Murder Mayhem

Not a day goes by before we read about murder is committed in countries around the world. Victims are of all ages. The venue could be the streets, the home, the school, a crowded mall, concert halls (as in Moscow this week), places of worship……no-place is immune.

Violence is often said to be a fundamental part of human nature. There is evidence to support this claim. In a cave in northern Spain, archaeological detectives discovered the remains of a 430,000-year-old skull bearing what appears to be lethal, deliberately inflicted blunt force trauma.

This skull represents the earliest known murder. Murder aside, the ancient Romans, seeking post-lunch entertainment, crowded into the Coliseum and murdered Christians by watching them being fed to the lions. When lions were in short supply, rather than suspend afternoon jollifications, they watched men murder other men…trained killing machines.  They killed another human being for no defensible reason they could find.

Being killed by a lion or by another man, the end result is the same, though the former would appear to be more brutal.  Thank God, it happened a long time ago.  We are rid of such aberrant behaviour, we say? No, we are not.  I remember in the 1950’s a white farmer in South Africa, emulated the Roman emperors and did exactly that: threw a man to a hungry lion because his performance in the farm as a labourer was not satisfactory. Murder for the most inane reason.

Killing one or one million are both hateful.  History is replete with examples of mass murderers who in the name of tribal loyalties (read religion as well) destroyed human lives.  When two countries wage war against each other for socio-political or religious reasons, death is inevitable.  Someone like Herod who ordered the slaughter of children did it for political reasons. (I am using the word political in a very broad sense). Genghis Khan who killed millions did to generate fear among the people. In his relentless march from Mongolia to eastern Europe, he left a trail of blood that is revolting.  While I was in Mongolia on a UN assignment, Enkhbat, my interpreter, used to tell me stories of G.K and his exploits.  For instance, he would ride into a town and if they offered any resistance at all to his takeover, he taught them a lesson by massacring women and children.  He would then ask their dead bodies to be piled up in the town square as a lesson to the men to obey his command.

Pol Pot of Cambodia must have learned his technique from G.K. During the Khmer Rouge regime, he killed over a million people.  Their heads were neatly arranged in rows to look like a wall.  He did this because Khmer Rouge believed in one socio-political philosophy and the others did not.  It was thus a means of eliminating opposition.  In the 1990’s, Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general, ordered the murder of every male Muslim in Srebrenica.  Approximately at the same time, Pinochet of Chile began killing all left wingers in the country.  A mere eighty years ago, Hitler………

We all know I could go on and on.

But the fundamental point is that it is the difference in political or religious beliefs that most often prompt civilized people to indulge in such excesses. (I did stop at this point to find out what the dictionary says about the word ‘civilized’.  Webster says that to civilize means, “To bring or come out of a primitive or savage condition to a higher level of social organization and of cultural and scientific development.”). Really??!!

Beyond murder, we are now facing an ever-increasing number of genocides in the world. Although sometimes they are not even recognized as such. Over 300,000 people murdered in Darfur still does not count as genocide to some, including the U.N. Who is sitting over there deciding that? What would the horrific magic number be?

Tolstoy in his ‘War and Peace’ poses a very interesting question through Arkady, one of the officers.  The officers are having a drink before they go to the front to meet Napoleon’s army.  It is very early in the morning, and Arkady decides to leave, saying that he has to go to the church before leading his troops. Now what would this man have prayed for? Is Arkday really asking God for strength to kill? Strength if getting killed? Or what?

Haven’t we learned anything?  Are we no further than we were in the Genghis Khan era? The Herod era?

Civilized? Yes; but we have not been able to persuade those who think they can slaughter human beings as a matter of policy that they will inevitably pay a price for doing so!  Nobody brought Genghis Khan to justice.  Idi Amin lived his last many years in a luxurious sea side villa in Saudi Arabia.  Mugabe got reelected for yet another term.  Milosevic was in jail..sort of. Again – I could go on and on.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Quotable quotes

We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones  have landed us…….Bernard Shaw

Xxxxx

The truth is rarely pure and never simple….Oscar Wilde

Optical Illusions

What do you see?

Neil Dawson Sculpture