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EDITORIAL: Bystanders to brutality
We are on the verge of losing our humanity with our delayed, numbed reactions, along with each report of mob justice.
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Photo of a crime scene. (Shutterstock.com/File)
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child in Banyuwangi, East Java, threw diesel fuel on his playmate and set him on fire last Thursday. The surviving victim reportedly witnessed his friend steal the fuel and cried “thief ” in panic. In the same week, a young father in Bekasi, east of Jakarta, was killed when he was set on fire by a mob that accused him of stealing amplifiers from a mushola (prayer room). Reports said the victim, Muhammad Al Zahra, was an electronic repair man.
“Mob justice” is alive and well. It is wishful thinking to say that such crimes stopped following horrific, lawless years after Soeharto stepped down in May 1998. The government’s National Violence Monitoring System recorded thousands of incidences of mob justice over the years across Indonesia in which hundreds were killed for suspected theft. The only good news? Researchers suggest many more incidences could have occurred were it not for improved policing.
The Banyuwangi report also shows that children learn fast — too fast compared to slow efforts in fixing all our ills. How did the aforementioned boy, aged around 12, acquire the instinct to light up his friend? He learned it from adults, naturally, as did the children who shouted “Kill Ahok!” in a recent parade, expressing resentment to the now imprisoned former Jakarta governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama.
These incidents warn us that we are on the verge of losing our humanity with our delayed, numbed reactions, along with each report of mob justice.
The pregnant widow of the Bekasi victim could only say “my husband is not an animal,” while their toddler son has also questioned his father’s fate. Police arrested a few suspects, but the involvement of a mob, and of youngsters in the Banyuwangi incident, shows tough law enforcement barely addresses our severely sick society — despite all appearances and rhetoric of religious devotion.
Poverty in the reported communities neither explains similar incidences in the areas that are less poor.
Pundits cite distrust in authorities. Locals in Bekasi said they were incensed at recent robberies and thought the victim had been stealing an amplifier or a motorcycle. When you report a missing chicken to the police, people say, you lose a goat. — the lame justification when taking the law into their hands, often fatally. Too often it is much easier for a bystander to record a horrifying scene and spread news of it as an exclusive scoop rather than to immediately contact the police to stop the crime.
Too many of us are accomplices in such crimes. People have said street justice is a much more effective deterrent than reporting suspected criminals to the police, as they are likely hardened armed robbers and even repeat offenders. That victims of mob trials turn out to be innocent is regarded as tragic collateral at best.
This is where we are ahead of our 72nd anniversary of independence. As we constantly experiment in bringing out the best in our children, it is the adults who must be rushed to emergency to be treated for insanity.
