Let’s get vigilant about vigilantism
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When mobs go on the rampage, the towns they live in go down in the history books. In our recent past, Aluthgama and Beruwela and Chilaw and Dambulla record for outraged posterity the ABCDs of violence and equally explosive civic responses. There was also, a while before these, the volatile and inflammatory acts committed in Angulana, Borella, Katunayaka, Rathupaswela, and a handful of other hamlets. Some of these protests cried out against the heavy hand of police agency, or the dull crunch and thump of army jackboots enforcing ‘law’ and/or ‘order’. Even militant religious organizations were in the thick of the action – as ostensible protectors of majority rights, or evident perpetrators of ordinary crimes. Now it is the general public that appears to have taken the law into its own right hand. Does it bode well for justice under an administration that trumpets good governance that the left hand of the law does not know what the right hand of vigilantism is doing?
There are those who think – and have said so, on social media among other forums – that public reactions to the capture of rapists or the release of attempted rapists and other miscreants points to complete breakdown of law and order. They argue that vigilante justice – no matter how appropriate or relevant or necessary it may seem or it may be deemed – is not the hallmark of a decent, developing society. The egregious abuses witnessed by the people-watchers who police the people in the absence of police action include the brutal treatment dished out by an angry mob to an alleged rapist (dragged through the street – beaten, bruised, bleeding) who was detected attempting to rape a minor. It was watched or supervised by a brace of policemen. Those eyewitnesses who saw the rough justice being meted out raised the question of whether violence on the alleged perpetrator was justified – because the girl was not actually raped – and whether or not it is precisely this roughness of justice meted out or not that begets a vicious circle of lawlessness from which our country has been trying to recover…
The responses to eyewitness accounts Tweeted about – or Facebooked, to coin a phrase – were hot and bothered, and mainly occupied two camps. Those who agreed that vigilantism was a no-no under any circumstances argued that rough justice is neither poetic nor proper. “It’s not justice of any kind,” wrote one such. “The score in this case is just Senseless Violence: 2 Humanity: 0,” they also said. Others admitted that poor policing or the law’s delays had seriously hamstrung the justice system. Hammering the living daylights out of a petty criminal – and enjoying administering the beating (if the viral video is evidence enough) – “isn’t going to solve the problem”. These (what you may term) tender-minded philosophers pleaded with the people’s wrath that justice must be left to the system to mete out, being persuaded that violence only begets violence and that the law must punish crime duly and fairly in order to protect citizens from crime more effectively than at present.
Those who argued that vigilante justice was a permissible – even necessary – evil were equally passionate about their persuasions. “Vigilante justice acts when official justice doesn’t or when the public strongly suspect it won’t,” posted one. “The law is useless and we all know it,” Tweeted another, receiving this mixed response: “That doesn’t mean we should act like savages! But since the law isn’t doing anything, if only releasing these animals back into wild, vigilantes must stand their ground.” The impression that many such impassioned social media commentators wanted to leave was that criminals must be sent a message – that villains such as rapists and murderers can’t escape the people even if they (by hook or by crook) escape the police. If the law isn’t going to apprehend and punish these people, someone else has to, suggested one indignant would-be vigilante. Society has to look out for its own, recommended another, and so it often does. These tough-minded philosophers were advocating a line of thinking that smacked of a common- or garden –citizen’s take on Halifax’s dictum, revising it to make it out that “alleged rapists are not brutalized for attempting to rape little girls, but that little girls will not have alleged rapists attempt to rape them”.
In the midst of this maelstrom of social media emotion, some common sense and cooler sensibilities prevailed that bear sharing in mainstream media. Urging prompt, impartial, effective policing, one saner mind wrote in favour of streamlining law-enforcement which had become corrupt and corpulent over the course of a quarter century or so of going to pot under cover of widespread conflict in the country. Another insightful observer commented regretfully that “we have a rather angry society because people feel that anyone can commit an injustice and get away with it” – for a plethora of unreasonable reasons. (The law has its reasons for inaction of which reason itself knows nothing, that person might well have added.) Pouring balm on troubled waters, one more speculated that it’s time for that negative feeling to change, conceding however that it probably wouldn’t happen overnight because even under the rule of the Pen as opposed to the Gun, “the law often exists to serve the rich and the powerful when it is required to do so”.
Being part of these conversations, I felt that social media – like a good newspaper in the old days – is a nation talking to itself. Of course, this is Facebook-nation or Instagram-state or Twitter-country. And so only a part – and a very small part, at that – of the whole. But it is reassuring to know that wiser counsel prevails even in the deepest darkest jungles of the Net, and is being broadcast along the Web’s jungle-telegraph. Thus, this, and reassuring at that, exchange:
“After all these years, we are still coming to grips with the proper role of law and order.”
“So should we allow the law’s processes to take their course, rather than taking matters into their own hands?”
“Yes, because people are emotional and partial.”
“But don’t you think that the man who tried to rape that poor innocent minor deserved it?”
“Ah, such thinking can descend into chaos and anarchy if it’s allowed to become acceptable!”
“I’m not sure you understand that if he had not been caught – and beaten, yes – that man would have actually raped that child?”
“Are you saying he deserved the near-death beating he got, then?”
“What if it were your wife? Not that child?”
“Are you asking me: ‘Would I beat – even kill – someone who raped my wife?’ Yes. I’d do unthinkable unspeakable things to that man! That’s why I shouldn’t be the one hearing the case, passing judgment, or carrying out the sentence…”
I’m glad the conscience of my little island nation in the sun – now under a strange and sordid cloud – is talking to its civic-consciousness. I’m sad that innocents are almost raped, and alleged perpetrators are actually ravaged by mob justice. I’m mad that vigilantism has had to step in where the long arm of the law should not fear to tread (if you will forgive the mixed metaphor). I’m bad enough myself to know that I’d do unthinkable unspeakable things to someone who – no, I dare not even say it.
Sri Lanka at its best needs saving from itself at worst. Let’s hope that Good Governance sees this… And that its policy-makers fine-tune or tweak or light a fire under law-enforcement and criminal procedure apparatus so that we don’t have to bemoan once again that justice delayed is justice denied. Such a waste – and crime – and evil – to let petty criminals be crucified so that minors aren’t raped.
(This is based on a conversation–real and/or imaginatively inspired– in the wide world, and on the web)