How unspeakable

re: "Merciful option?" (BP, PostBag, October 13, 2023) 

Dear editor,

In his letter as published, "Merciful option?", Ilyn Payne appears to argue that if a prison system is unspeakably inhumane, that justifies killing people in order to reduce the net suffering over a prisoner's life. A more moral stance might hold that the nation's prison system be required to meet minimal standards of decency to reflect a healthier set of public morals.

In his eagerness to lop off heads or otherwise kill, Mr Payne also leaves undefined what might constitute "unspeakable crimes" deserving of "the ultimate cost [that] should be paid." He also leaves unspecified what principle justifies killing another human being. Israel thinks it is justified in killing to hold on to land it illegally occupies. Hamas clearly thinks it is justified in killing to reclaim land stolen from the people it claims to stand for. Pro-choice abortion advocates think pregnant women have the right to kill the human being in their womb. Thai law thinks it acceptable to kill people who supply a popular drug of recreation to eager customers — Thaksin Shinawatra's murderous war on drugs was egged on by the morally stunted at every level of Thai society, none of whom have ever been held to account. Uganda thinks it right to kill gay men for the crime of "aggravated homosexuality". Are all or some these unspeakable crimes? 

Does the author think that the Paragon killer has committed an unspeakable crime deserving the death penalty? Did the Royal Thai Police officer who killed 36, mainly children, a year ago at Nong Bua Lamphu commit an unspeakable crime? Did the Royal Thai Army officer who gunned down 29 in Khorat in 2020 commit an unspeakable crime? Do major drug dealers commit unspeakable crimes according to whether the drugs they deal are legal or illegal?  

But those fatal vagaries in Mr Payne's call to kill leave untouched the deeper question:  whether any punishment can ever be justified. Punishment is legalized vengeance. Should the law be inflicting vengeance, or should its just goal be to prevent some committing acts that harm others? If the former, the eye-for-an-eye doctrine encoding the primitive moral notions of despotic societies, then the death penalty is plainly called for. That follows the  ancient mindset that commanded Moses's followers to steal by military invasion the land of Canaan after their reported exodus from servitude in Egypt, thereby beginning the litany of reprisal killings that more than 2,500 years later continue to define the so called Holy Land that Israel's hard-right nationalists, now ascendant, claim as theirs by the will of God with the same fervour shown by Hamas.

Perhaps Ilyn Payne could consider that we may only be justly punished for what we freely choose to do. Since the mounting evidence is that we could never choose other than we in fact do but only ever act as strictly determined by the physio-chemical processes taking place in our brains, this would suggest that the law's sphere of justice is limited to preventing harm to others, never to engaging in crude vengeance of the primitive eye-for-an-eye type for which he advocates.  

 Felix Qui 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on October 15, 2023, under the title "How unspeakable" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2664389/how-unspeakable