Live from death row: Should the world watch?
Should organs of death row inmates be harvested?
Should death penalty be abolished?
The Iranian government airing the hanging of a man charged with killing revolutionary guards a week earlier on state television, smacks of actions usually adopted by terrorists to infuse fear and subjugate a more powerful opponent. But whom did the Iranian authorities hope to terrorize by permitting such gruesome footage?
Just two months ago, the unstable Iraqi government had tried to contain the damage done by a video of Saddam Hussein's hanging making its way to television and the internet. Are the last moments of a man being executed by state authorities or terrorists, a subject to be broadcast on state media or the internet?
The intention apparently is to disperse the hanging in order to spread fear and deter anyone from crime, however to televise or broadcast it on the internet is not a good idea. Of course, people will watch because we never see death happen - we see it faked as in movies.
The reasons: people enjoy it. It won't deter anyone from crime, and in fact, people will become insensitive to human suffering and death, and I believe that would be unhealthy for humanity as a whole. Ask combat veterans or police officers about the things they have seen, and you will come to the same conclusion.
I don't see any reason, rather not able to construe on what basis, harbingers of 'justice' anywhere can allow this to happen? Is it going to make his punishment any sharper? I think this was supposed to be a punishment for the guilty, not quick relief for the bored. We shouldn't be validating his actions with cheap immortality in the media. I don't think that this execution, or any other, should be televised.
The visage of death is supposed to horrify people. If the execution is broadcast, what's to say that future executions won't be? We have sunk to a new low and are teetering on the brink of the lowest circle of Hell. Watching death as entertainment is way beyond disgusting.
