I just watched Hotel Rwanda last night … and today this story broke.
Two excerpts:
The Supreme Court of Canada says Leon Mugesera helped incite the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994 and should be sent home to face trial.
and then …
But Justice Minister Irwin Cotler says Canada will not order Mugesera extradited unless it gets a binding assurance he will not be executed if convicted of the crimes.
Help me understand this. Is there nothing a person can do, no matter how heinous, how destructive, how devoid of the least amount of common human decency, to deserve a personal death sentence in return?
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I think this kind of attitude would have Hitler out on parole in 20-25 years. It’s not fair, it’s not right, it’s not justice.
At it’s heart, justice has the principle of equality. That’s why the universal symbol of justice is a weigh scale: weight on one side equals the weight on the other.
If killing or participating in or inciting the deaths of countless thousands is the crime, how does 10 years of easy living in Montréal, Québec, and then (presumably) life imprisonment equal that?
It doesn’t.
And even capital punishment wouldn’t, but it would be closer.