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franceslievensBeing home with my parents for the weekend means I end up reading three different newspapers over the course of two days. This weekend they all had those torture pictures somewhere. I was struck by the horror of these, by the lack of sympathy of the torturers towards their victim. The dogs they used to frighten these prisoners in Iraq probably got a better treatment -- a humane treatment. There were articles under around above these photographs. But I don't know what they said. I couldn't look at the pictures, but my eyes were pulled to them, driven by a desire to see the horror, the inhumane. I turned the page and didn't look again.
On Thursday (last week) a documentary on tv caught my eye. Nothing on Iraq this time, but much closer to home. It told the story of three friends in Ardoyne, Belfast, Northern Ireland. All three of them had commited suicide, only a couple of months in between the first and the last death. All three had found death to be the only solution to the dispair of their situations. There is much unemployment. The quarter still carries the wounds and scars of the longlasting battle between catholics and protestants. Paramilitary groups reign. In a place where the police is distrusted, they are the law. And law enforcement means beating the crap out of youngsters that did something wrong according to their self imposed standards. These three kids were all confronted by those groups once. They were taken from their home and beaten to a pulp. The nightmare haunted them. They were scared that it would happen again, and there was no-one to protect them. The brother of one of the three boys had been through a beating himself, and told on screen how his life was like now, how he had to go on, but didn't know how, how he thought of giving up. And there was I, on the other side, sitting in my couch, thinking "What can I do?" and feeling bad for being part of a mankind that does these things, lets these things happen.
We all have a little psychopath in us, a little demon that doesn't feel the other's pain: The manager that fires two dozen people, the professor that deliberately asks the hard questions, you when you put the garbage in the middle of the pavement, just to annoy others. The so-called prison-experiment is there to "prove" it: whenever you put someone in a position where (s)he has power, (s)he is bound to abuse it. That is what we see in Iraq. How far do you dare to go? But this isn't some sick performance of which I don't understand the meaning. This is a real life, with real fears. And what happens next? Will these people too won't be able to sleep? Are they scared that they might come back? Will they give up, cos there is nothing worth living for and someone has taken away all the dignity they had left?
On Thursday (last week) a documentary on tv caught my eye. Nothing on Iraq this time, but much closer to home. It told the story of three friends in Ardoyne, Belfast, Northern Ireland. All three of them had commited suicide, only a couple of months in between the first and the last death. All three had found death to be the only solution to the dispair of their situations. There is much unemployment. The quarter still carries the wounds and scars of the longlasting battle between catholics and protestants. Paramilitary groups reign. In a place where the police is distrusted, they are the law. And law enforcement means beating the crap out of youngsters that did something wrong according to their self imposed standards. These three kids were all confronted by those groups once. They were taken from their home and beaten to a pulp. The nightmare haunted them. They were scared that it would happen again, and there was no-one to protect them. The brother of one of the three boys had been through a beating himself, and told on screen how his life was like now, how he had to go on, but didn't know how, how he thought of giving up. And there was I, on the other side, sitting in my couch, thinking "What can I do?" and feeling bad for being part of a mankind that does these things, lets these things happen.
We all have a little psychopath in us, a little demon that doesn't feel the other's pain: The manager that fires two dozen people, the professor that deliberately asks the hard questions, you when you put the garbage in the middle of the pavement, just to annoy others. The so-called prison-experiment is there to "prove" it: whenever you put someone in a position where (s)he has power, (s)he is bound to abuse it. That is what we see in Iraq. How far do you dare to go? But this isn't some sick performance of which I don't understand the meaning. This is a real life, with real fears. And what happens next? Will these people too won't be able to sleep? Are they scared that they might come back? Will they give up, cos there is nothing worth living for and someone has taken away all the dignity they had left?
