The vast majority of people certainly don't care what day it is.
October 10th, World Selling Cute Day.
Today is also World Day Against the Death Penalty.
As of today, 80% of the world's countries have abolished or eliminated the use of the death penalty.
The ratio was higher than I could have imagined.
With the exception of the United States and Japan, the vast majority of developed countries have abolished the death penalty.
Even in the United States, 16 states, including New York, have been abolished;
Although Japan retained it, it was very difficult to implement.
Despite this, Uncle Yu still believes that the abolition of the death penalty does not represent the degree of civilization of a country, and the punishment is appropriate.
Proponents of the death penalty say that when killing a person does not require compensation, the law is defending something.
Opponents of the death penalty say that there is a miscarriage of justice and that killing the wrong person will never have a chance to correct it.
Both sides make sense, but Uncle Fish doesn't side with either side today;
But I want to talk about an extremely marginal profession, the executioner —
The Shepherd and the Butcher
Shepherdsand Butchers
Shepherd and butcher are two professions of completely different natures.
Shepherds feed the animals, while butchers slaughter them.
What kind of man is both a shepherd and a butcher?
That's the answer this movie leaves us.
The film is the latest masterpiece by renowned South African director Oliver Shumiz and won the Audience Choice Award in the Panorama Section of the 66th Berlin Film Festival.
The story is set in South Africa in 1987.
The beginning is a cruel killing scene -
A 19-year-old white teenager shot seven black football club members in a row on a rainy night!!!
Racist or psychopathic killer or antisocial personality disorder?
The teenager was silent about the reason for the shooting.
Because of the extremely bad nature of the case, it immediately aroused the indignation of the crowd.
It is hoped that the murderer will be sentenced to death as soon as possible to appease the pain of the victim's family.
However, according to the judicial process, even the most heinous bad people also have the right to a defense.
With no one willing to claim this difficult task, John, a human rights lawyer who supports the abolition of the death penalty, is entrusted by a friend to defend the juvenile.
Of course, his odds are slim, because all the evidence is conclusive:
On the pistol, which is the murder weapon, there are fingerprints of the suspect;
The pistol was confirmed to be registered in the suspect's name;
The pickup truck driven by the suspect that night was also found at the scene of the crime.
None of the suspects denied the above evidence.
The facts are already clear, the murderer is the suspect Leon!
But the case itself has something strange.
Because Leon had no festival with seven blacks and had never been masked, the strange thing was that after the shooting, the corpses were lined up in a neat line, but afterwards he claimed that he did not remember anything.
Moreover, Leon has never had a previous conviction, once served as a class president in school, is a devout believer, and has nothing to do with the murderer who kills people without blinking an eye.
It is too far-fetched to say that it is a road rage attack and a sudden killing.
Believing that there must be something hidden behind this brutal murder, John asked for some important information from his brother-in-law, who worked in the intelligence organization.
It turned out that Leon was a prison guard.
Everyday life is spent with prisoners and sending them to the execution ground.
In South Africa in 1987, the death penalty was not uncommon, and the use of inhumane hanging was still used.
One of Leon's jobs was to escort death row inmates to the gallows, put special hats on the prisoners, then put thick ropes on them, and let them go the moment the floor opened beneath their feet.
At this point, the rope will immediately tighten, strangling the prisoner to death, making it difficult for them to breathe in an instant.
The rope is just the length of the rope, and if the prisoner does not struggle, he will soon be finished.
If the length of the rope is deviated, and the prisoner is eager to survive and struggles, the process will be extended to more than 10 minutes.
The prison guard needs to pull the prisoner up with a rope, put it down again, and repeat it several times before the prisoner will die of suffocation.
Death is not decent.
Due to gravity, the cervical vertebrae of the hanged person will fall off, resulting in the rupture of the cervical vertebral plexus, the lower nerves are no longer controlled by the brain, and the originally tight muscle tissue (including the bladder sphincter and the anorectal sphincter) will relax, so after death, the phenomenon of urinary and urinary incontinence will occur.
All this was mixed with a pool of black and red blood, and you can imagine how disgusting the scene was.
The first time he saw such a scene, Leon couldn't help but vomit.
That year, 164 death row inmates were sent to the gallows in South Africa, the most in history.
And every time, Lyon was present!
The prison guards also had to strip the prisoners of their clothes, wash the bodies, and toss a coin to decide who would bury them.
On the day of the crime, Leon was the one who threw the body.
There was a small accident during the transport, and the driver who had been driving the car fled. He could dispose of the bodies alone and bury them one by one.
On the drive back, Lyon was exhausted.
It just so happened that this stormy night, he almost collided with another minibus, which aroused his anger.
So, the minibus was forced to a closed ammunition hill and stopped.
When the door of the minibus was "snapped open", at that moment, Leon seemed to hear the sound of the movable board door of the gallows opening.
He quickly pulled out his gun and aimed it almost subconsciously at the football club members who got out of the car.
13 shots were fired and 7 people fell.
Then he walked over and lined up the bodies one by one in the form of the prison.
That year, at the age of 19, he went from shepherd to butcher.
As a result of the trial, Lyon was sentenced to 20 years in prison and treated by a state-appointed psychologist during his sentence.
What Uncle Yu did not expect was that the film was not fictional, but based on a real case that shocked South Africa.
The case also had a profound impact on South African penalties.
After executing 4,200 prisoners, South Africa announced a temporary suspension of executions.
Until Mandela came to power, it was completely abolished.
Uncle Fish does not want to discuss whether the death penalty should be abolished (which is a very complicated question), but wants to talk about the executioners who are often overlooked by us.
Lyon signed up to become a prison guard at the age of 17, just to avoid military service.
He didn't want to go to the battlefield to kill people, but what he didn't expect was: when he went to prison, he wanted to kill people!
On the first day of work, he was called by the warden to select a prisoner and send him to the execution ground.
Leon did not want to choose, so he was held down by the warden and forced to say a name.
A 17-year-old who had not received any induction training and was completely unprepared witnessed a mass death on the second day of work!
If killing a stranger on the battlefield requires psychological suffering, what about killing a familiar person?
Before death row inmates could be placed on the execution ground, Leon needed to spend his days and nights with them: wake them up, make sure they ate and exercised, read letters to them, read the Bible, and meet their families.
For Leon, these death row inmates are no longer a number, a string of names, but people who have actually walked into his life with flesh and blood.
However, after a period of time together, Leon will personally send them to the execution ground and watch them change from living people to corpses!
Speaking of which, Uncle Fish is reminded of another movie based on a true story, The Last Hanger.
"Cannes Film Emperor" Timothy Spoo plays a hanger, calm, professional, and even set a record of 7 and a half seconds to complete the execution, known as "the world's most efficient and humane first hanger".
He never confused his profession with life, and he rarely considered the cruelty of the profession itself.
Until one day in 1950, a friend had to be sent to the gallows with his own hands.
This caused him to break down so much that he quit his job as a hanger, ending the execution of 608 death row inmates over 22 years.
For Leon, the price was even more painful, a killing that ended everything.
As John, a lawyer who defended Leon, put it, "We send young people to the battlefield or to the execution ground without thinking about how this will affect them later in life."
Lyon, who had not received any training or psychological counseling, walked home from the execution ground and suffered from severe PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) because they could not accept the cruel images they witnessed and the terrible fact that they had become "murderers".
Don't know when it will be triggered by a familiar sound or picture, and pull the trigger;
Or completely adapted to this system, enjoying the pleasure of "killing" under the protection of the law, becoming a brutal, emotionless killing machine, and thus having no reverence for life and death.
Whether it is the former or the latter, they can never go back to a normal life.
Even the originally simple Lyon, in order to adapt to this cold job, will join the competition of the old prison guards to see who collects the most cushions on the coffins of death row prisoners.
Once time has passed, it becomes numb.
They passively become part of the state apparatus, watching their humanity dissolve without noticing it.
At first, they were taught how to kill;
Later, they unknowingly "killed themselves" in the process.
We use executioners as instruments of murder, but forget that they also have humanity.
While killing criminals, they are also committing violence against them.
Most people are fighting for or against the death penalty, but they haven't paid attention to this group.
Fortunately, the movie will end, but the thinking will not stop.
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