On the Case of Morality of Killing a Drug Dealer

I don’t know since when the citizens of this country has turned into a mass of cold blood murder, but sometimes reading the online feed of readers’ comments in some online news website can chill me to my bones. When President SBY exercised his constitutional right to pardon three death sentenced drugs dealers, suddenly the whole people went frenzy, shout the same harmony like the crowd in the Coliseum: “no mercy! Kill them, kill them, why you pardon them, kill them!” I then stop and think, how far this nation has gone along playing barbarism. If you read this simple thought of mine, and if you support the shouting of the angry mob asking the emperor thumb to point down, sign of no mercy, I want you to continue reading and let us think together.

To begin with, I want to ask this question: “who is the most responsible person for an agony of a dying overdosed young man?” My answer is; that young man. But yes that young man will not be able to consume the drugs if the drugs dealer didn’t sale his drugs. Yet, I’m not asking the chain of event here, because if we have to ask the chain of event, can we also blame the parents who gave money so the young man can buy drugs? I’m here asking about the accountability, who is accountable most for this young man’s agony? You may argue that the drugs dealer is by intention selling the drugs, knowing that the young man may misuse it. But bear in mind, that the parents also have the knowledge that the money can also be used to buy drugs, and even can buy many other evil things, so can we say also the parents  is accountable? If it’s not, so then also the drugs dealer. In part, the parents are to be blamed, and I’m sure they get all their agony back, but to kill the drugs dealer for something that he is not one hundred percent accountable is silly. You can say that they have to be killed because they are selling something that will potentially harm many people. Ah, so now we will base our legal decision to take someone’s life by “potential”. What a great legal system, to take people’s life by something they will potentially do. My worst nightmare is maybe one day we will ended up arguing about killing HIV infected patient because they are “potentially” harm other people.

Or maybe we ought to kill this drugs dealer because the damage they have done. If they have done real damage, prove it based on the damage, not based on the ownership and distribution of illegal drugs. Those are two different things.

Now, assume we use the same standard, that drugs are lethal and dangerous so we have to kill everyone dares to sale it. But tobacco and alcohol kill more people then drugs, they create more damages. Should we also kill all people engage in those industries? In Indonesia, more than ten thousand people engage in that industry, should we kill all of them? Please be consistent with your standard, and answer my question. I agree that drugs dealers have to be punished, but to kill them? Have we thought deeper before we decided to kill someone?

So you see, this argument of killing (yes, I always prefer the word “killing”, not “execution” because it is what it is, killing) drugs dealer is totally immoral and full of flaws. But why we keep doing it?
Even to the extent that we need to “kill them all”? Well, that’s human nature my friend. When someone makes a mistake, to blame is the easiest thing to do. We have done it since the dawn of human being. When God ask Adam for accountability, Adam blamed Eve, Eve then blamed
the serpent. Instead of saying that we have done a mistake, in raising our children and giving them proper education, prepare them mentally to face the world and not to spoil them with material things, we then started to blame. We blame drugs dealer, instead of the parents, we blame drugs dealer instead of our education system, we blame drugs dealer instead of society that since have lacked of proper moral judgment, when we are facing a mistake or big defects in our social system, have to start looking for someone else to blame, if necessary, kill them. If we don’t stop it NOW, and start looking to our self and ask “why is it happening?”, well, after we kill all the drugs dealer, don’t wonder if latter you will see the young people will always find a way to destroy them self, maybe by killing each other just for entertainment or “school pride”. Oh, yeah, I forget it is happening already.

My last suggestion is for this “politicians” who keep nagging around complaining SBY’s decision and acting as a saint: stop being hypocrites. You say that this is hurting people’s sense of justice.
Well, maybe you can start now teaching people what morality, accountability, and justice really mean. To kill someone based on blind emotion, “their potential harm”, or by unproven and abstract “damage” is not justice. It is not what civilized people do, it is what barbarians are. And since you have bigger “mouth” then me, please start educates this people, like what SBY has done. I don’t agree with many SBY decisions, but I support him for this.