Is there life on death row? Can there even be life in such a place? As banal as the question may sound at first, the answer is not that simple, because it depends mainly on how one defines the term “life.” Being locked up 23 hours a day in a tiny reinforced concrete room that stinks of mold and steel, with a window in only the rarest of cases, receiving visitors only once a week for one hour, and waiting for death every day … is that life?
For more people than you might think, however, this is a daily reality, and this website has therefore set itself the task of reporting on the circumstances in which these people live, without judgment or prejudice. This is not about the guilt or innocence of the inmates, because even though most of us would prefer to forget these people, they continue to laugh, learn, and suffer, regardless of the circumstances that led them to the row …
Gustav Heinemann, a German politician, once said: “The value of a society can be measured by how it treats its weakest members.” This is a statement that greatly influences this website, because there are certainly not many people who are more defenseless than those who have to live a life in solitary confinement. Some people will surely say that the victims of these men and women were even more defenseless, to which I would like to counter with another quote, this time from a Frenchman named Voltaire: “It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.” Who would want to see the person they love most suffering innocently on death row? According to Amnesty International, that figure is currently 2-3%, so it’s not that unlikely …
For me, the operator of this website, the death penalty is not an option, neither for serious crimes nor for blasphemy, “false” sexuality, or the like, and I will therefore do everything in my power to ensure that this website will eventually no longer be necessary! Until then, however, those affected are invited to do their part, and outside help is always welcome as well, because this is a fight that concerns us all.
As long as even one person is threatened with the death penalty, it threatens us all!
STEFAN HEIKENS