No toleration for violence
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How tender were the lovely faces. They were angels of the world, but their lives were taken away in a flash by an armed devil. Even more frightening, while the Americans were still shedding tears, gunshots were fired again, and another five people lost th
What kind of society is this? Are crying and feeling helpless the only things humans can do in the face of such inhumane extreme behaviour?
The 9-11 terrorist attacks in 2001 shocked the world and resulted in the deaths of 2,749 people, including the hijackers. Since then, the world mourns these innocent spirits of the dead every year on that day, and again and again on TV screens we look back on how the aircraft hit the buildings and triggered the raging flames, causing the buildings to tumble down.
How thrilling and terrible! However, the horrible spirit is still wandering around and the desire to take revenge is still following us. Extremists and avengers did not wake up after the tragic killings, but engaged in more killings and endless revenge. When people were still mourning the victims of 9-11, more innocent lives, including those of unarmed women and children, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and the Arab world have been taken by the bombers of the US and its allies.
Shouldn’t these victims be mourned by the world, too? Shouldn’t the US and its allies reflect and think about whether their so-called anti-terrorist actions have made the world better and more peaceful, or uglier and more violent? How has the policy of endless reprisals educated their people and what kind of negative effects has it brought?
As for the shootings in the US, is it true that they have nothing to do with militarism pursued by the US government in recent years? Isn’t it a reflection of a bad example shown to its people? Isn’t it a result of the culture of violence?
In Malaysia, although the culture of violence is not as bad as in the US, a series of violent incidents in recent days is enough to cause worries. For example, violence took place in Sungai Petani, in which two groups of people slashed and set fire to vehicles in a dispute, to vent their anger. If they had guns in their hands at that time, we could have had our own version of a tragic shooting.
According to a non-official statistics, more than a dozen political rallies have been violently disturbed over the past few months. The troublemakers entered the venues on motorcycles, smashed the cars of attendees, threw stones against rally participants and even launched arson attacks at the homes of politicians. This is anti-social behaviour that cannot be ignored.
Such chaos and violent attacks are, of course, related to politics. But society must not ignore them just because they are political affairs. Otherwise, they will quickly get out of control and evolve into self-destructive behaviour like the shootings in the US. We do not want to wake up and feel helpless about saving the situation after paying a heavy price like in the US.
