According to the information agency 24.kg ,November 30 in Bishkek will be marked as a day when all those advocating abolishing death penalty in Kyrgyzstan will be rallying in the downtown of the Kyrgyz capital. This rally is a part of the worldwide rally “Cities for life-cities against the death penalty”. It covers more than 500 cities in 30 countries on the globe.

The rally is supported by the local administration of Bishkek, which promised to illuminate the capital with red lamps and to let out doves when the rally is over. High officials, including the mayor of Bishkek, the chair of the Comission on Human Rights, the minister of justice and human rights advocates from fifferent organizations.

Probably, it’s going to be quite impressive. Especially, when you try not to think about what really caused this event .

At the very same day, students and human rights advocates are planning to start collecting signatures for the petition to the president of the country. The main demand in this petition is to ban death penalty in the country. At the moment , it should be emphasized that a moratorium on the death penalty is in action in Kyrgyzstan.

I have very ambiguous feelings about this whole issue. On the one hand, humanism is a good thing, on the other- it’s not quite clear whether those signing the petition are, indeed, genius. It’s also questionable whether it is appropriate for contemporary Kyrgyzstan.

Some of the recent newspaper headlines scream:

-This August in one of the cities of the country the family of 3 was killed. One of the suspected used to live in this family as an adopted child.
-This November teenage “kids” attacked the taxi driver and shoot him dead.
-Recently the gang of teenagers that is responsible for killing elderly people in their own apartments was detained.

It all sounds scary but it happens pretty often. It is also scary that we are getting used to such news pieces. The only hope for everyone is the perception that the punishment for criminals is inescapable. So far.
I’ve met many people that genuinely don’t understand why we should apply humanism to those who commit homicides and hardly care about the value of the human life. Shouldn’t we be more careful about prioritizing here? It’s a paradox, indeed: we all pay taxes that are in part spent to sustain those prisons where those sentenced to death spent years and years while different moratoriums on death penalty are in effect, but we, tax payers and citizens, are potentially susceptible to becoming victims of those with whom we are currently trying to be “humanistic”.
After all, this blind humanism can potentially cause lots of problems, since replicating experiences of leading countries that can afford applying principles of humanism on the ground, we are taking a risk of falling into a trap of complying with global roles but neglecting the specificities of the reality we exist in.