Wednesday, February 1, 2012

So, Why Aren't We Talking About the Death Penalty?



With Shafia trial finally coming to close with the appropriate verdict, it's sad to see that one key thing is missing from this case in order for justice to truly be done:

Simply put, Mohammed Shafia hanging from a rope, with his wife and son hanging alongside him.

Most of you probably know full well what the Shafia trial was about, but for those who don't, I'll provide a very quick synopsis: Mohammed Shafia's three daughters were becoming too liberal and westernized for his medieval tastes. So he, his wife and his son conspired to murder them. They locked them in a car and pushed it into the water, drowning them. During the trial, each of them lied, then lied over and over again. In the end, the verdict could only be one thing: guilty.

But unfortunately, Canada doesn't have the death penalty. So while the Canadian justice system has sent the requisite message to the millions of moderate Muslims that have immigrated to the western world -- we will not abandon you to the savagery of those who cling to medieval values -- we haven't sent the requisite message to those who would commit murders such as these:

That message being very, very simple: move to Canada and do these things, and you have committed suicide. Get ready to burn.

So it's in the wake of this trial that NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel has chosen to demonstrate the naivete of the NDP when she condemned Conservative Senator Pierre-Hughe Boisvenu, who recently stated that the worst criminals -- those who cannot or will not be rehabilitated -- be allowed to take their own lives.

Boisvenu wasn't really being serious. But when he suggested Canadians should be discussing having the death penalty as an option for dealing with the most dangerous criminals, he was dead serious. And he was right.

Boisvenu has more reason than most to have realized this. When his daughter was raped and murdered in 2002, it was by a repeat sexual offender. By the kind of offender who, at the very least, should have been locked up for the rest of his life, if not -- preferably -- shuffled off this mortal plane by way of a lethal injection.

No, I'm not joking. About any of this.

"What Senator Boisvenu did is against the law. You can't call on people to kill themselves," decried Turmel. "The death penalty debate has been closed in Canada for decades. Why are the Conservatives reopening the whole debate?"

The problem is that they aren't. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has already declared that his government will not revisit the death penalty. And as much as those who favour its return may wish otherwise, one Conservative Senator bringing it up does not entail reopening the debate.

Which is a shame. After the Shafia trial, of all things, we as a country need to be asking ourselves why Mohammed Shafia, a man who murdered his three daughters and their mother, will continue to draw breath, instead of being dumped into the Rideau Canal with his Lexus SUV chained to his testicles to ensure he makes it to the bottom.

So why aren't we talking about the death penalty in Canada? Why are even those who, like Pierre-Hugh Boisveru, have been victimized by these sorts of crimes, targeted for doing so?

Because hug-a-thug, peacenik, naive twits like Nycole Turmel or Justin Trudeau are always waiting in the wings, just waiting on baited breath to denounce any mention of the death penalty as barbarous, although they'll always take pains to never denounce acts such as the Shafia honour murders as barbarous.

That's how backward these people are. And that's why it's so sad that so few real leaders have the cojones to tell them to shut the fuck up while adults discuss how these matters will be properly dealt with.

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