Response to response to snatch theft article

The article I wrote last Sunday on the lady who ran over the snatch thief looks to have produced a response worthy of unsettled hornets.

Somebody wrote on their blog a scathing reply, with this sentence in the final paragraph: "I don’t get how you can even get your bloody article published."

It was inspiring enough for me to craft a reply.

I was directed to your blog from your email.

I understand your anger against snatch thieves. That, added to the fact that they seem to callously put people's lives in danger just for maybe a hundred Ringgit seems unjust enough that you would want to hurt them grievously - kill them even.

You ask me how I feel if somebody close to me was killed by such a snatch thief.

I would naturally want to grab hold of him, torture him mercilessly, keeping him barely alive so I can inflict the maximum amount of pain. I would do this, knowing that no amount of physical suffering could make up for my emotional loss. Yet, I would endeavour to make him feel fear, perhaps hurting his loved ones too to make him know the gaping maw that lies within me. I would perhaps injure those he cares for until I see the loss in his eyes, and then perhaps go beyond it for good measure. I would show practically no mercy, except for him to contrast his predicament with what the absence of pain for him to really appreciate his condition.

This is why I hope somebody would stop me from doing it. My fear is that if pushed I would do this, and I know right now, right here, that this would put me on the wrong side of civilization that I would like to see the human race to be. Mahatma Gandhi agreed too, when he said "An eye for an eye makes everyone blind".

This is why public vendetta is illegal. This is why we don't let a person in the street take direct and vengeful reaction on those that wrong him. This is why we say, a man is innocent until proven guilty, and that the only killing deemed acceptable is in direct self-defence or as part of a state-sponsored execution.

And yet, that anger if left unassuaged will need to find a way to vent itself. If you continue to hate those that you think wronged you, then you will want to take retribution on all those that person represents.

I would like to call you a friend, if only because I think we both understand the pain that a crime can cause beyond its immediate act. If you want to get your MP to campaign for snatch thefts to be classified as attempted murder, that I would support your right to do that too.

But if you want to be part of a group that hunts down and kills a man as he flees, because somebody else on a motorcycle who killed somebody else while snatching their purse, then I apologise: I have to stand opposite you my friend, and stop a criminal act.

Labels: contradictheory