Over the years, and especially after September 11, 2001, "Western" has become more vague as sharp differences emerged between the world view of Americans all alone on one hand, and "Europeans" on the other, the latter category including Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders. Last week Filipinos were exposed to one aspect of this growing cultural divide when ambassadors representing European Union (EU) countries, usually quite low-key in the Philippines, suddenly made headlines by visiting death row inmates in Bilibid and requesting our government to reconsider its decision to lift the moratorium on the death penalty.

The Europeans' opposition to capital punishment dates back to the 18th century, when humanist philosophers and social reformists such as Francois Voltaire and Jeremy Bentham began to raise serious questions about the death penalty. The Italian social reformer Cesare Baccaria was so successful in his anti-death penalty arguments that Italy practically abolished capital punishment by 1786. (A glaring exception was the papal states, where executions continued for another century because the popes saw the abolition of capital punishment as another manifestation of dangerous liberal thinking.)

By the 1980s, all the Western European countries had abolished capital punishment. A passage from a recent EU document, dated July 14, 2003, explains their views on the death sentence, describing it as punishment which "impairs human dignity, increases the level of brutality and provides no added value in terms of deterrence." So strongly did the EU feel about capital punishment that back in 2001, Chris Patten, EU commissioner for external relations, declared the union's goal of working toward "the universal abolition of the death penalty."

The EU's uncompromising stand against the death penalty stands in stark contrast to the position of the United States, where the death penalty was abolished in 1972 but restored in 1976. President George W. Bush is a fervent believer in capital punishment. During his five-year term as governor of Texas, there were 152 executions or an average of about one every two weeks. Europeans are particularly appalled about capital punishment in the United States because only two developed countries, the United States and Japan, now use the death penalty, making them look almost barbaric in the 21st century.

The EU have an equally tough challenge dealing with Asia, where most countries still use the death penalty. Singapore, often held up as a paragon of law and order, has the highest number of executions in the world, when compared to its population. China is well known for its quick implementation of the death penalty: convicted criminals are often shot in the head on the same day that they are sentenced, with the cost of the bullet charged back to the bereaved family.

And the Philippines? Sadly, we take after Mother America in this national self-delusion that executions deter crime. We, too, abolished the death sentence, then restored it, then went into a moratorium and are now preparing the lethal injection chamber to be used again.

Besides the opposition to capital punishment, there is another aspect of law enforcement where Europeans sharply differ from the Americans: gun control. Americans defend private gun ownership as a sacred right. Their policemen are often armed, based on the idea that armed law enforcement provides the best security. We Filipinos have surpassed Mother America in this regard, sporting "Pro-Gun" and "I Love My Gun" stickers on our vehicles. Americans, so used to guns, still end up shocked when they see how even our security guards brandish firearms.

The Europeans take a completely different view of guns, seeing these as dangerous and corrupting. European law enforcement officers are usually unarmed and there are strict laws regulating private gun ownership. The Europeans' revulsion to guns once again came into the limelight recently when they opposed the US government's requirement that all international flights have armed sky marshals to protect passengers from terrorists. The Europeans see armed air marshals as further increasing the risks of violence through accidental shootings or, in a worst-case scenario, unarmed hijackers ending up with the lethal weapons by overpowering a sky marshal. Put briefly, guns are seen as inviting, rather than deterring, violence.

Generally, Europeans have been more vocal than Americans in speaking out against the use of force. Thus, public opinion in many European countries was squarely against the Iraqi invasion. Today, many Europeans will point out they were right in opposing the invasion, and that the world has become even more unsafe because of Bush and his government's lust for war. Sadly, the Philippines has slavishly toed the American line that war brings peace.

One could argue that the Europeans live in glass houses, given their dark and bloody imperialist past. It was the Europeans, too, who institutionalized the death penalty in their colonies. In fact, several American states began to reduce the number of capital crimes shortly after independence in the 18th century, partly in reaction against the British, who used the death sentence quite widely in their American colonies.

Here in the Philippines, many of our national heroes were actually victims of capital punishment under Spain and the United States. Rizal was executed rather mercifully, by firing squad, when compared to other death convicts such as Fathers Gomez, Burgos and Zamora who were slowly strangled to death using the garrote.

But it was the Europeans' cruel colonial past, the two world wars with some of the bloodiest battles fought in Europe, the Jewish holocaust and more recent conflagrations such as that of Bosnia, that seem to have made them so obsessed about peace and justice, about building truly civil societies. The Europeans are passionate in their opposition to the death penalty, launching petitions and protest rallies whenever the Americans are about to execute someone. The Italians use a different but more dramatic tact, fully lighting up the Colosseum in Rome whenever a country abolishes capital punishment.

Maybe, just maybe, the Colosseum will one day light up in its full splendor to celebrate the death penalty's abolition in the Philippines, a country that claims to be Christian. It was in the Colosseum where many early Christians were fed to the lions -- capital punishment for refusing to give up a faith anchored on the power of compassion and justice.

Sources and Relevant Links:

Inquirer News Service: Learning from the Europeans 20 January 2004, Philippines

AFP: Executions on the rise in Asia, the death penalty capital of the world 18 January 2004

The noose snaps and another body collapses in Singapore's Changi prison gallows at dawn on a Friday ..... Dawn on Friday is execution time in Singapore, the nation that human rights group Amnesty International says has the highest death penalty rate per capita in the world.