All the year round in Mauritius people talk of non-violence and human values. Every attempt is being made to preserve law and order by well intentioned church and social welfare leaders. They talk of Manilal Doctor's work and that of Mahatma Gandhi's non-violence teachings; and yet there are still certain people who are ready to restore capital punishment on the island to deal with criminal behaviour. Mahatma Gandhi himself said: “An eye for an eye ends up making the whole world blind.”

Our Prime Minister and others are going regularly to India and political leaders from India are always in talks with Mauritius. Are our leaders being influenced by their Indian friends regarding capital punishment? I hope not. The debate on capital punishment in India was revived in 2004 by the case of Dhananjoy Chatterjee who had been sentenced for rape and murder.

At present more than 100 people are on death row in India, although the number of executions in that country is actually very low and the Indian Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty should only be used in the rarest of rare cases.

Even in UK also whenever there are some heinous crimes committed people begin to talk of bringing back capital punishment as a deterrent. News on Sunday ( 24 Feb,08) noted: “We were unlucky enough to witness the aftermath of two such crimes in quick succession last week. Steve Wright became one of a mercifully small number of convicted British serial killers after murdering five prostitutes in Ipswich. Then Mark Dixie was imprisoned for life for killing model Sally Anne Bowman and raping her as she lay dead or dying. Such brutal crimes inevitably raise questions about how we treat people whose actions make them unfit to hold a place in society.”

The relatives of these victims made clear their preferred solution: bring back hanging or some other form of capital punishment. The paper said “But, even though we sympathise, we should resist their calls. What they seek is revenge – and understandably so. What society must seek is justice – and the two are not the same thing. Even though opinion polls regularly show support for a return of the death penalty, this newspaper believes that it would be a retrogressive step,–and not just because mistakes can be made. The taking of any human life, however undeserving, demeans us all. It also makes us the same as those we seek to punish.”

Mauritian political leaders too have a duty to seek justice to restore social equilibrium on the island.
No matter how good or convenient it sounds Mauritius should not be thinking of solving her problems the MSM way. I hope the people of Mauritius have enough common sense to move forward with progress and face social changes on the island with courage and conviction without resorting to this barbaric method of control in the 21st century.