A Discourse on Human Rights in Tanzania: Should death penalty be abolished?

Adam Musa

Dar es Salaam. December 2010 statistics indicate Tanzania had 295 males and 11 females on the death row. But the question remains: don’t these people deserve to be hung as per their sentences?

Jack Kevorkian once said: “I will admit, like Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and some other philosophers, that there are instances where the death penalty would seem appropriate”

The World Day Against the Death Penalty is marked on October 10 every year and it will be globally observed for the 10th consecutive time this year.

The UN will vote for a fourth time in December 2012 when the organization is widely expected to support the call for a moratorium by an even higher majority.

The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty already is collecting signatures in support of the resolution.

The concept that ‘no one can arbitrarily be deprived of his life’, still leaves room for states to kill someone where it is not found to be arbitrary.

The word ‘arbitrary’ gives states powers to deprive a person of his right to life as long as it is done in accordance with the law.

Most of the states, including Tanzania, have made use of this flexibility to create laws that allow the state to violate people’s right to life.

The 1977 Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania guarantees the right to life, yet law imposing the death penalty violates it by allowing killings during lawful warfare and self-defence.

Modes of executing the death penalty amongst the states, according to Amnesty International, include beheading, electrocuting, hanging, lethal injection and shooting.

The death sentence in Tanzania, according to Cap 21 of the 1985 Criminal Procedure Act, is executed by hanging to death.

The law requires heads of state of countries in which the death sentence is still in practice to use their powers of signing death warrants, pardoning the convicts or ordering the sentence to be substituted and commuted for any other punishment.

Maxim theory explains capital punishment as a reflection of retributive justice. It personifies the ancient belief of ‘an eye for an eye and tooth for tooth’.

As a result of basing on the principle of vengeance, critics, particularly Human Rights activists, regard the sentence as outrageous. The Human Rights activists’ argument notwithstanding, the death penalty should not be abolished. Going by findings of the Harrison poll conducted in the US, over two thirds of Americans are still in supports of the punishment.

Considering most of the public voices heard against the capital punishment, the overwhelming support of the penalty in the poll findings is surprising.

As if encouraged by the poll results, few countries, including China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and some states in the US and Texas, in particular, regularly put people to death.

Most supporters believe the death penalty is justifiable on one or more of the following grounds: as a means of retribution, as a deterrent to others, as a prevention of the danger of re-offending and as a cheapest way of keeping inmates.

The Statistics of Bureau of Justice laments that the support for the death penalty keeps increasing, as between 60 and 70 per cent of murder convicts have either directly or indirectly committed similar crime.

When a killer repeats the crime, psychologists refer to it as recidivism – a tendency to return to a previous pattern of behaviour, especially a criminal one.

Source: The Citizen (08/08/2012): http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/magazines/32-political-platform/24711-should-death-penalty-be-abolished