty. Nations that use the death penalty are less likely to define the punishment as a human rights issue. Nations that feel that the issue of capital punishment does not fall within the scope of human rights, include Singapore and China. Other nations still use the death penalty, but tend to only define capital punishment as a human rights violation when it occurs in other nations. The United States is especially guilty of this, because the majority of the nations express concern over the use of capital punishment in developing countries without considering whether capital punishment occurring within the United States might be a human rights violation. The status of capital punishment as a human rights issue may not have reached an overall consensus as yet, but the current trend of abolishing its use points to it becoming an accepted human rights issue in the near future. The debate on the abolition of the death penalty is kindled anew, as people still continue in some countries of the world to be subjected to being sentenced to death and executed. Each of us has seen or read pictures, TV - reports and newspaper articles on the subject. Opinions concerning the continuation or abolition of the death penalty are still split, but there are now, due to the global presence of some human rights organisations, led by Amnesty International, more and more opponents of the death penalty. The debate on the abolition of the death penalty has grown up today to a debate with profound cultural background, particularly regarding the role of the Near and Middle East (Iran, Saudi Arabia) in the discussion. In these countries, executions of people, convicted because of their sexuality or their religious beliefs to death, are still on the agenda. The United Nations regularly deals with this problem and could move even a few nations to abolish the death penalty. The quote of the Indian politician Mahatma Gandhi, "eye for an eye - and the whole world will be blind" had been already thought provoking for many people in the 20th century, including senior politicians and is still relevant today. The writer, based in Canada, can be reached at email: gopalsengupta@aol.com