A special event: Philosophical Perspectives on the Death Penalty and Abolition. The first session in a 10-part series. If you missed this event you can still watch it on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg2Nic08SvM
We will hear legal, political and human rights experts of global significance discuss the social and judicial foundations of the death penalty, its impact on the individual, society, and humanity, and perspectives on its abolition in Iran and beyond.
All sessions will be on the second Saturday of each month except August. The final session will be December 10, Human Rights Day.
Why is there a death penalty? What are the arguments for and against removing this sanction from the law? What are the popular conceptions about the death penalty and abolition?
Our panelists will discuss the philosophy and ethics of this ultimate and irreversible sanction and the role of the state in shaping popular attitudes and narratives to justify its use or promote its abolition.
Amnesty International ranks Iran second behind China in the number of people it executes. Though 853 have been confirmed in 2023, Amnesty believes the number is much higher. Execution rates for 2024 are likely higher yet.
State-ordered execution is truly a dying practice. International law condemns it. Most countries have abolished it. Yet Iran’s Islamic Republic continues killing peaceful protesters, women, men, political opponents, journalists, lawyers, and an increasing number of Iran’s minority ethnic and religious populations.
The death penalty is understood by many as a very simple matter: guilty or not guilty, life or death, justice or injustice, ‘an eye for an eye’. Our panel will explore the many irrationalities, inconsistencies and ineffective practices that govern attitudes and impulses on this issue. The countries of West Asia and Egypt will be used as examples.
Samira Mohyeddin will serve as moderator for our panel discussion
Ms Mohyeddin is an award-winning producer, a broadcast journalist (several years with CBC’s ‘The Current’), a food expert (host of CBC’s ‘Unforked’), a trained Shakespearean actor.
She graduated from the ‘Women and Genders Studies Institute’ at the University of Toronto, the ‘American Musical and Dramatic Academy’ in New York, and the ‘Zoryan Institute’.
At present she is the inaugural journalism fellow at the ‘Women and Gender Studies Institute’.
Her central concern for journalism today is with those who ‘fall in line with the people it is their job to cover’. Her purpose as a journalist is to ‘Make mad the guilty and appall the free and confound the ignorant.’ (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2)
Session 1 Panelists:
Hossein Raeesi is an Iranian lawyer with 20 years spent defending high profile cases of women, minorities, students and children at risk of execution. He is the founder and former head of the ‘Human Rights Committee of the Fars Province Bar Association’ and ‘The Voice of Justice Legal Association’ in Shiraz. This sort of work brings increasing scrutiny by the authorities. He came to Canada where he is teaching and researching at Carleton University and advising the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Amnesty International.
Ramin Jahanbegloo is an award-winning director of the ‘Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Nonviolence and Peace Studies’ and the ‘Centre for the Study of Developing Societies’ in New Delhi. He has taught and researched at the ‘Academy of Philosophy’ and the ‘Institut Français de Recherche en Iran’ in Tehran, at Harvard University’s ‘Center for Middle Eastern Studies’, and the ‘Centre for Ethics’ in Toronto. He is presently at St. Andrews University in Scotland as a Leverhulme Award Visiting Professor. Dr Jahanbegloo was arrested at Tehran airport in 2006 and charged with planning ‘the smooth toppling’ of the Islamic regime. For four months he endured torture and solitary confinement. He has published 27 books.
Omid Milani is an expert on state-sponsored violence and human rights law at the University of Ottawa and fellow at the ‘Human Rights Research and Education Centre’. He treats the many aspects of human rights – legal processes, application of state power, civil and common law, Shia Sharia law – as a multidisciplinary process. It’s when written and spoken language is deficient in expressing difficult ideas that his work as a multimedia artist and curator takes over.
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