L'ACTUALITÉ
Dernière modification : le 04-Oct-2003 14:36 (GMT+1 / Bruxelles)

 

 

04/10/03 - The eternal debate on the death sentence in Africa is started again - organizations of Humans right call upon the Ethiopian government - directed by the Prime Minister Mr. Mélés Zénawi - so that is carried out to the suppression of the death sentence in the new Ethiopian Penal code.

By Bouh Warsama.

 

"You will give life for life - il for - il, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise" (Exodus, XXI, 24-25).

Is such the law of retaliation and its absolute reciprocity which dominated all the reasons for settings with died during centuries and still perpetuate in some countries in a not officialized form although the motivations and the direction are identical.

• It is broad and thorny debate which constitutes the application or the abolition of the death sentence.

This debate raises this eternal question - "the society has it the duty (and/or) the right to condemn to dead those which violate its laws and which carry seriously reached to their next and can one thus grant the right to avenge the illegal crime by the legalized murder ?"

During tens of centuries the question did not arise - or little dared to think and pose it of it - because the death sentence was felt like a repair essential and entered in "the order of the things".

It was claimed whereas the social body found only in the fear, inspired by the punishment, the parapet with proper safety ; with a form of immanent justice what will too often open the door with all the excesses legalized by the capacities.

As the society moved, the question "doesn't justice also have as role to give a new repairing chance to those which violated its laws?... " was posed and busy of a situation of protective of the established rights - it is true sometimes with the radical methods not to say exterminating - it opened Rights to the culprits in - some kind - protecting.

It was and is still nowadays a form of consent on behalf of the society and its supposed evolution, of its incapacity to correct, with the teaching direction of the term.

Did each society thus found its own penal code, the sanctions and the prisons which judge it itself.

• Ethiopia - recent history.

  • Did May 22, 1990, the governmental daily newspaper Ethiopian Herald announce the execution of 12 Generals, shown to have taken part in the attempt military conspiration of May 1989 during which these general officers had wanted to seize the capacity while benefitting from an official visit from Menguistu Haïlé Mariam (Menguestou Haïlé Maryam) in Democratic Republic from Germany.

  • May 21, 1991, president Menguistu (Menguestou Haïlé Maryam) left Ethiopia to take refuge in Zimbabwe.

With the capacity since 1977, after having eliminated the other persons in charge for the military conspiration had reversed the Emperor Haïlé Sélassié in September 1974, it founded mode of a socialist type which was transformed into a sanguinary dictatorship which would have made - according to various sources of information - more than three million died among the civil populations.

Senior officials of State - having been useful under the mode of president Menguistu (Menguestou Haïlé Maryam) and having taken an active part in a true organized genocide - in particular against the populations area of the Tigré ; men, women and children - were translated in front of the Courts and for some were condemned to death.

• The law of retaliation dominates all the reasons for settings to dead - the blood of the victim shouts sacrificial revenge against that which poured it.
  

It is this shape of logic of the old, traditional societies and in the religion which one finds as in the Bible for example - Caïn, although culprit, is defended against those which would like to kill it (Genesis, IV, 15) - whereas on the contrary Lamek is the symbol of an insatiable anger (Genesis, IV, 23-24).

The code of Hammourabi (2285-2242 front. J.-C.) enumerate the various settings with dead by fire, water and the stake.

The blood of the victim shouts revenge against that which poured it and it is for the honor or good of other reasons, that the "vendetta" - which takes of other names according to the areas - is the response to this cry.

When that there is deficiency of the State - judged like such or it did not recognize the supreme authority - the family or the tribe deals with then to restore the order broken by the crime by achieving a compensation and repairing justice that traditions, ritual laws or the gods themselves are supposed to claim....

But little by little one sees the Codes and their laws to regulate this family revenge, in order to adapt the punishment with the committed crime and at the same time to also protect the culprits against possible excesses from a disproportionate and interminable revenge.

• When is born the State, the death penalty is very frequently regulated.
  

But it is an undeniable fact that as soon as the society feels threatened ( political conflict, ideological conflict, upsurge of criminality, social plague : the drug trafficking for example and especially the genocides and the murders of children), a great part of the public opinion rises in favour of the death sentence ; either of its re-establishment, or of its implementation.

One thus sees the delicate and measured approach which it is advisable to have when one approaches the case of the maintenance of the application of the death sentence in certain countries - as it is currently the case in Ethiopia - while taking care not to carry a value judgment which could prove far too whole with regard to the maintenance of the application of the death sentence which - still let us underline in this case - concerns only men considered and condemned for facts assimilable to a genocide under a despotic and sanguinary mode.

• The dialogue in an Operating state towards the democracy.
  

The wide-ranging debate in the form of dialogue which must be established on the legitimacy of the death sentence in Ethiopia must lead inevitably to a practical reflexion concerning the major direction of the sorrows inflicted by a society which moves at its rhythm - need has to protect itself for the future so that such despotic and sanguinary modes - assimilable to that of Menguistu - do not seize the power in the country.

With this all the means of international assistances are added to assign to the country for the development of a penitentiary mode whose Ethiopia must necessarily lay out - humanly and financially - to make pass in the acts this direction of evolution and to make it credible.

 

Mr Bouh Warsama.

 

Free text of right, any nonsubjugated integral copy with the preliminary authorization of the writer of the article.

Foot-note : Diffusion E mail - 8 897 addresses.