A few months
from now a US District Judge will confirm the death sentence for the younger of
the two Boston marathon bombers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. His execution by lethal
injection won’t be imminent but he’ll be on death row.
That should be
a problem for Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop and Tanya Plibersek and Ben Quilty
and all those who raged against Indonesia for executing Australian drug
smugglers. Unless they make clear their unequivocal opposition to Tsarnaev’s possible
execution they’ll simply confirm the double standard that infects much of the debate
in Australia about capital punishment.
Tsarnaev is
an evil person. He shattered many lives. He should never breathe free air
again. But if he is executed why shouldn’t others be? And those others,
inevitably, will include Australian nationals. Currently some 17 Australians world-wide
are at risk of receiving the death penalty. The moment a sentence is confirmed we’ll
waggle our collective fingers at the horror of it all.
But those being
waggled at will have the perfect out: ‘Where was your outrage when others were
killed?’ And there’ll be no meaningful answer unless and until we wean
ourselves of the absurd notion that capital punishment matters only when Australians
are its victims.
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