Man to man is so unjust

Jul 26, 2009 Features / Columnists, My Column

By Adam Harris
I read somewhere that man is the greatest predator. It might have been a book by James Michener who did a novel that actually traced the origin of man on the planet. And then there was this National Geographic programme which I saw just as I was writing this piece.
That narrator said that the badger has no predator other than man himself. And I said to myself, why is man the way he is. The world is at his feet. He is free to destroy it or to preserve it. He moved from the days when he had to move from place to place as his food source moved, to the present, where he can stay in one location and get all the food he needs or wants.

He has power over the entire world because he has learned to harness the various natural energy sources; he has even created energy sources of his own by harnessing nuclear power. Man is king of this planet.
A few Sundays ago I saw on the television documentary ’60 Minutes’ that man is now approaching the stage where he can read the mind; he can actually tell a person what he has been thinking. This speaks a lot for the evolution of man who can communicate over tremendous distances without leaving his living room.
Sadly, these are not the rambling thoughts of an old man. They represent the concerns of a man who is seeing cruelty of man to man just about every day. It is a case of a man who is watching as others with power fail to harness that power. It is like the man who wants to commit suicide.
I always say to such a person that there is no hurry; you have the power to take your life at any time so why the hurry?

These thoughts flowed when I, through the efforts of reporters, encountered a man who was so severely brutalized that he could not walk. And instead of the authorities rushing him to hospital, they placed him on a bench in a police station and attempted to hide him from public view.
This man, later identified as Troy Small, was picked up as a likely suspect in the torching of the Health Ministry building. He was not subjected to the ordinary interrogation; it mattered not that he has uncontrollable shakes. He was brutalised, beaten with a hammer to say anything about the fire.
From the lips of the Police Commissioner, I learnt that the man actually implicated himself. If someone were to beat the daylights out of me I would confess to having sex with my mother or the Queen or anyone that the beater wants me to admit to. I would confess to murder, arson, gun crimes, just about anything under the sun.

The other day I happened to interview some professionals who had come to help with the justice improvement programme, and I learnt that prosecution is not about securing a conviction. Rather, it is about ensuring that justice is done.
By beating this man, whoever did it was bent on securing a conviction at all cost at the expense of justice. This cannot be what the law was meant for. It is not that beating is unusual, because even the United States has been indulging in this practice.
Man can be so cruel. We beat our partners; we molest our children and we kill each other over simple disputes. We do not talk to each other anymore and we resort to violence. This cannot be the way life was intended. Animals rarely kill their own kind but man has no such compunction.
I have seen people risk their lives to save animals. Just the other day there was a feature on a man who lost two fingers saving his dog from the jaws of an alligator. I have seen people calling firemen to get some cat out of a tree or out of some tight space; I have seen the movie Free Willy. People shoot horses when they are injured.

If man can be so kind to animals, why must he be so cruel to his own kind? We wince when we see others in pain and to this day some people resent going to the hospital to visit relatives because they cannot take the suffering. But here we have people inflicting suffering on others and actually enjoying it.
There are masochists and perverts in every society, but in this case I am sure that the people who beat Small are neither, because they would not stand by and watch their wives or children suffer.
What has happened to the good old-fashioned investigation? Why don’t our investigators canvas neighbourhoods?
I shudder to think that we are going to beat and cripple each other for the rest of our lives.

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