They can then be a focus of more intense pressure from other governments, including our own, and from human rights groups such as Amnesty International.
What solution could we possible offer? The punishment for premeditated (first-degree) murder should be life in prison without possibility of parole. Murderers should do productive work in prison in order to pay for their room and board and to make financial restitution to the families of their victims. We should return to the notion of "life at hard labor." It should not involve the cruelty of meaningless work--breaking big rocks into little rocks--but productive labor and an effort to make amends. Such an effort can restore to a family at least some of the financial support it lost when a parent was murdered. In the case of a murdered child, it might enable the family to establish a scholarship fund or other memorial so the child will not be forgotten.