25 July 2008
Crime Novel Excerpts: In the Woods, by Tana French
In the Woods (2007) was Tana French's debut novel, winner of the 2007 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Set near Dublin, Ireland, it's narrated by Murder Squad detective Bob Ryan and moves between two possibly related crimes, both involving children, that take place 20 years apart in the same area. It's marketed as part police procedural and part psychological thriller, but I don't think it lives up to its thriller possibilities. The book was a pleasure to read but I was a bit disappointed with the ending.
What interested me most about it -- besides the well-paced exploration of a few characters and relationships, the intriguing plot, and the good writing (slightly too much 'had she but known" for me, and while in places the writing is beautifully poetic and whimsical, it's also a bit distracting because of that) -- were the Girardian possibilities in the various rivalries and mimetic doubles (two major sets), and the intimations and evidence of psychopathology.
French's second novel, The Likeness, featuring one of the main characters from the first, was published in the U.S. this week. The title plus the synopsis tells me there may be more mimetic doubling going on....
A couple of lines from In the Woods that particularly caught my attention:
"I don't tell people about the Knocknaree thing. I don't see why I should; it would only lead to endless salacious questioning about my nonexistent memories and inaccurate speculation about the state of my psyche, and I have no desire to deal with either." ... Replace "Knocknaree" with a variety of other things and Ryan's reasoning is mine for not talking much with most people about a good deal of my life, experiences, feelings, thoughts, etc.
"I'm not sure what exactly I did for those two years. A lot of the time, I think, nothing. I know this is one of the unthinkable taboos of our society, but I had discovered in myself a talent for a wonderful, unrepentant laziness, the kind most people never know after childhood. I had a prism from an old chandelier hanging in my window, and I could spend entire afternoons lying on my bed and watching it flick tiny chips of rainbow around the room." ... (Similarly -- and that was a fairly industrious day in which Things Got Done.)
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22 July 2008
Noose Watch
A surprising number of noose incidents in the southern New England and mid-Atlantic states ...
Click on map to learn details of each of the 78 incidents reported to authorities within the last year in the U.S.)
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10 July 2008
Who are the Victims?
Another idea I have for an occasional series: News stories in which some group is labelled 'the victim' of a group, abstraction, or individual. I think it's educational and interesting to explore who or what are identified as victims and perpetrators in the media.
Recently,
American people are the victims: "The whiners are the leaders. Hell, the American people are victims. ..." [Said by political advisor and former Congressman Phil Gramm, reported today]
Palestinians are the victims of Jewish persecutors: "Touring the somber [Holocaust] museum, it occurred to [Israeli-Arab lawyer] Mahameed that 'we Palestinians are the victims of the terrible things that were inflicted on the Jews by the Holocaust.' [8 July; the article is actually eye-opening, moving, IMO]
Bass and salmon are the victims of mismanagement: "Striped bass are the victims of gross state and federal mismanagement of Central Valley rivers and the Delta, as are collapsing Sacramento River chinook salmon populations." [8 July]
Tuna are the victims of their own success: "Chronically overfished, Mediterranean tuna are the victims of their success with fish lovers, especially with the passion for sushi." [3 July]
Sociopathic politicians, celebrities and sports figures are the victims: "For all the public examples of bad behavior set by politicians, celebrities and sports figures, many young people see these individuals for exactly what they are: spoiled, overrated sociopaths who are the victims of an overly indulgent, disengaged society in search of civilization." [7 July]
Pakistani college women are the victims of cell phone use: "Mostly intermediate students are the victims of mobile mania" [8 July]
San Diego stores are the victims of shopping cart theft and displacement: "The stores are the victims, Councilman Jack Feller said, and they aren't the ones who should be punished." [12 June]
and finally, the word "victim" isn't used but it's sure implied in this odd story [7 July]:
"A special meeting about Dallas County traffic tickets turned tense and bizarre this afternoon.
"County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts.
"Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections 'has become a black hole' because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.
"Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud 'Excuse me!' He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a 'white hole.'"That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy."
wtf?
20:15 Posted in animals , community , crime , earthcare and environment , girardian anthropology , other people said it , politics, government and law , pop culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
20 June 2008
Collective Violence - Examples - Part V
It's been another month since I last blogged about mob violence, which continues pretty well unabated. Below are some of the latest incidents reported, and some commentary on the phenomenon by others. (And here's why I'm doing it.)
I won't be making the Girardian connections for each of these as I have previously because the connections are the same as always -- scapegoat is often someone from the margins (disabled, poor, stranger, female, old, young, from another caste or class or country, seen as privileged, etc. ), mob often forms spontaneously or grows larger as the scapegoating occurs due to accusatory mimesis, perpetrators easily justify the scapegoating as necessary and right, scapegoating's intention is to bring about peace in the community.
INCIDENTS
** 15 May 2008, Baltimore MD: "Child Was a 'Demon'"
"One Mind Ministries of Baltimore, MD, allegedly starved an 18-month old child because he was viewed as a ‘demon' ... after the baby wouldn’t say 'amen' at mealtime." The baby's "body was found last month in a suitcase in Philadelphia two years after his death." Immediately after his death, "the baby was placed on a mattress, on which cult members said God would resurrect him from the dead." Examiner article here.
** 31 May 2008 Para, Brasil, in the Amazon: "Brazilian Tribes Say Dam Threatens Way of Life" reported at NPR
Indigenous people protesting a proposed hydroelectric dam on the "remote, pristine Xingu River," near the mouth of the Amazon River, attack Paulo Fernando Rezende, a representative from the state's electric power enterprise, with machetes as he speaks to them about the dam:
"Roquivan Alves Silva takes the microphone and declares: 'If necessary, I will make war to protect the Xingu and the people of the entire region.' Moments later, the Indians rise in unison. A mix of warriors and women moves menacingly across the room toward Rezende. Then suddenly they're on him. Machetes and sticks flailing, they push Rezende to the floor, poking him with their weapons. The warriors rip his shirt to shreds and carve a deep gash in his right arm. Blood pooling on the floor, Dom Erwin, the Catholic Bishop of Xingu, steps in. The gymnasium hangs suspended between fear and euphoria. Chief Tabata, whose tribe lives in the Xingu National Park in the state of Mato Grosso, says he feels the Eletrobras representative lied. ... 'We have to hurt them. They weren't respecting the Indians. ... That's our fight. I want the people, the white people to understand why the Indians are so angry.'"
** 2 June 2008 Imphal, Manipur, India: Woman killer lynched: Mob justice at Umathel:
"In a macabre incident, a woman (45) was hacked to death by a man (60) who was subsequently lynched by an angry mob at Umathel Mamang Leikai under Waikhong Police Station this morning. ... According to police report, at around 6 am today, Sangai was returning home from collecting monthly subscription of a Marup from a person at Umathel Mamang Leikai. While she was preparing to cross a bailey bridge, Khullachandra, who was then splitting bamboo, came from behind and hacked her on the neck killing the woman on the spot. When the news of the incident spread, angry locals came out in large number and beat up Khullachandra to death. The body of Khullachandra has been picked up by the Waikhong police. None of his family members have come to claim the body so far."
** 2 June 2008 Flushing, New York: "Mob Violence Against Falun Gong Worsens in Absence of Police"
"About forty Falun Gong practitioners were surrounded on Main Street in front of the Flushing Library Saturday evening between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. by a large, angry mob. According to eyewitness reports and Epoch Times reporters on the scene, the mob was emboldened by the absence of the police. ... 'These mobs, there were hundreds of them, at least 200-300 of them.'" ... There is speculation that the Chinese consulate is organizing the mobs and that "some of the violence is being aggravated and encouraged by well-placed individuals among crowds of Chinese. On Sunday, an unidentified Chinese man, standing among a large crowd of Chinese on Sanford and Kissena Streets, described how he had attacked a female Falun Gong practitioner the previous week, ripping the sign she was holding and knocking her to the ground. The man, who was described as about 5'7" and in his mid-40's with scars on his face, encouraged people in the crowd to attack Falun Gong practitioners themselves." More on an earlier incident here.
** 9 June 2008 Bagamoyo, Tanzania:
Kate Kozonasky reports on her blog of an incident of mob violence: "A few nights ago ... us girls were sitting outside at night, probably around 730, inside out home base just talking. All of the sudden, we heard this massive ROAR of people coming from outside the gate; it was ridiculous. at first it just sounded strictly like shouting, but as we ran outside our protective gates to see what the fuss was, we realized that at LEAST 150 people were running down the road with torches and spears, screaming "THIEF!" Our Tanzanian security gaurd explained that this often happens in Bagamoyo when there is a crime; when something happens and a citizen witnesses it, he has to scream to get others attention to catch the criminal themselves, because police are not affective here. So apparently, a man stole from a local store and they were literally chasing him out of the town to kill him!"
COMMENTARY examining triggers for mob violence:
South Africa: Ugly Politics Aggravate Xenophobia by Terence Corrigan and Faten Aggad, 4 June 2008: The "recent eruption of mob violence targeting foreigners living among us" in South Africa" have been put down to "xenophobia," but this, the authors contend, "cannot on its own explain the violence. After all, South Africans have been living alongside foreign nationals for decades. This suggests that other factors are involved. We need to understand what they are – urgently." Factors the suggest and explore are (1) the inability of the existing democratic process to mitigate conflict; (2) the 'uneven' South African policy on immigraton, which leads to grievances such as "anger at competition for jobs and services, envy at the perceived success of foreigners, and suspicion of other cultures;" (3) a political system that fails "to channel people's grievances into formal channels;" (4) "a lack of understanding on the part of ordinary people as to how they can make themselves heard."
South Africa: Graca Machel Warns of Revolt Among Victims of Pogroms, 10 June 2008:
"Mozambique's former first lady, Graca Machel, who today heads one of the country's most respected NGOS, the Community Development Foundation (FDC), on Tuesday warned of possible revolt among the tens of thousands of Mozambicans who have fled from anti-foreigner pogroms in South Africa. ... Should the government prove unable to satisfy their demands, and to reinsert them into Mozambican society, that could lead the victims of the pogroms to revolt against their own government" with mob violence. ...
"She added that the solutions to such problems must lie in the establishment of governments that are able to respond to the needs of their citizens, and reduce the likelihood that they will be driven to the margins of society. Machel claimed that the mob violence in South Africa was aimed more against the sub-human living conditions in the townships than against foreign citizens. She argued that the attacks had been unleashed by people who were 'rejected, marginalized and unused' by the South African system. (However, contrary to this view, there is good evidence that the initial riots were far from spontaneous, but were organised by self-styled 'community leaders'). Machel argued that the development models adopted by African governments have produced millions of marginalized and excluded people, living in conditions favourable to outbreaks of brutal violence. 'Extreme poverty dehumanizes people and leads them to madness,' she said. 'That's what happened in Rwanda over ten years ago.'
South Africa: Xenophobia on Trial at Boekehuis: Dark Tales and Hope by Liesl Jobson, 2 June 2008:
"Johannesburg readers crammed into Boekehuis" recently to "talk about xenophobia in literature. ... Store manager Corina Van der Spoel [chaired] the event," introducing "the topic with a series of salient readings and reflections, starting with an excerpt from the Goldstone Report of 1993/4, which noted the different ways that perpetrators, victims and bystanders react to massive human rights abuses -- the callousness with which innocent people are murdered, raped and tortured, and the shallow excuses produced by the perpetrators for such brutality.
"'He finds similar behaviour everywhere,' said Van der Spoel. 'The situations are universal. Throughout the world one must recognise that any people, anywhere, has the potential for evil on a massive scale. And all victims, whoever they may be, need the opportunity to heal. No continent, no region, and no people are immune from it.'" ...
"Van der Spoel also quoted from the Southern African Migration Project's World Values Survey on International Attitudes to Immigration, which she described as 'astounding'. In calibrating attitudes to foreigners it was found that South Africans held the harshest anti-immigrant views among the 29 nations surveyed. 'More than 20% of people surveyed here wanted all foreigners barred from entering the country on any grounds, compared with 13% holding this view in Britain, 11% in China, and 4% in the USA and Mozambique.'"
Pakistan: Burning of robbers shows lack of justice, police inefficiency by Zamir Sheikh, 26 May 2008:
Speaking of "the unfortunate burning of two alleged robbers by an angry crowd in Karachi recently" -- due to "a daylight robbery in a flat located in the congested locality" -- Skeikh points to "the rising unbearable cost of living" as a possible cause.
He also notes, "The desperate element in the street justified the mob justice arguing that there is no other way than to handout instant justice to the perpetrators of heinous crime. ... It is difficult to single out one single factor as the cause of the incident. It was just the instant anger with no restraining saner voice in the mob that caused the gruesome and inhumane act. But if discussed from various angles, one could reach the conclusion that snail pace process of justice, overburdened police force dominated by a few corrupt elements, tribal justice system prevalent in some areas the country and lack of trust of the judicial system were some of the factors that forced the unconscious mind of an enraged mob to indulge in an act which is prohibited both by the God and the man made laws.
"None other than William Shakespeare had written about the mob mentality in his famous drama Julius Caesar, how Mark Antony is his funeral speech played with mobs emotions in order to whip them into a frenzy of rage.
"The crowd that caught hold of the robbers as soon as the victims raised hue and cry had to react immediately and in the fit of mob anger they found no alternate than to beat them near death. Some one in the crowd who might have seen or undergone the sufferings of facing a similar personal experience lost his sanity and resorted to an act which otherwise under normal circumstance he would have just avoided and handed over the culprits to the police."
Pakistan: Rule of the mob by Ishtiaq Ahmed, 7 June 2008:
"In the wake of viciously gruesome attacks recently by angry mobs on criminals -- robbers and thieves -- caught recently red-handed on the scene in Karachi and other parts of the country, Gallup Pakistan conducted an opinion survey on May 18 and 19, 2008 ... Fifty-two percent (52%) of the total respondents were of the opinion that beating to death and then burning the bodies of those robbers apprehended on the spot was the "right thing to do" while 42 percent (42%) disapproved of such brutal methods. ...
"If we now recall that in the past few weeks a Hindu worker has been killed in a similar fashion by a mob which suspected him of blasphemy, incensed lawyers beat up pro-Musharraf ministers of the previous government in Lahore, and rival groups of lawyers fell upon each other in Karachi, causing a number of deaths, then the situation becomes very worrisome. It is symptomatic of not only a state and its institutions failing to establish and uphold law and order but civil society failing as well to inculcate norms and ethics that discourage violent conduct.
"When such a situation becomes endemic the name for the phenomenon is ochlocracy, devised by the ancient Greeks to describe mob rule or mob justice. Sometimes another word, "mobocracy," is applied instead to describe the power of the masses, in contrast to the power of an established ruling elite. ...
"The outbursts of mob fury and the concomitant 'rough' justice meted out to the culprits [in Pakistan] reflect not only loss of faith in the political leaders and state institutions' ability to maintain law and order and practice justice. Rather, in a more serious manner such extreme behaviour is a manifestation of helplessness and despondency in relation to the ruling class. "
More on Pakistan's blasphemy laws and the consequences for those accused of it. ("The blasphemy laws impact everyone, regardless of religion -- and the tragedy is that almost every case is completely fabricated. ... The reason is simple. The blasphemy law requires no evidence other than an accusation made by one person against another.")
06:00 Posted in community , crime , death , girardian anthropology , politics, government and law , travel and place | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
21 May 2008
Mob Violence - This Just In
Reported today at CNN: "Mob burns to death 11 'witches, wizards'" in Nairobi, Kenya:
"Officials say a mob has burned to death 11 people suspected of being witches and wizards in western Kenya. Deputy police spokesman Charles Owino says the mob hunted down the 8 women and 3 men in two villages in the western Kenya district of Kisii Central. Owino says most of the victims were between 70 years old and 90 years old. Only one of the victims was 40 years old. Senior administrator Njoroge Ndirangu says ... 'These people identified who is to be killed by accusing their victims of bewitching their sons and daughters.'"
A BBC report on the attacks adds:
"The mob dragged them out of their houses and burned them individually and then set their homes alight, our correspondent says.
"Residents have been ambivalent about condemning the attacks because belief in witchcraft is widespread in the area...."
The International Herald Tribune put the size of the mob at "300 young men" and said that in some cases the victims' throats were slit or they were clubbed to death before being burned.
One police officer, Mwaura Njoroge, questioned how the young men could prove someone was a wizard and suggested that "'It is likely that the people who committed these killings had personal vendettas against their victims.'"
Added 22 May: In depth article on the issue of witch-hunting in Malawi, from the Women's Internatonal Perspective: "Mob Justice in Malawi: Accused of Witchcraft, the Elderly Are Rarely Protected by the Law"
16:40 Posted in community , crime , death , girardian anthropology , politics, government and law , theology, spirituality, philosophy , travel and place | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
Collective Violence - Examples - Part IV
It's been almost a month since I last blogged about mob violence. Again, that's not because it's not happening but because it continues relentlessly. Here are some of the latest. (And here's why I'm doing it.)
26 April 2008 in the Erie Times-News, Erie, PA, USA: "Police charge 3 as victim remains on ventilator": Kyle Miles, 28, is in critical condition after being attacked by "a group of 10-15 people" who chased him and beat him severely after "a perceived slight triggered mob violence on a spring evening. ... The [original] assailant told Miles the assault was all about respect, said a witness. ... 'He was telling him that he (Miles) can't come down to this neighborhood and disrespect nobody.' ... The attacker boasted that he had dropped Miles with one hit. ... Arrington estimated up to 15 men in their late teens or early 20s chased Miles and gathered to watch the assault, as if it were a spectator event. 'Some girl said something. He said something. Someone took offense, and all hell broke loose.'
Conformity: The assault was a bonding experience for most of the onlookers. The cause of the brutal attack was a 'slight' that nonetheless seems to have justified the brutality in the eyes of the perpetrators. The victim was apparently someone from outside the community, since he ran the wrong way seeking escape.
28 April 2008, Karachi, Pakistan: "Jagdeesh Kumar, a 22-year-old Hindu worker in a garment factory in Pakistan's largest city, was beaten to death by a mob [as police looked on] for allegedly making blasphemous remarks about Prophet Mohammad. ....'His murder may have nothing to do with blasphemy. What we saw was an honour killing, coloured as a killing for blasphemy. Most, if not all, of the cases of killing for blasphemy have a different, more mundane and criminal reason. Blasphemy provides a cover,' says [A.H.] Nayyar [, an Islamabad peace activist]. He has reason to believe that the Hindu boy was in love with a Muslim girl." Hindus make up less than two percent of the population in Pakistan. (Sify News)
Conformity: Hindus, a tiny minority of the population in Pakistan, would be prime scapegoat material because they are non-conforming, marginalised and have been historically persecuted in Pakistan since the Partition of India in the 1940s. The scapegoating is cloaked in religious terms -- the scapegoaters claim to kill for sacred reasons -- while the truth seems rather different.
6 May 2008, Madurai, India: "A police official was stabbed and 17 policemen injured while a police jeep and four motorcycles were set on fire in mob violence which engulfed Eliyarpathi Village of the district today. Police sources said the trouble started when members of Mutharayar Community resorted to road blockade demanding action against some Dalits who allegedly desecrated a portrait of King Perumpidugu Mutharayar in the village. The incident was sequel to the stoning of Dalit houses in the villages by Mutharayars over a petty quarrel in a tea shop last night." (MyNews.in)
Conformity: Apparently a revenge attack. Dalits are the lowest caste in India, the so-called untouchables, and here they are alleged to have desecrated something sacred.
8 May 2008, Patna India: "Villagers pour acid into man's eyes in Bihar": "A man was severely beaten and acid was poured into his eyes by residents of a village in Bihar's Purnia district. ... The villagers "overpowered Vinay Yadav alias Pappu Yadav, wanted in connection with the February 28 killing of Bihari Lal Yadav and his grandson, and beat him mercilessly with sticks and iron rods on late Monday night. As Vinay collapsed in pain, the villagers poured acid into his eyes. The police soon arrived and took him into custody. He was rushed to the Purnia sadar hospital where his condition was stated to be stable. ... A mob had recently gouged out the eyes of two alleged thieves in Bihar's Nawada district. "
Conformity: Not much based on this report, other than the mob aspect and the escalation (if acid in the eyes is worse than being beaten with an iron rod ...) . Ruthless revenge attack of an alleged murderer.
10 May, Patna, India: "Mob justice takes 5 lives": Four bank robbers (including a murderer) and a would-be thief were beaten to death in Bihar in two separate incidents.
"In Siwan, Chand Quereshi (29), was beaten to death right in front of Siwan police station early in the morning. The incident took place around 3am when Quereshi broke into the Jai Prakashnagar residence of Vinod Mehta. 'Some 10 to 15 neighbours rushed to the house, overpowered the thief and beat him up till he fell unconscious.' ...
"At Buxar, four robbers were beaten to death by a mob, while another drowned in the Ganga while trying to escape the crowd. The robbers ... were part of a group of seven, who were trying to flee after a loot this afternoon," which they had taken from a branch of the State Bank of India at gunpoint after shooting and killing the bank's guard. ... The alarm alerted residents and they chased all seven and overpowered six of them within 500m from the bank. A mob of 100 started beating the men up and attacked them with bricks, stones and sticks -- anything they could lay hands on."
Conformity: Again, pretty common story of retaliation, in one case a small mob for an attempted crime and in another a large mob for an apparent robbery and killing. "Anything they could lay hands on" gives a sense of the frenzy of the mob. And did 100 men all start beating at one time, as if on cue, or did one start, and then another, and then the rest joined in?
12 May 2008, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India : "2 Dalit boys paraded naked for killing birds": "In yet another instance of mob justice, two Dalit minors were paraded naked for allegedly killing birds at Byawar village in Rajasthan’s Ajmer district. ... The minors, identified as Vinod (12) and Sagar (10), belong to the Kanjar tribe. The two were caught by villagers while they were catching birds and, on rummaging through through their bags, were found with a few pigeons and partridges. Furious villagers then beat up the boys and stripped them naked in public, police said. The villagers then called a barber and got their heads tonsured before parading them naked in the village."
Conformity: Humiliation of two Dalit boys, the lowest Indian caste (the 'untouchables'), easily scapegoated. I don't know enough to know what the aparent crime was here, what made the villagers 'furious': that the boys killed the birds (animal cruelty? the birds belong to someone else?), an 'untouchable' touching the birds that others might want to eat? Keeping the birds for themselves (stealing)?
13 May 2008 in the Sun News Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: "Police chief warns thugs following swarmings": Edmonton police chief Mike Boyd proclaimed that his city would not tolerate "this kind of mugging and swarming mentality against our police officers and any citizen in this city" after "the school resource officer at Eastglen high school was kicked in the head when he tried to stop former students from stunting in a vehicle. ... One pulled out a baseball bat but dropped it when the officer pepper-sprayed him. During the fight, the officer was pulled to the ground and kicked in the head, leaving him unconscious and having to be taken to hospital. ... Boyd said there have been other swarming incidents and muggings in which civilians are also being targeted.
Conformity: This story points to the no-holds-barred nature of group violence when the group feels provoked, including against law enforcement officers. (Perhaps drugs were involved, too?)
14 May 2008, Karachi Pakistan: "Residents of an apartment building attacked and set on fire three alleged robbers here on Wednesday, killing them all, police said. Police officer Amir Shaikh said residents of the building heard gunshots from an apartment where a neighbour had resisted robbers trying to steal his possessions. A mob of residents confronted the thieves and beat them with burning wood from the oven of a nearby bakery, setting them on fire." (That's the entire reported story.)
Conformity: Another brutal act against would-be thieves. The intention and outcome, as it often is, is not just to keep the thief from one's possessions but to punish the thief indelibly -- either because there's that much rage towards the thief or to signal to others that such an act won't be tolerated. Does the mob really feel that their actions should be tolerated? Is there that much perceived justification?
17 May 2008, Calcutta, India: "Shop fire triggers mob attack": "Over a dozen youths today stormed the home of the owners of the Sodepur shop where 12 people died in a fire yesterday, and failing to find them beat up a heart patient who stood nearby." They were thwarted from setting fire to the garment shop owners' house by neighbours. Two of the owners were in intensive care after the fire while other family members had fled to avoid retaliation and/or probable arrest. "Faced with a locked house, the young men ... vented their anger on a local youth. Raju Nag Biswas, 30, was standing in front of the house ... when he saw the cars pull up. About a dozen men jumped out and rushed to the house, but seeing it locked turned towards Raju," whom they apparently took to be the shop owners' watchman. Raju "pleaded with them saying he was not the guard and was a heart patient. 'But some of them grabbed my collar and began slapping me.'
Conformity: Retaliation. The beating of the innocent bystander when the intended victim can't be found -- and the justification that the bystander was culpable by association, is as guilty as the intended victim -- is a hallmark of scapegoating. Any victim will do to discharge the rage, to bring about peace. Interesting that according to the victim, only 'some' of the dozen youths/men continued to attack him after he denied association with the shop owners.
06:05 Posted in community , crime , death , girardian anthropology , politics, government and law , travel and place | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
03 May 2008
The Contagion of Violence
Long cover article titled Blocking the Transmission of Violence by Alex Kotlowitz (author of There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America, 1992) in the NYT Magazine today about CeaseFire, a group of mostly ex-cons working in Chicago and a few other cities to contain the contagion of violence. The key point: violence is contagious, like an infectious disease:
"THE STUBBORN CORE of violence in American cities is troubling and perplexing. Even as homicide rates have declined across the country -- in some places, like New York, by a remarkable amount -- gunplay continues to plague economically struggling minority communities. For 25 years, murder has been the leading cause of death among African-American men between the ages of 15 and 34, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has analyzed data up to 2005. And the past few years have seen an uptick in homicides in many cities. Since 2004, for instance, they are up 19 percent in Philadelphia and Milwaukee, 29 percent in Houston and 54 percent in Oakland.
"The traditional response has been more focused policing and longer prison sentences, but law enforcement does little to disrupt a street code that allows, if not encourages, the settling of squabbles with deadly force.
"CeaseFire tries to deal with these quarrels on the front end." 'Violence interrupters "suss out smoldering disputes and to intervene before matters get out of hand. ... [It] doesn’t necessarily aim to get people out of gangs -- nor interrupt the drug trade. It's almost blindly focused on one thing: preventing shootings.
"CeaseFire’s founder, Gary Slutkin, is an epidemiologist and a physician who for 10 years battled infectious diseases in Africa. He says that violence directly mimics infections like tuberculosis and AIDS, and so, he suggests, the treatment ought to mimic the regimen applied to these diseases: go after the most infected, and stop the infection at its source.
"'For violence, we’re trying to interrupt the next event, the next transmission, the next violent activity,' Slutkin told me recently. 'And the violent activity predicts the next violent activity like H.I.V. predicts the next H.I.V. and TB predicts the next TB.' Slutkin wants to shift how we think about violence from a moral issue (good and bad people) to a public health one (healthful and unhealthful behavior)."
About violence and murder, Slutkin is convinced that "longer sentences and more police officers had made little difference. 'Punishment doesn't drive behavior,' he told me. 'Copying and modeling and the social expectations of your peers is what drives your behavior.'"
The interruptors, Slutkin says, "have to deal with how to get someone to save face. In other words, how do you not do a shooting if someone has insulted you, if all of your friends are expecting you to do that? ... In fact, what our interrupters do is put social pressure in the other direction."
---
About this contagion of violence, and its cure, Girardians have a lot to say:
** Rene Girard, in "Are the Gospels Mythical?" talks about the contagion with reference to Peter's denial of Jesus:
"Peter spectacularly illustrates this mimetic contagion. When surrounded by people hostile to Jesus, he imitates their hostility. He obeys the same mimetic force, ultimately, as Pilate and Herod. Even the thieves crucified with Jesus obey that force and feel compelled to join the crowd. And yet, I think, the Gospels do not seek to stigmatize Peter, or the thieves, or the crowd as a whole, or the Jews as a people, but to reveal the enormous power of mimetic contagion -- a revelation valid for the entire chain of murders stretching from the Passion back to 'the foundation of the world.'"
** James Alison, in a 2007 lecture entitled "Love Your Enemy: Within a Divided Self," talks about Jesus's command in Matthew 5, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you":
"The instruction is not one about being a doormat, it is one about how to be free. 'Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you' means 'do not be towards them as they are towards you, for then you will be run by them, and you and they will become ever more functions of each other, grinding each other down towards destruction. ... Instead of that, allow your identity to be given to you by your Father who is in heaven, who is not in any sort of reciprocity with them, and is able to be towards them as one holding them in being and loving them, without reacting against them.'"
Alison says that to change the pattern of our desires so wholly requires prayer, a recognition of our similarity with our enemies; this will "'eventually empower you to be towards your enemy as God is. Thus you will be free of any contagion from their violence towards you'."
Alison also speaks, in Blindsided by God: Reconciliation from the underside (2006), of the Holy Spirit's power to operate "neither from fear, nor from necessity, nor from togetherness, nor from contagion, nor from hate, nor from vengeance, nor from survival, nor from any other of the structuring forces of our society. And so it enables the person who is moved by it and recreated by it to begin to swim spaciously in the midst of violence without that violence infecting them."
** Drasko Dizdar, citing both Girard and Alison in his paper "Leaving the Temple" in the Australian EJournal of Theology (2004), says:
"Humanity is, indeed, so easily misled -- and not least by those who 'come in my name, saying: I am! – leading many astray' (Mark 13:6). The contagion of violence, working through fear, anxiety, indignation, anger, resentment, vengeance, etc, infects all who are not immunised against it: 'But when you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be terrorised (throeisthe); this must happen, but the end is not yet' (Mark 13:7). Maintaining peaceful balance in a storm of contagious violence is Christ's gift...."
** G. B. Caird (in Richard B. Hays, chapter "Revelation" in The Moral Vision of the New Testament, quoted here) explains the contagion, expressed in the book of Revelation, this way:
"Evil is self-propagating. Like the Hydra, the many-headed monster can grow another head when one has been cut off. When one man wrongs another, the other may retaliate, bear a grudge, or take his injury out on a third person. Whichever he does, there are now two evils where before there was one; and a chain reaction is started, like the spreading of a contagion. Only if the victim absorbs the wrong and so puts it out of currency, can it be prevented from going any further."
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The work of CeaseFire seems to be to convince the victims to imitate another model, to absorb the disease, to keep each other from reacting against 'the enemy,' and thus to keep the violent contagion from spreading and eventually to free the community from the disease.
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Read the article for more details about the violence interruptors, why they turn from violent perpetrators to interruptors, how they operate (e.g., they "respond to every shooting and stabbing victim taken to the hospital"), founder Slutkin's background, the impact of CeaseFire on communities, its struggles for funding, etc.
20:40 Posted in community , crime , death , girardian anthropology , health and medicine , other people said it , politics, government and law , pop culture , theology, spirituality, philosophy , travel and place | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
28 April 2008
What I'm Reading Online - Our Personal Connection To What Is Wrong
>> SACRALISING DRESS
This article at Anderson Cooper's 360 Blog by a former female Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saint, interested me because it seems to concern sacralising behaviour (related post).
"Women lost a lot of rights in 1953. They no longer had any say in who they could marry nor could they choose how to dress. The way this was spun was that since the community had come through the raid so successfully, it was now ready to practice a higher form of God's law. (God is always the explanation when things get more restrictive; change is presented as a prize for being righteous and faithful. We were always told we were worthy of a higher law.)"
She reiterates the idea a little further down the page:
"The clothing also desexualizes women. Our chests are flattened out and any natural shape is hidden.
"We were always told by Warren Jeffs when the dress and choices became more restrictive that is was a sign that 'God loves you so much he wants you to be more like him.' (We believed Warren received direct revelations from God.) What we were losing were rights and any sense of control over our lives and all individuality."
As mentioned in a study of religious and secular communes in the previous blog post, the study's authors concluded that "ritual constraints are not by themselves enough to sustain co-operation in a community -- what is needed in addition is a belief that those constraints are sanctified."
>> LIVING CLOSE TO NATURE = POVERTY AND MISERY, or ENRICHING RELATIONSHIPS with earth and others? Or both?
"Couldn't God Have Designed A Gentler Universe?" by Jesuit astronomer Guy Consolmagno SJ at Thinking Faith: The Online Journal of the British Jesuits got my attention because I just finished reading Three Cups of Tea for a bookgroup, which is about American Greg Mortenson's mission to build schools in Islamic countries (Pakistan and Afghanistan). Twice in that book there's a sort of teaser for a comparison-contrast argument that never actually happens. Early in the book, the question is raised whether the rural mountain town that Greg is so taken with is a paradise, because the people seem happy, they are welcoming, they smile a lot, they are patient and accepting of what happens, they have leisure time, they have close relationships with each other and live intimately with the land and seasons, or a miserable backwater, because the people have high rates of goiters, cataracts, malnutrition and infant mortality, almost no access to health care, live in frigid temperatures for half the year, and work very hard to survive. Later in the book, there is a moment's musing about a 'hard' but 'pure' life of such people, and what Western technological influences like roads, bridges and buildings will do to the close relationship those people have to their land.
Consolmagno's words resonated with that in my mind:
"There's an odd divide in Western culture nowadays. We've become separated from nature. We have air-conditioned homes, air-conditioned cars, air-conditioned offices, air-conditioned lives. [In far northern climes, substitute 'well-heated' for air-conditioned.] We spend most of our lives wrapped in cotton wool. If we feel pain, we want it to stop, now.
"Well-lit streets at night that mean that most people never see the Milky Way -- or at least not until the lights go out. After the Northridge earthquake in southern California in January 1994, the phones at the Griffith Planetarium in Los Angeles started ringing off the hooks as people wanted to know why the earthquake made the sky look so scary. The earthquake struck at 4:30 a.m., while it was still dark outside. When people rushed through their blacked-out homes to the outdoors, a million people saw something in the skies over Los Angeles they'd never seen before: stars. And they were terrified. ...
I spent two years in the Peace Corps in Africa.I saw there how we used to live, back before flush toilets and neon lights. People lived close to nature, in a way that hardly anyone in America does anymore. And I learned in Africa that there’s a word for people who live close to nature: starving.
Our lifestyle puts a heavy toll on the environment; but so does the lifestyle of the desperate people in Kenya or Haiti, who strip the forests bare in their day-to-day struggle to stay alive. So I don’t necessarily mean to disparage our cotton-swabbed existence. My point is just to point it out, because the shock we experience when a natural disaster hits us is precisely the wrench of being jerked out of our cotton-wool womb and forced to confront nature. Nature can be hostile as well as beautiful; nature gives us food and gives us death."
The rest is worth reading, though no answers are given.
>> Two articles on the HIGH PERCENTAGE OF IMPRISONMENT in the U.S.:
Adam Liptak in the NYT (23 April) writes "Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations'" and Marie Gottschalk writes "Two Separate Societies: One in Prison, One Not" in the WaPo (15 April), both on the same topic.
Gottschalk points to a recent Pew Center study which showed "that for the first time in this country's history, more than one in every 100 adults is in jail or prison" and one in every 32 adults is or has either been "incarcerated, on parole or probation or under some other form of state or local supervision." The U.S. incarceration rate "is 5 to 12 times that of other industrialized countries as well as being the highest in the world." The rate is ten times higher for African-American men: One in 9 young black men is imprisoned.
Liptak elaborates on the stats: "The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners. Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes -- from writing bad checks to using drugs -- that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations."
Gottschalk, citing hearings held by Senator James Webb (D-Va) last October, says that the increases in incarceration are not "driven so much by an increase in crime as by the way we chose to respond to crime," with tougher sentencing guidelines. Her main point is that "the leading presidential candidates have not identified mass imprisonment as a central issue, even though it is arguably the country's top civil rights concern."
Liptak points to more reasons than simply tougher sentencing guidelines for the high U.S. incarceration rate (which, he notes, seems to have led to decreases in crime, although Canada's crime has likewise decreased with no concurrent increase in incarceration rates), and he discusses each factor separately:
"Criminologists and legal experts here and abroad point to a tangle of factors to explain America's extraordinary incarceration rate: higher levels of violent crime [a murder rate 4 times higher than many Western European nations], harsher sentencing laws, a legacy of racial turmoil, a special fervor in combating illegal drugs, the American temperament, and the lack of a social safety net. Even democracy plays a role, as judges -- many of whom are elected, another American anomaly -- yield to populist demands for tough justice."
Is this high rate of imprisonment our country's nuanced form of mob justice?
Concerning the factor of "American temperament," Liptak notes that "some scholars have found that English-speaking nations have higher prison rates. 'Although it is not at all clear what it is about Anglo-Saxon culture that makes predominantly English-speaking countries especially punitive, they are,' wrote Michael H. Tonry, a professor of law and public policy at the University of Minnesota, in Crime, Punishment and Politics in Comparative Perspective (2007).
"'It could be related to economies that are more capitalistic and political cultures that are less social democratic than those of most European countries,' Mr. Tonry wrote. 'Or it could have something to do with the Protestant religions with strong Calvinist overtones that were long influential.'"
>> WHY BOTHER WITH ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY?
That's what Michael Pollan ask, and answers, in his article titled "Why Bother" in the NYT Magazine (20 April). Pollan examines some of the obstacles and justifications for doing nothing, or very little:
Why bother to take any steps in the direction of reducing my footprint on the Earth "when I know full well that halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who's positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I'm struggling no longer to emit."
And even if, for the sake of virtue, "I decide I am going to bother, there arises the whole vexed question of getting it right. Is eating local or walking to work really going to reduce my carbon footprint?" (Pollan points to studies that show they may not. )
"If determining the carbon footprint of food is really this complicated, and I've got to consider not only 'food miles' but also whether the food came by ship or truck and how lushly the grass grows in New Zealand, then maybe on second thought I'll just buy the imported chops at Costco, at least until the experts get their footprints sorted out."
His argument for making our daily, individual lives more sustainable is this:
"Whatever we can do as individuals to change the way we live at this suddenly very late date does seem utterly inadequate to the challenge. It's hard to argue with Michael Specter, in a recent New Yorker piece on carbon footprints, when he says: 'Personal choices, no matter how virtuous, ... cannot do enough. It will also take laws and money.' So it will. Yet it is no less accurate or hardheaded to say that laws and money cannot do enough, either; that it will also take profound changes in the way we live. Why? Because the climate-change crisis is at its very bottom a crisis of lifestyle -- of character, even. The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us (consumer spending represents 70 percent of our economy), and most of the rest of them made in the name of our needs and desires and preferences. "
Pollan cites Wendell Berry, who 30 years ago "was impatient with people who wrote checks to environmental organizations while thoughtlessly squandering fossil fuel in their everyday lives -- the 1970s equivalent of people buying carbon offsets to atone for their Tahoes and Durangos. Nothing was likely to change until we healed the 'split between what we think and what we do.' For Berry, the 'why bother' question came down to a moral imperative: 'Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live.'"
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Much more to Pollan's article (specialisation, hidden energy costs, why we should take individual steps anyway), but where this last bit leads me is back to a perhaps romantic notion of the 'purity' -- or at least the honesty -- of living life close to the land, and that state of being contrasted to the cultural free-floating angst, the urge to crime and urge to punishment (leading to high rates of incarceration and a punitive justice system), the need to sacralise and the need to artificially create meaning that we find widespread in our culture, where we are so much more likely to be living without integrity, living "the best we can," as Berry says, in at least a veiled awareness of our own complicity in unsustainable living, in an unnecessarily harsh 'justice' system, in the war we are waging and its collateral damage as well as its intended damage to humans, other animals, and the Earth, and so on. We can watch reality TV, and it's an almost-but-not-quite successful effort to screen ourselves from Reality, from "our personal connection to what is wrong."
10:50 Posted in community , consumption , crime , earthcare and environment , girardian anthropology , other people said it , politics, government and law , pop culture , simple living , theology, spirituality, philosophy , travel and place | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
25 April 2008
Collective Violence - Examples - Part III
It's been 16 days since my last Mob Violence post. The delay isn't due to lack of material but instead to being overwhelmed with material. The news from the Patna area of India would be enough by itself to fill this entry.
(If you want to know why I'm doing this, read the first posting.)
On with the show ...
1. 25 March, Port Harcourt, Nigeria:
The Advocate reports on the brutal beating of a chapter director of Changing Attitude Nigeria, a gay rights group, during a funeral service: "A man approached him while the congregation sang a hymn, asking him to speak with him outside. He said he was then attacked with slapping, punching, kicking, and spitting by a group of six men.
"'While beating me they were shouting, "You notorious homosexual, you think can run away from us for your notorious group to cause more abomination in our land?" Those who attacked me were well-informed about us, so I suspect an insider or one of the leaders of our Anglican church have hands in this attack.' ... The attackers "said they would not rest until gays are silenced from activism."
"Colin Coward, director of Changing Attitude England, said in the release that violence against LGBT people has been encouraged by the Church of Nigeria's leaders, including notoriously antigay archbishop Peter Akinola, who is primate of the Church of Nigeria."
Conformity: Homosexuals are likely scapegoating targets in a majority heterosexual society, particularly one that considers homosexuality 'an abomination.' The attackers seem to have found meaning in their violence, announcing that they would not rest until their mission was accomplished.
2. 9 April, Karachi, Pakistan: 7 die in Pakistani clashes
"Rival groups of lawyers fought Wednesday in Pakistan, triggering greater mob violence that left at least seven people dead in Karachi, police said.
"Five of the victims, including a woman, were burned alive when rioters set fire to Tahir Plaza, the Press Trust of India reported. Fifteen more people were reported injured, and a bank and several vehicles were torched, PTI said.
"The confrontation between the lawyers started near the office of the Sindh High Court Bar Association over the alleged manhandling of former federal minister Sher Aftgan in Lahore the previous night. The violence then spread elsewhere in the city with armed men exchanging gunfire at several locations, PTA reported." Per UPI
Conformity: Not much info here. The spreading of the violence to other quarters speaks to the contagion aspect of violence and mob actions.
3. 15 April, Zweletemba township, Worcester, South Africa:
"Thomas Chamiso, 32, an Ethiopian refugee, ran the Thembikosi Trading Store in Fulang Street in Zweletemba township, Worcester. A month ago, he was one of 50 foreigners chased out of the town by local residents.
"With his four cousins, Chamiso fled Zweletemba with only their wallets and cellphones. They lost their refugee permits, business papers, financial records, identity documents and driver's licences. 'Maybe we will sleep on the street. What will we eat? We have nothing. How can I start a business again? I have nothing left, nothing. Who will give us money? We have lost our humanity in Worcester.'
"As one drives from the bustling town of Worcester ... it is hard to imagine that this place, where the shacks have neat gardens and children play in the streets, could have been the scene of violent all-night looting of 23 foreign-owned shops.
"Foreigners, about 20 from Somalia, 15 from Ethiopia and a handful from Zimbabwe, the Congo, China, Pakistan and Bangladesh, were driven away on the night of Friday, March 7.
"The violence is said to have erupted after two shooting incidents in which a teenager was killed and a woman injured. Two Somalis have been arrested, one on a charge of murder and one on a charge of attempted murder. Both were released on bail and are scheduled to appear in Worcester Magistrate's Court again on April 25. ...
"South African shopkeeper 'Lani' Rasi, whose parents own Vukuzenzele Spaza Shop, said it was as though the community 'were just hungry for violence'."
"[Worcester police spokesperson Captain Mzikayise] Moloi said the perception of many locals that Somalis were murderous and intent on 'killing our children' was an issue that needed to be addressed. 'Locals don't acknowledge how many people their children have killed,' he said. ...
"Duncan Breen of the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (Cormsa) said the Worcester attacks seemed to fall into the same pattern as other recent xenophobic attacks across the country.
'There appears to have been tension building for a while, and it just took a trigger to ignite into mob violence. One of the common challenges we see is that many foreign nationals and South Africans have very little interaction, which allows negative stereotypes of foreign nationals to remain unchallenged.'"
Conformity: Pretty typical choice of scapegoats, people who aren't (for the most part) an intrinsic part of the community, strangers and unknowns on whom the locals can project all manner of evil. All 'foreigners' could be tarred with the same brush. What surprised me most was the police spokesperson's comment that while locals may perceive Somalis as child killers, the same locals don't take into account how many people their children have killed!
4. 17 April, Bihar, Patna, India: Two men lynched in Bihar for theft
"In yet another case of 'mob justice', two people suspected of committing a theft were lynched by a mob in a Bihar village, the police said Thursday. The victims, identified as Mahant Nat and Butan Nat, were brutally beaten after they were caught allegedly while stealing a water pump set Wednesday night in Pokhra village of Siwan district, about 150 km from here. Both victims belonged to the economically weaker nomadic Nat community.
"'An angry mob of villagers caught them and beat them to death with bricks, bamboo sticks and iron rods. One eye of Mahant Nat was gouged out by the mob,' police sources said." Reported by ThaiIndian News.
Conformity: No sense of the size of the 'angry mob' or the unifying aspects of the violence. As I commented last time, with the regularity of these mob lynchings in Bihar, one can only assume that the feeling of unity and peace during and following the lynching, if there is any, is extremely short-lived. The victims' status (or lack thereof) -- poor and nomadic -- conforms to Girardian predictions for typical scapegoats, those on the margins.
5. 19 April, El Alto ("La Paz's destitute and neglected satellite city"), Bolivia, S.A.:
The BBC reports on mob violence in January against two innocent bystanders mistaken for perpetrators:
"Tony and his friend arrived at a birthday party in the Bolivian city of El Alto and realised they had come empty handed. After greeting the host, they went to find a shop. But as they came out of the house a girl who had just been the victim of an attempted robbery saw them, and alerted the neighbours.
"'People started to point at us, they started to bang the doors yelling we were robbers,' Tony told the BBC as he walked down the streets where he was attacked, his face still swollen from the beatings.
"'All the other people around there woke up and were coming out of their homes with whatever they had at hand, like sticks. They started to beat me insanely, with their hands, with rocks.'
"'They were out of control, not listening at all … we were yelling: "you are confused, we are innocent, we are innocent, please", we begged a lot, even crying', Tony added.
(The article continues with a discussion of Bolivia's increase in mob violence and of the distinction between community justice and mob justice.)
Conformity: The mob was not interested in the guilt or innocence of the people it was beating; they came out of their homes ready to attack whoever was there. Tony even recounts the accusatory gesture: "People started to point at us."
6. 24 April, Bihar, Patna, India: Two [more] beaten to death in Bihar
Headline looks the same, but it's a different case a week later, as ThaiIndian News reports:
"In two incidents of 'mob justice', a man was lynched for allegedly attempting to rape a girl while another man was beaten to death for opposing extramarital relations of his wife in Bihar. Mithilesh Singh was lynched for allegedly attempting to rape a girl at Kelbanni-Dahiyar village under Rosra police station in Samastipur district, about 100 km from here, police said Thursday.
"Singh entered the house of Manju Devi, a ward member in the village, and allegedly tried to rape her twelve-year-old daughter. But the family members caught him and beat him to death, a police official said.
"In another case, Nasib Paswan was beaten to death by the family members of his wife for opposing her extramarital relations in Betadi village in Bhojpur district, about 70 km from here."
Conformity: The first case doesn't sound as much like mob justice as protection of a child by her family. The second case is perplexing -- the man was killed by his wife's family because he didn't like her having an affair? Probably more to this than the short article can convey.
7. 24 April, Bihar, Patna, India: Man lynched for delay in serving tea:
"In yet another case of mob violence, a tea shop owner was beaten to death by a group of youths for delay in serving tea in Bihar's Araria district, the police said on Thursday. Abdul Qayum, in his 40s, was the victim of the violent act. ...
The police said some youths were angered by the delay in serving tea. They first beat up Qayum's son Bittu. When Qayum intervened to rescue his son, they severely beat him with bamboo stick and bricks, they said. He died on the way to hospital and his son was admitted to the hospital for treatment, the police said.
"According to the police, the victim was busy serving tea to people at his shop and requested others to wait for some time. But the youths took the request as an act of humiliation." Reported at Rediff.
Conformity: The lynching was seen as justified because the youths felt humiliated.
8. 25 April, Gotkharik village in Bhagalpur, Patna, India: Mentally challenged man lynched
From India enews: "A mentally challenged man was beaten to death by a mob in a Bihar village on charges of trying to give injections to children. ... According to the police, some girl students informed the villagers that a man was trying to lure them so that he could administer injections.
"A group of people attacked him with bamboo sticks, bricks and stones. He was seriously injured and fell unconscious. Some people took him to the house of a village council member. But before the police could intervene, he was dragged out and beaten to death.
"Deputy Inspector General (eastern range) Raghunath Prasad Singh said the police were yet to identify the victim. 'No injection needle was found (on him),' said Singh."
Conformity: 'Mentally challenged' is almost shorthand for 'likely scapegoat.' (Bamboo sticks and bricks certainly seem the brutal weapons of choice in Patna.)
9. 26 April, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia:
(This is a follow-up to the actual attack, reported by GoldCoast.com.)
"Some of the teenagers responsible for a sickening attack on an off-duty Gold Coast police officer and his girlfriend have walked free from court, smiling and laughing. Meanwhile, their victims, Constable Rawson Armitage and Michelle Dodge, who have been left physically and psychologically devastated by the attack, made a secret exit from the court yesterday, away from the spotlight.
Constable Armitage "told the court he was questioning his career as a police officer, had lost his confidence and desire to have children because of the violence inflicted on him by 'the pack of animals'.
"Of the nine teenagers sentenced in Southport District Court yesterday, six -- including ringleader Tiani Slockee, 18 -- walked free with either probation and community service or a suspended detention sentence.
"Two other teenagers, who assaulted Constable Armitage while he was unconscious, were sentenced to 15 months in juvenile detention.
"Many of the teenagers allowed to go free yesterday were happy to pose for the cameras, safe in the knowledge the media cannot identify them. Queensland's Juvenile Justices Act prevents the media from doing so.
"Described as inflicting 'mindless, gutless, mob violence' by Crown prosecutor Stuart Shearer, the gang worked together to render the couple completely defenceless as they walked home from a night out in Coolangatta.
"Constable Armitage was beaten unconscious and his head then stomped on.
"Ms Dodge was repeatedly punched and large chunks of her hair and scalp were ripped out as she tried to call for help.
"Alcohol abuse, peer pressure and a lack of parental supervision were raised as explanations for the attack."
Conformity: The article doesn't talk about what led the children (in their minds) to attack the couple, so it's hard to draw conclusions. Obviously, lots of communities have alcohol abuse, lack of parental supervision, and peer pressure without mob violence resulting, though those conditions certainly increase the chances. The article does imply that the teens are perhaps not unhappy with their identity as savage attackers.
21:25 Posted in community , crime , death , girardian anthropology , lists , politics, government and law , travel and place | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
09 April 2008
Collective Violence - Examples - Part II
I wasn't sure how often I'd be posting stories of contemporary mob violence but it looks like there are enough incidents to post a list of them every two weeks or less. (If you want to know why I'm doing this, read the first posting.)
Be sure to read the last incident, which is different from the others.
Police in Igunga have shot dead a 20-year old youth and are holding 14 people in connection with mob violence in which the Igunga Police Station was burned. ... The regional police chief said an angry mob of more than a thousand people, holding stones, laid siege on the police station on Thursday, threatening to kill two women, Hawa Athman and Malizia Ramadhani, residents of Nkokoto Street in Igunga. Their neighbours accuse them of practising witchcraft, prompting the police to put them under protective custody.
Conformity: The accusation of 'witch' makes those accused seem to be outsiders. There are no details about how the accusation came about, what perceptions it was based on, whether the women had caused perceived harm to anyone. The group attacked the police station where the women were in protective custody because they felt the police were delaying 'justice' in this case. That there were more than 1,000 people in the mob indicates strong community unanimity in the accusation.
Conformity: Not much info here. This part of India sees a lot of lynchings, so obviously if there is a sense of peace and unity afterwards, it's very short-lived. The most interesting part of this report is the family's testimony that he is not an habitual thief. Remember that in the report on the man lynched on 26 March in Bihar it was said that "there seems to be no resentment as the man had criminal antecedents." In this new case, the family may be signalling that the man did not deserve this treatment and that there may well be "resentment." (Or they may just be upholding family honour.)
4. 3 April 2008, Sheffield, England, UK:
"Three Asian men were locked up this week for their part in the 'mob violence' that led to the death of an Iraqi Kurd on the streets of Sheffield. Ismail Rashid, aged 42, was the victim of an 'honour killing', beaten to death because he had been sleeping with a married Pakistani woman. A gang of up to 20 attacked him ... in June last year and he died in the Northern General Hospital eight days later, despite brain surgery. Amjad Latif, aged 27, armed himself with part of a roof rack from his car and hit Mr Rashid around the head, knocking him to the ground, Sheffield Crown Court was told. A 'sustained attack' by others followed, with Ashraf Latif, 18, and Ishtiaq Ahmed, 19, both admitting kicking him as he lay on the ground. On Tuesday they were sentenced to a total of 20-and-a-half years in custody. ... The purposes of sentencing in a case like this are clear – to punish the individual offenders and to send a clear message that the use of mob violence in the streets cannot be tolerated in a civilised society." The catalyst for the attack had apparently been Rashid's spraypainting of his nickname 'Rambo' while he was drunk on the front of a shop owned the Latif brothers' cousin.
Conformity: The victim was seen as deserving violence, because he was breaking a cultural (and presumably religious) taboo. He further 'incited' his attackers by flaunting himself and defacing another's property. In a 'civilised society' that places a cultural prohibition on extra-marital affairs, the victim probably would not be attacked or killed (though he might be, but probably only by one person, not a group) but would likely be scapegoated in more subtle ways, by economic and social exclusion, by ruining his reputation, and so on. The woman would probably be scapegoated as well. In some civilised societies, there is little or no prohibition on extra-marital affairs, perhaps because the role of religion is minimal in those areas. ? Are there 'civilised' countries where such things are handled by a civil legal system?
5. 1 April 2008, Waycross, GA, USA: Third-graders plot to harm teacher.
"A group of third-graders plotted to attack their teacher, bringing a broken steak knife, handcuffs, duct tape and other items for the job and assigning children tasks including covering the windows and cleaning up afterward, police said Tuesday. The plot by as many as nine boys and girls at Center Elementary School in south Georgia was a serious threat, Waycross Police Chief Tony Tanner said. ... The scheme involved a division of roles, Tanner said. One child's job was to cover windows so no one could see outside, he said. Another was supposed to clean up after the attack."
"The children, ages 8 and 9, were apparently mad at the teacher because she had scolded one of them for standing on a chair."
Conformity: For 8- and 9-year-olds, the teacher is an outsider by virtue of both her exalted role and her advanced age. Justification for the attack was that one of their classmates was 'unjustly' scolded for what they probably considered a minor infraction. The unusual thing about this case is that the mob attack was heavily premeditated, not spontaneous. If it had actually occured, however, others might have joined spontaneously, sucked into the excitement of the moment.
6. A different kind of mob story.
J. Dunne at Through the Eyes of Faith: Holy Cross Ghana blogs about witnessing and transforming an incident of mob violence last month.
At around Noon that same day [Good Friday] I heard a loud ruckus outside the school library where I was working with a student. I turned to see a few students running across the assembly area towards the canteen just outside the campus grounds. As I walked out of the room I saw about a hundred of our boys gathered around the canteen outside the campus.
I knew what it was before I got there. It was what I feared… Ewee. In the Fante language Ewee means thief. Now why does that cause me to fear? Stealing in Ghana, or in Africa, for that matter is a pretty serious crime. The thing is thieves aren't turned over to the police, in fact, the police sometimes don't ever hear about the incidents. When a thief is caught he faces mob justice which usually ends up with the thief being beaten, humiliated and then lynched, drowned, or burned to death. The general justification for such brutal punishment is that to steal something that someone has worked their whole lives for is like taking that person's life; so you should be killed for doing such a thing.
Anyway, the story is this. A young man was caught trying to steal a TV antennae in Anaji, where our school is located. The small mob stripped the man naked and beat him severely. They walked him down the road humiliating him in front of all who were present until the thief ran toward our school for some vain hope of refuge. His accusers continued to beat and insult him outside our school grounds.
When I finally got to the scene I was overcome with anger. There were my own students laughing, insulting, and encouraging the other men to beat the thief. Once of the students ran up to me laughing like a jolly fool, 'Hey Bro…look look Eweeo!' I shoved him to the ground and started screaming at the tops of my lungs for the students to go inside. I don't think they ever saw me that angry because they all scattered and ran inside. One of the teachers came out behind me and helped me to get the rest of the boys back inside.
I turned back to see the thief crying and begging for his life whilst bleeding all over. His accusers stood over him holding big sticks and shovels. They were shouting insults in the vernacular and slapping him across the face.
They wanted to kill him. I felt sick. I couldn't stand it so I stepped up to the accusers and begged them to let him go. At first they didn't mind me at all. Almost as if I wasn't there, but eventually they began to move away from the thief until there was only one man left. He still stood there holding his stick threatening the thief by slamming it on the bench behind where the thief was sitting. I looked at the man and told him he was sick.
All of the students were still watching from inside the campus. I had to do something for the young man. I took off my undershirt and gave it to the poor naked criminal. We made eye contact for about one second before I turned and headed back inside the school.
As I walked back into the school all of my students with impatient tones demanded to know why I would do such a thing. 'Bro why would you give that man your shirt? He is a thief.'
I was so bewildered by my mixture of rage and discouragement that I could hardly speak, but I did manage to answer their question. 'Because I am a Christian.'
I don't think they understood me.
10:00 Posted in community , crime , death , girardian anthropology , lists , politics, government and law , travel and place | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this
28 March 2008
Collective Violence - Examples
The first in another series, this one documenting mob violence, vigilante justice, and crowd retaliation around the world.
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Mark Heim has well summarised Rene Girard's ideas on the expediency of scapegoating and sacrifice as a (temporary) peace-making tool, a way to limit the contagion of violence in a society:
"Social life, particularly in its infancy, is fatally subject to plagues of rivalry and vengeance. Escalating cycles of retaliation are the original social disease. Without finding a way to treat this violence, human society can hardly get started. The ability to break this vicious cycle appears as a kind of miracle. At some point, when feuding threatens to dissolve a community, spontaneous and irrational mob violence erupts against some distinctive person or minority in the group. They are accused of the worst crimes the group can imagine, crimes that by their very enormity might have caused the terrible plight the community now experiences. They are lynched.
"The sad good thing that happens as a result of this bad thing is that the scapegoating actually works. In the wake of the murder [sometimes just an ouster], communities find that this sudden war of all against one has delivered them from the war of each against all. The sacrifice of one person as a scapegoat discharges the pending acts of retribution. It 'clears the air.' This benefit seems a startling, even magical result from a simple execution. The sudden peace confirms the desperate charges that the victim had been behind the crisis to begin with. If the scapegoat's death is the solution, the scapegoat must have been the cause. ...
"Rituals of sacrifice originated in this way, says Girard. They were tools to fend off social crisis. And in varied forms they are with us still. The prescription is that divisions in the community must be reduced to but one division, the division of all against one common victim or one minority group. Prime candidates are the marginal and the weak, or those isolated by their very prominence. Typically, they will be charged with violating the community's most sacred taboos. The process does not just accept innocent victims, it prefers them-- 'outsiders' who are not closely linked to established groups in the society."
"No one thought out this process, and its effectiveness depends on a certain blindness to its workings. Myth reflects the scapegoat event but does not describe it. Myth is the product of a collective killing that all the actors found completely justified, entirely necessary and powerfully beneficent. It is the memory of a clean conscience that never registered the presence of a victim at all."
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Keeping in mind James Alison's comment, from a Sept. 2006 interview: "It is easy to look at mobbing and think: how primitive those people are. It is much more difficult to catch oneself being complicit in exactly the same forms of violence disguised in the values of 'religion' or 'family' or 'civilization.'"
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I'm recounting current accounts of mob "justice" to witness to this ongoing form of sacrifice and so-called peace-making, and to see how -- as far as is possible having only media accounts of the incidents -- they do or don't conform to the aspects Girard and others have described.
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Four stories this morning:
1. (28 March) Villagers catch 'witch', beat up and parade her, in New Delhi, India:
"When she [returned to] the village on Thursday, villagers tied her to a tree, beat her up, sheared and set her hair on fire. They then tied her hands and paraded her through the village, with even the village elders joining in. The incident took place a stone's throw away [pun intended?] from the local police station."
Another article about the event reports that "The entire village joined hands in punishing the woman."
The police did arrest six of those abusing the woman, and they arrested the woman for "conning people." The CNN-IBN news article suggests that "the locals may have beaten up the woman because it is a 'traditional thing' to do when they are dissatisfied." (Apparently, per another CNN article, she had been brought in previously to help cure a sick woman in the village but had not succeeded.) NDTV also reports the incident.
Conformity: A 'witch' from another town is certainly an outsider. Her 'crime' was to set herself up as 'better than' others (able to cure the sick), and secondly, to fail. Her failure to cure may leave the man without hope, desperate, and it may also leave him humiliated for having pinned his hopes on her cure. The scapegoating seems to have united the townspeople, as the village "joined hands" in punishing her and the elders lent their support, too.
2. (26 March) Xenophobic violence: In South Africa, at refugee settlements near Praetoria, mobs of people are attacking those they consider outsiders, throwing stones at them, torching their houses, and in some cases beating and killing them.
IOL reports that "about 300 immigrants [have been] forced from their shacks by marauding gang