Zimbabwe Vice President Joice Mujuru (R), Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai (C) and a member of the House of Assembly attend the presentation of the Final Draft of the Constitution for debate in Harare, February 6, 2013. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo
Zimbabwe has appointed a new hangman — reportedly a Malawian citizen — after a 12-year search, prompting fears of a round of executions of the country’s 76 death row inmates. (Since its last hangman retired seven years ago, Zimbabwe has not executed any prisoners.) The announcement has human rights groups loudly protesting Zimbabwe’s continued use of the death penalty.
It should be remembered that Zimbabwe is not alone in this definitive manner of punishing criminals. Although the number of countries with a death penalty is declining — as of May 2012, 141 countries out of 196 had abolished capital punishment — thousands of people are still executed every year worldwide. Iran executed 360+ in 2011, Saudi Arabia 82+, Iraq 68+, and the U.S. 43. China is thought to execute more people than the rest of the world put together, although Beijing does not release its national execution statistics.
Nor is the African nation unique for having grabbed headlines via its capital punishment policies. In January, an Indonesian court sentenced British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford to death for smuggling nearly 5 pounds of cocaine into the island of Bali. If carried out, Sandiford will be “led to a jungle clearing…blindfolded, tied to a pole and executed by firing squad.” Sandiford’s punishment seems all the more excessive in light of the 15-year jail term recommended by Indonesian prosecutors (and the lesser sentences received by her co-conspirators). Her death sentence may be motivated more by politics than by justice — Jakarta recently announced its plans to end Indonesia’s 5-year execution hiatus, and Sandiford’s execution would be a highly public way to do so, all while serving as a stark reminder of the country’s strict enforcement of its drug laws. Scores of foreign maids are facing equally bleak fates in Saudi Arabia where Rizana Nafeek, a 24-year-old Sri Lankan domestic worker, was beheaded in early January 2013. Not to mention the young alleged sorceress burnt to death in Papua New Guinea on February 6. While Kepari Leniata’s brutal killing came at the hands of an angry crowd, not an official executioner, it was nonetheless condoned by a state that has mulled over letting its citizens carry out executions in the past.
Amnesty International’s southern Africa director Noel Kututwa decried the recruitment as a sign that “Zimbabwe does not want to join the global trend towards abolition of this cruel, inhuman and degrading form of punishment.” A new draft of Zimbabwe’s constitution seeks to answer criticism in that vein by exempting all women, and men under 21 or over 70, from the death penalty. But skeptics are now demanding the abolition of the entire constitution, arguing that since only two of Zimbabwe’s current death row inmates are women, the exemption will have little impact.
But similar, albeit broader, questions will likely be raised by the proposed constitution itself. Critics will see in it an attempt to gain Zimbabwe needed positive press to counter its shaky human rights record rather than a real reform effort — and possibly as a P.R. move to change international perceptions of dictatorial President Robert Mugabe. Regardless of the motives behind it, it has to be approved before the national elections Mugabe is planning to hold this year can take place and it remains one criterion for the lifting of E.U. sanctions against Mugabe’s regime. Which means there are bigger issues at stake in the draft than the question of capital punishment reform — so here’s hoping that Zimbabwe’s latest recruitment to the archaic-sounding position of national hangman keeps attention focused on the country’s broader political infrastructure and human-rights problems.
