"I condemn the execution of Akmal Shaikh in the strongest terms"
Prime Minister Gordon Brown
"China had failed in its basic human rights responsibilities... the execution of Mr Shaikh was totally unacceptable"
Foreign Office Minister Ivan Lewis
"I deplore and deeply regret the fact that the Chinese authorities have executed Akmal Shaikh"
Conservative leader David Cameron
"I am shocked and disappointed that the execution went ahead with no regards to my dad's mental health problems, and I struggle to understand how this is justice."
Leilla Horsnell, Akmal Shaikh's daughter
"The way the Chinese authorities have stubbornly failed to take account of this poor man's severe mental illness shows that China is still stuck in the dark ages."
Robert Westhead, spokesman for The Bipolar Organisation
Elsewhere reactions have been far more mixed; the Chinese authorities, in particular, have been defiant in the defence of their actions. A spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry told a press briefing in Beijing that no-one had the right to comment on China's judicial sovereignty.
Closer to home the BBC's Have Your Say bulletin boards have been swamped with comments, so much so that the site crashed for several hours. A large proportion of the mainly domestic comments praise China's hardline stance on drugs and lament the lack of a similar policy here in the United Kingdom. My own particular take on the subject - still to appear on the site - summarises what I believe to be an utterly immoral act;
"The death penalty has no place in a progressive society and no state should have the right to take life. Execution is non-reversible and removes any possibility of rectifying judicial mistakes should new evidence come to light. It is also prone to abuse, and the secretive nature of execution in China suggests its use as a tool of repression.
And why do those states which abolish capital punishment not suddenly find themselves overwhelmed by violence if its primary function is as a deterrent?"
There is nothing wrong in questioning the moral and ethical reasoning behind another state's laws. Our politicians have been right to do so.
1 comment:
the chap is pakistani, and has lived in poland and other countries.
perhaps those countries should be trying to help him?
he has not had the mental health defence on the other occasions he acted criminally.
he is not that innocent, to paraphrase britney!
i accept anyone carrying 4kgs of drugs into china is certifiable.
but i agree with the sentence and think a lot less crime would happen in britain if drugs became a commodity not worth dying to supply.
perhaps our soldiers in afaghanisatn could destroy every field of them rather than keeping the local warlords onside by letting them continue supplying their misery.
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