World Anti-Death Penalty Day – Forum & March – AUSTRALIANS AGAINST CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Wednesday is World Anti-Death Penalty Day. In Brisbane we have organised a march and forum on the Tuesday against the ongoing use of the Death Penalty.

The rally will begin at Brisbane Square (cnr George and Queen Sts) at 5.30pm, then march across the bridge and on to the site of the forum – 16 Peel St, South Brisbane, where Margret RoadKnight will perform a few songs, then will be followed by speeches from Father Frank Brennan, AO, Paul Wilson the Chair of Criminology at Bond University and also from Christine and Lee Rush, whose son Scott is facing execution in Indonesia.

As well as attending these events, AACP asks all those who oppose capital punishment to take further action – by writing to our Prime Minister, all opposition parties and to the media to express your views.

Australians Against Capital Punishment, Just Peace and Amnesty International invite you to a public forum to commemorate World Anti-Death Penalty Day.

Tuesday October 9^{th –}6.30 for a 7pm start. Lvl 2, Trades & Labour Council Building, Cnr Peel & Grey St, South Brisbane – parking at rear

Join us for a candlelight march before the forum

5.30pm at Brisbane Square, George St

Forum to be opened by a performance by Margret RoadKnight

Speakers include

Father Frank Brennan, AO – Jesuit Priest and social justice advocate

Paul Wilson – Chair of Criminology Bond University

Lee and Christine Rush – parents of Scott Rush, one of the young Australians facing the death sentence in Indonesia.

Join us to discuss the ongoing campaign for the abolition of the death penalty worldwide. In any case, in any country, in any circumstances – Justice must not kill. For more information, call Tina on 0423 709 445

or email: justine.hampson@gmail.com

https://aacp.wordpress.com/

Other organisations supporting the campaign – Foreign Prisoners Support Service, GetUp! JustRights Qld, Qld Council for Civil Liberties, Sisters Inside.

A wonderful item was published in the Cathnews discussion forum today:

Here we have two contenders for the Australian throne and the obvious intent of their approach to you and me, is revealed in their attitude to the convicted criminals who lay in Gaols either in Australia or elsewhere . They will endeavour to have Australians spared from the hangman if they are given a death sentence in a foreign land, but if they are terrorists they can rot in their prison until they are removed in a pine box. It doesn’t matter whether one considers Mr. Howard or Mr Rudd, they obviously base their attitude on anything , apparently .
It has taken a fair while for the human race to crawl out of the jungle and commence that civility which you and I appreciate, provided we are not prisoners of the state . But that civility can be forfeited and lost , and human greed can lead the charge. A quick look at contemporary circumstances in Burma is enough to highlight the process. An injudicious leader , or a secularist judiciary, or a party hungry for power , can bring about the decay of state institutions which seem unchangeable, until they collapse, and are changed forever , as occurred in that most civil state we know as France . The guillotine blighted the day and night and the history and stance of what had been a leader of the human family . was turned forever , so that what had been known as the eldest daughter of the church could hardly be recognised . And if the eldest daughter can be blighted, what about the far off island that hardly knows any such history ?

In that far off Island Howard and Rudd contend for leadership and show their understanding of what the church stands for, in the matter of human life and its inestimable value , as practically an unknown . For the church stands for the abolition of the death penalty, not based on the severity of the treatment the criminal deserves for a heinous crime, but based on two simple propositions. The human capacity to assess the treatment of crime is deficient and has always been deficient and will always be deficient . Judgement passed to remove the life of a criminal, will always be lacking in justice, because human nature is full of revenge and short on temperance , and the combination always results with injustice uppermost. The church would remove that injustice . And where the state can justify the death penalty, it can also justify a plethora of punishments for much lesser crimes and boys stealing apples from orchards can be found behind bars . The process highlights the in grown tendency in human nature to seek revenge , and that process maintains a certain barbarity and false understanding of what human life is supposed to be about. The legitimate urge to defend oneself from undeserved attack , is very easily sidetracked into revenge . The invitation to compassion and tenderness, so that the nature may operate in that way , is poles apart from the urge to revenge.

No man deserves the life he possesses, it is sheer gift from an Almighty Giver and only the Almighty Giver has the right to remove that life. No member of humanity has that right, no matter what humanity might judge to be the reasons for demanding the life of a particular criminal . Humanity finds it difficult to accept that principle but that will not prevent the church from preaching it and working so that civil society eventually recognises its duty to abolish the death sentence. And while the church has taken time to note the direction in which humanity should strive , so that it has only relatively recently set its teaching to promote the abolition of the death penalty, it should also be realised that in a period when mankind lives a tribal and poorly cultured existence such a teaching is impossible. Only modern conditions make the teaching a possibility. As with practically every teaching, the church finds opposition and here in the Island in the South West Pacific , the populous is having a marvellous exhibition of how muddled the thinking is on the topic.

It is obvious that on this topic Rudd and Howard are wonderfully muddled in their thinking. It is a fine example of how wonderfully muddled they can be in numerous other ways.
Yours faithfully John Heesh .

2 comments

Tony Robertson says:

October 10, 2007 at 5:06 am

A wonderful item was published in the Cathnews discussion forum today:

Here we have two contenders for the Australian throne and the obvious intent of their approach to you and me, is revealed in their attitude to the convicted criminals who lay in Gaols either in Australia or elsewhere . They will endeavour to have Australians spared from the hangman if they are given a death sentence in a foreign land, but if they are terrorists they can rot in their prison until they are removed in a pine box. It doesn’t matter whether one considers Mr. Howard or Mr Rudd, they obviously base their attitude on anything , apparently .
It has taken a fair while for the human race to crawl out of the jungle and commence that civility which you and I appreciate, provided we are not prisoners of the state . But that civility can be forfeited and lost , and human greed can lead the charge. A quick look at contemporary circumstances in Burma is enough to highlight the process. An injudicious leader , or a secularist judiciary, or a party hungry for power , can bring about the decay of state institutions which seem unchangeable, until they collapse, and are changed forever , as occurred in that most civil state we know as France . The guillotine blighted the day and night and the history and stance of what had been a leader of the human family . was turned forever , so that what had been known as the eldest daughter of the church could hardly be recognised . And if the eldest daughter can be blighted, what about the far off island that hardly knows any such history ?

In that far off Island Howard and Rudd contend for leadership and show their understanding of what the church stands for, in the matter of human life and its inestimable value , as practically an unknown . For the church stands for the abolition of the death penalty, not based on the severity of the treatment the criminal deserves for a heinous crime, but based on two simple propositions. The human capacity to assess the treatment of crime is deficient and has always been deficient and will always be deficient . Judgement passed to remove the life of a criminal, will always be lacking in justice, because human nature is full of revenge and short on temperance , and the combination always results with injustice uppermost. The church would remove that injustice . And where the state can justify the death penalty, it can also justify a plethora of punishments for much lesser crimes and boys stealing apples from orchards can be found behind bars . The process highlights the in grown tendency in human nature to seek revenge , and that process maintains a certain barbarity and false understanding of what human life is supposed to be about. The legitimate urge to defend oneself from undeserved attack , is very easily sidetracked into revenge . The invitation to compassion and tenderness, so that the nature may operate in that way , is poles apart from the urge to revenge.

No man deserves the life he possesses, it is sheer gift from an Almighty Giver and only the Almighty Giver has the right to remove that life. No member of humanity has that right, no matter what humanity might judge to be the reasons for demanding the life of a particular criminal . Humanity finds it difficult to accept that principle but that will not prevent the church from preaching it and working so that civil society eventually recognises its duty to abolish the death sentence. And while the church has taken time to note the direction in which humanity should strive , so that it has only relatively recently set its teaching to promote the abolition of the death penalty, it should also be realised that in a period when mankind lives a tribal and poorly cultured existence such a teaching is impossible. Only modern conditions make the teaching a possibility. As with practically every teaching, the church finds opposition and here in the Island in the South West Pacific , the populous is having a marvellous exhibition of how muddled the thinking is on the topic.

It is obvious that on this topic Rudd and Howard are wonderfully muddled in their thinking. It is a fine example of how wonderfully muddled they can be in numerous other ways.
Yours faithfully John Heesh .

Myriam Stubbe says:

August 4, 2008 at 8:46 am

Greetings

Reginald Perkins has an execution date for January 22nd 2009

Please read, sign and forward widely

http://www.petitiononline.com/rwp2904/petition.html

together in struggle

Myriam

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