Ms Cyprah

No one has that right. We are either ruled by the law, or we are not. Once anyone takes the law into their own hands and does what he/she likes, with the blessing of everyone else, we have sunken beyond animal levels. It becomes a free for all, the strong brutalising the weak.

Take the example of the man who buggered his stepson with a tool handle in revenge for him raping his half-sister. What makes this man any less of a
criminal than the stepson he was hurting? What makes him less brutal than the stepson? What makes him any different if he can quietly and calmly plan and execute that on someone? That young man clearly needed psychological help, not revenge. Changing his life so that he doesn’t repeat that awful act should be more important than damning him forever. Otherwise we will simply get more of the same. The answer is to try to change the law, or protest about it, not become judge and jury ourselves. The law cannot apply to some and not to others.

It is not an eye for an eye that let’s us retain our sight. It’s love, education and forgiveness. Given America’s history of hangings, lynchings and swift justice, and the consequences of those, one would have thought it would have learnt something from them by now. They weren’t the answer then, and they are not the answer now. Two wrongs NEVER make a right. It is easy to bay for someone’s blood when it has nothing to do with us, but it would be an entirely different thing if the teenager were related to us.

When we are angry and mad at someone, where do we stop short in that justice? That boy could have died later from the effects of what was done to him. It all depends on a person’s capacity to bear such actions. Everyone is different. And what would have happened then? Both the father and the brother would have been gone, devastating the whole family in the process. People also forget the psychological effect on that poor girl, not only of the rape, but she will mistakenly continue to believe, for a long time to come, that she was responsible for what happened to both her brother and her Dad. I think she could have done without that as well.

If we are going to start deciding what punishment everyone should have for any crime we don’t like, and also do it ourselves, given the chance, why do we need any kind of laws? We might as well go back to the caveman days of everyone for himself. Some of the chilling comments I heard around the case showed that we have hardly evolved through the centuries, despite our so-called education and innovations. We are still back there somewhere, living by a lawless code to suit ourselves when we feel like it, yet expecting some kind of law to work for us when we are in need of it.

We really cannot have it both ways. Using violence against another doesn’t make anyone into a man/woman. That’s the mark of a coward taking out their feelings of inadequacy on another equally helpless person simply to feel self righteous. It solves nothing at all in the end except the sad destruction of everyone involved.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS