Death Penalty
Published in Today newspaper
6 February 1999
So now he is dead. Leo Echegaray is no more. His life has been ended by an official execution with some macabre publicity, macho posturings, cries for mercy, heartfelt appeals, outpourings of disgust, torrents of talk. While official execution takes center stage there is little outrage about the extra judicial executions that are frequent occurrences. Or abhorrence at the deaths of thousands of children weekly through disease caused by the willful neglect of profligate and corrupt officials who spend in a day what could give life to thousands.
The execution of Leo Echegaray is a display of legal hypocrisy mocked by bloated and decaying bodies of those killed by death squad vigilantes. The execution of Echegaray proves nothing, changes nothing, prevents nothing. It is an admission of failure to transform society from barbarity to decency, from ignorance to enlightenment, from a society steeped in retaliatory violence to one based on compassion, social justice and humane punishment.
Resorting to killing in order to teach that killing is wrong is self-contradictory. So many in positions of power are victims of ignorance, having failed to learn the basics of human psychology. By executing the convicts society lashes out blindly in the hope that the demons of crime will be banished by the vengeful taking of life. Fearful of such a draconian punishment the criminal will resort to worst crimes to eliminate witnesses and cover his tracks. He might as well be executed for a greater crime as for a lesser one.
Will the rule of reason ever prevail, will our institutions of moral values and learning have any relevance to social behavior? Will we ever learn that brutality and mistreatment inflicted in childhood is frequently returned tenfold when the victim reaches adulthood? Do we not realize that violent crime is the product of a violent home or a brutal neighborhood or society where the value of life is measured by how much money one has?
We need to be convinced that corruption, evil, sin and violence can only be significantly reduced when there is a return to an unshakable commitment to abide by the moral and spiritual values that respect the sanctify and dignity of all creation and especially the dignity of human life that is made in the image and likeness of the creator.
Father Shay Cullen
PREDA Foundation Inc.
Upper Kalaklan, Olongapo City
(047) 222 4994, 223 9630
E-MAIL: predair@info.com.ph
