Capital punishment

(PAKISTAN TODAY – Faraz Talat)

Thou shall not kill… and now, a list of exceptions that rolls out like credits at the end of a major film.

The state plays, or is unreasonably empowered to play, the role of the family patriarch in a nation-state model. Madiha Tahir and Mahvish Ahmed expertly point out the Roman Law, in which the patriarch is permitted to kill his own children, in an attempt to maintain order in the house; ‘honour killing’, so to speak. The premeditated killing of an inmate already made incapable of inflicting any more harm isn’t ‘justice’ as much as it is ‘honour killing’ at the level of the state.

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