The news that the Chinese authorities have chosen to execute Akmal Shaikh is ... unsurprising. The condemnations by Government leaders and other politicians are welcome ... but not enough.
No nation state has the right to take a person's life against that person's will. No government should hold the right of life and death over its own citizens or visitors to its shores.
Judicial execution must end. There is something we can do to help end it, here in the UK.
We need a new law. That law must make it explicit that the judicial execution of any Briton in any nation is an act of murder with malice aforethought, allowing the British courts to issue warrants for the arrest of those persons involved in the execution: prosecutors; judges; prison wardens and guards; oficials who have a legal capacity to directly intervene and offer clemency - but choose not to do so.
Of course, no nation state that practices judicial execution would be willing to arrest people named in the warrant, and it's doubtful that other nation states would be willing to upset the likes of China, the United States or Saudi Arabia by acting on the warrant when those people come within their juristiction.
But it will allow those people to be arrested and charged with murder should they ever attempt to enter the United Kingdom. Such as Rick Perry, Governor of Texas in 2003 when the Texans executed Jackie Elliot; Roy Barnes, Governor of Georgia in 2002 when the Georgians saw fit to murder Tracy Housel. And not forgetting those folks in Singapore who strung up that dog John Martin back in 1996.
Yes, Martin was a serial murderer, Elliot was a rapist-murderer and Housel also murdered an innocent woman. Nasty dogs. But a nation state that executes such deviants makes itself no better than them. A murder can never be fixed by further murders - not in anyone's name. Not even in God's name.
And nation states that execute people with mental disorders ... are no better than the Nazis in Germany with their ethnic cleansing and eugenics.
Akmal Shaik deserved better than the fate delivered to him this morning. In his memory, let us work to bring the perpetrators of his murder to justice!
My Poem Published in The New York Times
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