Opinion
Reflections by Wee Kek Koon
Wee Kek Koon
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Published: 4:45am, 9 Oct, 2021
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A print of a scene of execution in China from the 19th century. Photo: Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Corrected [12:01pm, 9 Oct, 2021]
Weeks after the United States abandoned Afghanistan and allowed the Taliban to take over, the acts for which the latter were infamous were put on display, literally. Taliban authorities in Herat executed four alleged kidnappers and hung their bodies in public. A note on the chest of one of the corpses read: “Whoever kidnaps others, will end up like this.”
Most people in the modern world will be shocked and disgusted by the brutality of the spectacle, but the Taliban seems to be very keen on bringing back the medieval practice where executions were not only performed in public, but their results were deliberately displayed in public to warn and deter.
Reflections by Wee Kek Koon
Like the Taliban, Chinese once publicly displayed bodies of the executed, in a form called ‘abandoned in the marketplace’
- Examples of the ancient Chinese form of punishment suggest the victims’ bodies were left for public display as an indication of the severity of their crimes
- One famous case involved the vice-censor-in-chief of Empress Wu Zetian, whose corpse was left in the open and mutilated by his enemies.
Wee Kek Koon
+ FOLLOW
Published: 4:45am, 9 Oct, 2021
Why you can trust SCMP
24
24
A print of a scene of execution in China from the 19th century. Photo: Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Corrected [12:01pm, 9 Oct, 2021]
Weeks after the United States abandoned Afghanistan and allowed the Taliban to take over, the acts for which the latter were infamous were put on display, literally. Taliban authorities in Herat executed four alleged kidnappers and hung their bodies in public. A note on the chest of one of the corpses read: “Whoever kidnaps others, will end up like this.”
Most people in the modern world will be shocked and disgusted by the brutality of the spectacle, but the Taliban seems to be very keen on bringing back the medieval practice where executions were not only performed in public, but their results were deliberately displayed in public to warn and deter.
