What is the most precious thing in your life? What matters to you most? What do you hold on to, what do you protect?
These were the questions Toshi Kazama asked during his photo presentation Eyes On Preciousness. For the past 15, almost 16 years, Toshi has been photographing death row inmates, families of both victims and the inmates, execution chambers, prisons and crime scenes. Despite having been a victim of attempted murder himself, he is a committed anti-death penalty activist, and has travelled to numerous countries to share his experience. And luckily for us, he managed to make a stop in Singapore.
Photo by Toshi Kazama
For copyright reasons I can’t share all the photos with you. I wish I could. I wish every single one of you were at that presentation to see those photos. Understated, beautifully shot black-and-white photographs. And the faces of the death row inmates – some who have since been executed – staring out at you as if to say, “Have you forgotten? I am just like you.” And they are; their faces, postures and expressions are all so stunningly ordinary. If they were walking down the street you wouldn’t have picked any of them out as being anything very special at all.
Behind some of these faces are stories that horrify, terrify, repulse and shock. Rape, violence, drugs, guns, arson… one girl even peeled the skin off her victim’s head to pick up a piece of her skull as a keepsake. Hearing these stories, you get a sense of human nature at its most violent, most ugly. The thirst for vengeance – cloaked prettily in the name of “justice” – can be strong, if you let it.
Yellow Mama, Photo by Toshi Kazama
Then you see the photographs of the execution chambers: the mark on the seat of the electric chair (eerily named ‘Yellow Mama’) that looks just like an innocent splotch at first, until Toshi reveals that it actually comes from the tailbones of the inmates burning into the chair as they die. The grim-looking gurney that people are strapped to when they are executed by lethal injection. The heartbreaking white square of the sheet in the middle of a floor of black sand, where Taiwanese death row inmates have to lie face-down before they are shot in the head or heart. The holding cell next to the execution chamber with the black wire mesh. The table where inmates eat their last meals; it has a tablecloth and artificial flowers in a vase, if that makes you feel any better.
The inmate knows when he/she is going to die, right down to the minute. They spend days, weeks, years waiting for the moment when they are deliberately killed, on schedule. Everyone knows exactly when that person will die, but no one stops it. This does not happen in any other scenario anywhere in the world.
It makes you wonder: how does this make us any less violent or cruel than those we condemn?
And even more disturbing are the stories that Toshi told of the innocent on death row; people who were just at the wrong place at the wrong time, or who just happened to be the weakest link in the chain (perhaps because they are mentally incompetent), an easy scapegoat if the police and prosecutors are looking for an open-and-shut case.
Michael Shawn Barnes, Photo by Toshi Kazama
Michael Shawn Barnes was 16 when he was arrested, and has an IQ of 67. He had been born with a part of his brain dead, because his 16-year-old mother had had a drug overdose. His mistake had been admitting that he had been at the scene of the crime. Although other prints were found, he was the only one arrested, charged and convicted. Luckily for him the Supreme Court has since abolished the death penalty for juveniles, which is why he’s still alive. Many juveniles did not live to see that ruling.
Shareef Cousin was another one who had been wrongfully convicted because someone had to be blamed. The prosecutor had even produced a false witness. He was lucky enough to have been eventually exonerated. How many have not had that good fortune? How many innocents are there in prisons all over the world, awaiting execution? How many of them are here, in Singapore?
It is easy to quote statistics, to argue points, to come up with anecdotes and analogies. But in the midst of all that talk talk talk, it is also easy to forget the reality. After all, the death penalty is so removed from our everyday lives; it doesn’t always enter into our everyday thoughts. It’s so easy to just push it aside and pretend that nothing is happening. Seeing the photos of the inmates and the execution chambers is simultaneously shocking and surreal as we are forced to confront the reality of the existence of the death penalty, the fact that we are all executioners.
Which brings us back to the questions Toshi asked. What is most precious to you? What would you protect?
I know my answers: my family and my friends are precious to me, and I don’t want any of them to live lives filled with hatred, anger and revenge. I don’t want my loved ones – amazing people with big hearts and bright smiles – to be part of a system that deliberately takes lives in the most premeditated fashion.
And one more thing that is precious to me: my belief in myself, that I am a good person who tries not to harm others. Yet while I live in a country that has executed 170 people since 1999, and continues to take lives in my name, how can I say that I am good if I do not speak against it?
