Places and forms of power: the abuse of power

Places and forms of power

For the notion of places and form of power, I have chosen to study the abuse of power.

We are the first generation who has not lived during war. We due this finding to the stability and the power of the most powerful countries in the world that prevent wars before it starts, so this world looks perfect with nothing to say about, so the question is:

Does abuse of power still exist?

I will first examine the capital sentence, it is still legal in 32 states of the us of A, the problem is that the death penalty violates the right to life which happens to be the most basic of all human rights. And this is not the only issue of the death penalty. The first thing that has to be pointed out is the fact that the justice is not perfect and so, it happens that some innocent are being executed. Another thing is the cost of this action, because the person which receive the death penalty has nothing to lose, he usually makes appeal and goes to the supreme court, this is why it can last about 30 years, this is part of the cost because killing someone isn’t free either… The total has been estimated to 1 million dollars more than a non death penalty case.

Another example comes from Uganda. Last year, Uganda’s constitutional court and its “president” voted a law about homosexuality. The goal of this law is to eradicate homosexuality from Uganda because every Ugandans’ suspected of homosexuality will be exposed on the front page of the local newspaper and will be executed. Yoweri Musevini is an homophobic person he does not hesitate to say “what sort of people are they?” The thing is that this country proclaimed itself as a democracy, and as a president who claims he respects civil rights.

I will now talk about the world’s 13th largest economy, Australia. This country is a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Australian policy has not been very respectful, especially towards aborigines. The policy they applied for decades has been called “stolen generation”. When James Cook landed on the east coast, they were 1 million aborigines. They are today approximately 550 000! This is due to the policy the Austrlian government had since 1869 and more widely executed from 1930 until the end of the century. This policy consists in child removal from half-casts aborigines, to be given to white families. Most of the Aborigines victims of this policy are homeless; a lot of them has been sexually abused, but the government did not apologized until December of 2007.

In conclusion, abuse of power are still happening, but not only in the dictatures or in poor country such as Uganda, but also in the wealthiest countries in the world. These abuse of power are rarely recognized by the country it is or has been done and it leads to the death of a lot of people.

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