Will China Show Mercy?

Over the past several days, most of Britain has been feet-up-before-the-fire, enjoying the Christmas holiday. Not so for Akmal Shaikh's family, the British prisoner who is set to die in China at 2.30 tomorrow morning. His family were allowed an hour and a half with him this morning, and emerged despondent. Akmal had just been told he had 24 hours to live. "He was obviously very upset on hearing from us of the sentence that was passed. We strongly feel that he's not rational and needs medication," said Soohail. Yet as so often with the death penalty, especially when prisoners without wealth have lawyers without influence, the final flurry of publicity is often when potential witnesses hear about the case for the first time. His poverty in Poland and his mental illness has shown no reason to spare this man's life; even appeals from his family and campaigners are too late to save him now. Luis Belmonte, is a Spanish photojournalist who followed Akmal for months as he slid from homelessness deeper into mental illness. Belmonte's pictures of an unshaven Akmal, sitting on a bench in a crumpled white suit and staring despondently across a homeless shelter, tell the story more eloquently than any lawyer could.

Two others who knew him were British teachers living in Poland. Paul Newberry and Gareth Saunders befriended Akmal, and past his crazy ideas they saw the gentle optimist beneath. Akmal was convinced that he would record a hit song that would usher in world peace, and his persistence paid off when he talked his way into a free hour at a recording studio. One Saturday, Akmal's two newfound friends could not refuse his plea to help him make a first cut of the record. Saunders was a musician and agreed to do backup vocals, Newberry offered his amateur bass guitar. They both agreed that the result was deplorable, but Akmal was not to be dissuaded from his mission. These three witnesses provide compelling evidence of Akmal's mental problems. However,some less charitable people cottoned onto Akmal's vulnerability and made him their unwitting drug mule, hence the looming hour of his execution. Nobody should accept my view that Akmal is innocent of any criminal act, but it is becoming increasingly clear that Akmal did not have a fair trial. His case underlines the dangers of fallible humans assuming omnipotence. Death penalty is the ultimate exertion of the government's overwhelming power, flooding over the meagre capacity of the individual who is seated defenceless in his prison cell. Yet ultimately it betrays a national weakness as well, a government's failure to confront difficult issues which surround human rights. This is as true for China as it is for the US – whether in the context of the death penalty, or the excesses of the "war on terror". Let us hope that the Chinese authorities remember the quality of mercy in time to avoid a tragic mistake: "Tis mightiest in the mightiest, it becomes the thronèd monarch better than his crown."


 
Death penalty is the ultimate exertion of the government's overwhelming power, flooding over the meagre capacity of the individual who is seated defenceless in his prison cell. Yet ultimately it betrays a national weakness as well, a government's failure to confront difficult issues which surround human rights. This is as true for China as it is for the US – whether in the context of the death penalty, or the excesses of the "war on terror". Let us hope that the Chinese authorities remember the quality of mercy in time to avoid a tragic mistake: "Tis mightiest in the mightiest, it becomes the thronèd monarch better than his crown." It's ironic that whilst we are shuffling off to the new decade, we are being thrown back into the dark age by corrupt democracy & a broken international society. One mentally-ill, poor man tricked into smuggling drugs is due for a public execution. Another, who American authorities were warned of, is given a jail sentence. If the judicial system in both China and America are as iniquitous as this then who can be trusted for liberty, justice and fair democracy for all? When terrorism is allowed to run amock whilst the innocent are publicly humiliated and slaughtered, who do we turn to? This isn't about politics anymore; it is about human decency. And it seems the world has run out of it already - along with compassion for our fellow man.