Nagaenthran’s Death

There is something deeply disturbing about a state-organized execution that draws you into the guilt of the act. You can’t shrug it off as someone else’s deed or as the actions of another country. Just knowledge of it draws you into the killing as if it was you who woke the man up in the still-dark hours of the morning, walked him to that dastardly contraption, put the noose around his neck, and waited for the floor to give way from under him. Then as the man hanged, you sat there in an official chair, neatly arranged for you to have a clear view of the last twitching moments of the man’s life, and waited for the doctor to confirm his death.

The horror is how, from the moment the man was apprehended for the crime to the slow progress through the courts, and to the detention while awaiting the hanging, a civilized state with well-dressed men was relentlessly urging on the process that would take the life of a man. Not far away from all this, other men and women in hospitals were bringing new souls to life and working desperately to save the lives of others from illnesses and injuries. If you listened carefully, even in the gallows in those early hours, you would have heard the wailing of ambulances rushing to save lives. But no ambulances made their way to the gallows.

How do you transpose the duty of a state to preserve lives over the authority it claims to take a life without surrendering your humanity and your process of reasoning? If the state demands death for causing death and (in this case) by extension to offences involving drugs because it values life, how is the value of life or its protection justified by the ceremonial killing? How can a justice system whose purpose is to protect life and rights continue to prevail and justify itself by sending someone to death? There is a break in the logic somewhere. Surely, the justification of every civilized law is defeated by those judicial acts that lead to the taking of a life. The sanctity of life cannot ever be justified by taking it. But this morning, from reports in the press, it appears that the court that sanctioned the hanging was more concerned about its own dignity being pierced by public comments. Strong action will be taken, it said, to protect the administration of justice. Whatever the actions are taken to defend the courts, they will never relieve us of the guilt that we will bear for Nagaenthran’s killing.