China executes mentally ill British man

I start this post by saying I don't intend on starting any death penalty wank here. I think this story goes beyond that.

Story here

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A British man convicted of drug smuggling in China has been executed, the Foreign Office has confirmed.

Apparently, the man had bipolar disorder, and had apparently been duped into carrying the drugs:

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Mr Shaikh's family said he had been delusional and duped into a carrying a suitcase that did not belong to him when he was found with 4kg of heroin in Urumqi, north-west China, in September 2007.

His daughter has said drug smugglers in Poland convinced him they would make him a pop star in China.

The Chinese were nice enough to execute Akmal Shaikh by lethal injection instead of firing squad.

I think the issue here goes beyond the death penalty, and into a wider problem of relations between China and the UK (and Europe as a whole). Here's some reactions. Gordon Brown has reportedly called the Chinese ambassador in for a bollocking

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In the worst spat for many years, Britain summoned the Chinese Ambassador to London and told her that her country had failed in its basic responsibilities on human rights.

Of course, no controversial news story is complete without the obligatory Daily Mail being completely and utterly wrong. Sometimes I wonder if they're just trolling these days. If you want to get super angry, have a look at the comments underneath, including such gems as:

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The death of a Pakistani drug trafficker is of no concern to me. What concerns me is the bleating from Brown and the child Milliband. They have little to say about the hundreds of service men and women killed and horribly maimed by their illegal wars but give them an opportunity to big it up to impress ethnic minority voters a few months before an election and they can't shut up.

Wow. I don't even know where to start here. That's terrible.

It may be horrible, but my first thought was that China had better be really nice to the UK for a while or else they may find themselves facing a full on war. It's an extreme possibility, but it's not utterly unthinkable.

When confronted with people in society who willingly or unwillingly cause the deaths of many people, it is difficult to say whether they deserve the death penalty, considering that my own religion abhors killing for whatever reason (despite all the sanctioned killings in the Old Testament, and the various wars and inquisitions ignited by selfsame religion).

As a citizen of a so-called democratic republic, I often wonder if I am qualified to decide whether someone should live or die. How can a person make that decision? Is it that I am too soft, or don't understand the need for executions? Is it that I am too sensitive to the needs of other people? Is it because I grew up with an autistic brother, who taught me that, regardless of mental state, a human is a human?

And yet killing maintains my standard of living. I am able to sit here in front of a computer, with electricity, running water and Internet access, as a direct result of our species' bloody history and social upheavals. Is killing justified to maintain my standard of living, and that of my family?

If I answer either yes or no, I will be a hypocrite, caught between history and religion.

Why can't I make up my own damn mind?

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her country had failed in its basic responsibilities on human rights.

When is above statment not true?

KelinciHutan wrote:

Wow. I don't even know where to start here. That's terrible.

It may be horrible, but my first thought was that China had better be really nice to the UK for a while or else they may find themselves facing a full on war. It's an extreme possibility, but it's not utterly unthinkable.

I do hope not. China has more nukes and are probably a lot more willing to use them.

But yeah, this represents a major setback in diplomatic relations, which is something which makes me very uncomfortable indeed.

ZoZo wrote:

KelinciHutan wrote:

Wow. I don't even know where to start here. That's terrible.

It may be horrible, but my first thought was that China had better be really nice to the UK for a while or else they may find themselves facing a full on war. It's an extreme possibility, but it's not utterly unthinkable.

I do hope not. China has more nukes and are probably a lot more willing to use them. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

To be fair, you don't need that many nukes to wipe out the UK. Also, considering that this Chinese/British-war is already an extreme possibility, it's an even more remote possibility to have that war involve nukes. Note how nuclear bombs have been used only twice since they were invented: they're kind of a last resort.

(Yes, I'm opening up the gate for nuke-wank in a thread that could already easily be derailed by many, many other flammable subjects. I'm whacky that way.)

Jay/Cris wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

KelinciHutan wrote:

Wow. I don't even know where to start here. That's terrible.

It may be horrible, but my first thought was that China had better be really nice to the UK for a while or else they may find themselves facing a full on war. It's an extreme possibility, but it's not utterly unthinkable.

I do hope not. China has more nukes and are probably a lot more willing to use them. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

To be fair, you don't need that many nukes to wipe out the UK. Also, considering that this Chinese/British-war is already an extreme possibility, it's an even more remote possibility to have that war involve nukes. Note how nuclear bombs have been used only twice since they were invented: they're kind of a last resort.

It depends on how good the Chinese army actually is. Yes, I know it's big and huge. Back in the Soviet era, people used to think that the Russian army was this massive unstoppable force that could roll over and crush western Europe. In truth, most of the Red Army was an unruly mob of conscripts who were lucky to know which end of the gun is the shooty end, because the Kremlin was too cheap to pay for all their soldiers to undergo even the most Basic training. Only a fraction of their forces actually had any business on a battlefield. The rest would probably run away or defect as soon as the fighting started, and the Kremlin knew it.

The Red Army was basically a scarecrow. Russia already knew that they would lose a conventional war against the West, so their plan if war started was basically to nuke first, and ask questions never. I can't tell you how the Chinese would react. With a huge population and unmatched industrial base, maybe they'd try to stick it out and fight fair.

However, it would be a mistake to assume that the Chinese government feels the same way about nukes that we do.

I don't know, Lysander. What the Soviets may have lacked in the ability to mass-produce technology they made up for by getting an impressive amount of intelligence. In a conventional conflict, it is likely that they would have known the order of battle and plans of attack as well as the Pentagon did, thanks to the activity of John Walker and the like.

Returning to the thread subject... I fail to understand what is the message that China means to send. Using the incident for leverage seemed more likely. It's like they took a leaf from Putin's book and are saying, "we'll do as we damn well please as long as you need to do business with us."
With basically the whole Western civilization owing them a shitload of money - not just for cheap trinkets anymore - the only option for Blair seems to be that of sucking it up.

The Unoriginal wrote:

I don't know, Lysander. What the Soviets may have lacked in the ability to mass-produce technology they made up for by getting an impressive amount of intelligence. In a conventional conflict, it is likely that they would have known the order of battle and plans of attack as well as the Pentagon did, thanks to the activity of John Walker and the like.

What I'm saying largely comes from Russian sources. The Russian leadership was continually astounded that we clung to the idea of a conventional war building up into a nuclear exchange. It never even occurred to them to fight a conventional war. They knew they couldn't have won a real war against us. Without nukes, they could barely have fought a war against us. Militarily, they were a fucking joke.

It has nothing to do with intelligence or technology. The bulk of their forces were simply incapable of fighting. Most of their army was untrained civilians, and their only job was to wear a uniform so that their army would look big enough to keep NATO from pushing into Eastern Europe. Half their army would've put down their weapons and surrendered if we'd dropped pamphlets promising free weed and vodka for anyone who defected to the West.

Believe me, military reform was the first thing to happen in Russia when the USSR fell. For all their troubles, they're much stronger as a nation now than they were back when the Pentagon was pissing their pants about Ivan.

I'm going to veer off of the nuclear weapons/Russian army/how-did-the-Cold-War-go-again? bit for a moment.

Manny wrote:

And yet killing maintains my standard of living. I am able to sit here in front of a computer, with electricity, running water and Internet access, as a direct result of our species' bloody history and social upheavals. Is killing justified to maintain my standard of living, and that of my family?

If I answer either yes or no, I will be a hypocrite, caught between history and religion.

Nonsense. Is someone actively dying right now so that you may live as you do? More importantly, if someone was dying right now so that you might live as you do, and you knew about it, and had the capacity to intervene and save their life, would you do it? My suspicion is that you would answer yes in a heartbeat, and not think twice about it when you did so.

All manner of horrible things have happened throughout history. Not all of them due to religious people, and not all of them due to human ignorance. But you, right now, can not go back and change history. It's a fruitless exercise to wish that you could. But you seem to be struggling with the idea that bad actions can have some good results. Why? For example, Josef Mengele (no, it's not a Godwin's; I'm not comparing anybody to him) caused some of the most horrendous suffering in human history. Our modern understanding of how the human body reacts to cold and our treatments for hypothermia, however, are as good as they are because of his experiments. Does that justify what he did in any way? Of course not. Wrong actions are still wrong no matter what good comes from them later on. However, since that knowledge does exist, it would also be wrong to let people die of the cold simply because we hate the person from whom the knowledge of how to treat it came.

So, no, killing is not justified to maintain your standard of living. But you are not killing anyone to live as you do, and you can't bring back the dead. How would it be better if we all foreswore any knowledge or technology we now possess that any human being had to die to achieve? What would that solve? Who would it help? More importantly, who would die as a direct result of that decision? And how would their deaths make the historical ones less present and true? You are not personally responsible for every evil action done by every human being. You can't be. Be kind to other people where you can. Do your best to preserve life. Ease suffering where you find it. That you can do.

That's pretty much just how the Chinese government treats its own people. The only reason anyone knows anything about this is because it was someone from the UK and their family kicked up a fuss. So don't worry, Brits. It's not that the Chinese government hates you specifically. They just have callous disregard and utter contempt for humanity in general.

Fitchsticks wrote:

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her country had failed in its basic responsibilities on human rights.

When is above statment not true?

Understatement of the century. Especially when directed toward a country that routinely harvests the organs of anyone the government does not like while they are still alive then leaves them to bleed out on the operating table.

Narwhal wrote:

That's pretty much just how the Chinese government treats its own people. The only reason anyone knows anything about this is because it was someone from the UK and their family kicked up a fuss. So don't worry, Brits. It's not that the Chinese government hates you specifically. They just have callous disregard and utter contempt for humanity in general.

This. Apparently the body isn't coming back to the UK, specifically because China don't want to give away secrets of how they execute people. Nice work.

ZoZo wrote:

This. Apparently the body isn't coming back to the UK, specifically because China don't want to give away secrets of how they execute people. Nice work.

That means they've already pilfered it for organs and sold them on the black market.

Fitchsticks wrote:

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her country had failed in its basic responsibilities on human rights.

When is above statment not true?

China is ALWAYS AND CONSTANTLY fucking up with regards to basic human rights. It treats its own damn citizens like that all the time. Why does it take a British citizen being executed for people to notice that?

Oh, wait - because nobody in the UK gives a shit about the citizens of China.

Also, while I won't deny that some people DESERVE a death sentance (I'm looking at you, pedophiles of the world), I'm against it as a practice, and besides, there are far worse crimes than smuggling drugs. China really fucked up in this instance.

1: They executed a citizen of one of the world's superpowers.
2: Their reasons for picking out the death sentance as punishment were unjustified.
3: The man's own compliance in the act of smuggling is questionable.

Repeat 1 to 3, especially 1, ad nauseum. It would have been a fucking stupid thing to do even if the man was perfectly, certifiably sane in every way.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Fitchsticks wrote:

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her country had failed in its basic responsibilities on human rights.

When is above statment not true?

China is ALWAYS AND CONSTANTLY fucking up with regards to basic human rights. It treats its own damn citizens like that all the time. Why does it take a British citizen being executed for people to notice that?

Oh, wait - because nobody in the UK gives a shit about the citizens of China.

Pretty sure all of the British-based chapters of Amnesty International will disagree vehemently with ya there, Harls.

Lysander wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

This. Apparently the body isn't coming back to the UK, specifically because China don't want to give away secrets of how they execute people. Nice work.

That means they've already pilfered it for organs and sold them on the black market.

That's okay, the body will come back to the UK eventually.

In dog food. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]









:crap:

Jay/Cris wrote:

To be fair, you don't need that many nukes to wipe out the UK.

There's even a fillum about it! (This gut-wrenching, insomnia-inducing nightmare fuel is Carl Sagan-approved.)

Manny wrote:

Why can't I make up my own damn mind?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] Don't worry too much, honey. Your heart's clearly in the right place.

Delcat wrote:

There's even a fillum about it! (This gut-wrenching, insomnia-inducing nightmare fuel is Carl Sagan-approved.)

Two, even!

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When the Wind Blows

DO YOU LIKE CRYING
DO YOU FUCKING LOVE IT
ARE YOU A BITCH FOR SOBBING LIKE A BITCH
WATCH THIS MOVIE

Mafiosa wrote:

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When the Wind Blows

DO YOU LIKE CRYING
DO YOU FUCKING LOVE IT
ARE YOU A BITCH FOR SOBBING LIKE A BITCH
WATCH THIS MOVIE

IT'S THE CRYING GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

FOR LIKE MONTHS

no seriously

oh God

...i just

...oh God


(P.S.: I scanned the original graphic novel, enjoy.)

The last 10 minutes were the worst. It was like watching my grandparents die a slow and painful, ignorant death.

Then, nightmares of nuclear war.

(Thanks Del!)

Jay/Cris wrote:

Note how nuclear bombs have been used only twice since they were invented: they're kind of a last resort.

ORLY?

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

China is ALWAYS AND CONSTANTLY fucking up with regards to basic human rights.

You say "fucking up" like it's an accident. China simply has little to no regard for human rights whatsoever.