Be careful when you see your kids tormenting upturned insects and causing pain to puppies and kittens. It might be a sign that they love torturing and one day they may inflicting it on you or other human beings without seeing much wrong in it.
Mai invited me to join a FaceBook account dedicated to Junko Furuta, a 16-year-old girl who was held captive for 44 days (then succumbed to the torture) by 4 boys and raped, tortured and mutilated in every conceivable manner. To add insult to injury, those boys remain free now, so that they can carry out the same act upon someone else.
Torture and brutality are an obsession. Psychiatrists say they give a high to the mentally disturbed. The victim is totally at your mercy; you can do anything to him or her, and anything means anything, there is no limit. Two English movies come to my mind (fortunately, no such movies are made in India, and again, fortunately, they don’t even have a market for such themes): The Hostel and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In The Hostel, the perpetrators visit a torture site just as you may visit a brothel. A victim is bought, you are given a room, and you can do anything to the victim. A thriving market is shown where unsuspecting tourists and locals are brought to the place and then captured. It is a totally sick movie, but I don’t know where I read, that some of it is reality, and this is where it becomes a true horror.
Among living forms only humans inflict pain for pleasure and entertainment, may be because human thinking is more complex compared to animals. We can associate unlimited feelings to a single act. More than pleasure and entertainment, it is the feeling of unlimited control over another human being. People torture animals too, but an animal cannot beg for mercy, you cannot humiliate it, you cannot devoid it of dignity because in our perceptions such characteristics cannot be attached to it.
So to say torture is human, is misleading. Torture is very human because this act is perpetrated by only humans.
The case above makes it more important to denounce torture, no matter how justified it seems. Torture is torture, there is no good torture or bad torture, because the person inflicting it, whether he or she is your hero or villain, does it for the same purpose: total control over the existence of another human being.
Whether you call it a beauty or a tragedy, nobody knows when you can become a target of torture. If something exists around you, there is a great chance you may become its target. You cannot discuss the pros and cons of torture when somebody, even if a policeman, is inserting a rod into your anus or breaking your ribs with blows. Talk against it when you can.
But then how to punish the perpetrators? I have no idea. Do you?
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I am one of those who hate and agonise over torture. And it is always a live issue with me. So thanks for posting this. You might look up a recent article called “Gathering Dark” in my blog, http://suvrobemused.blogspot.com, and another titled “Is all ‘fun’ funny?” in the other blog, http://suvrooncemore.blogspot.com.
As for punishing the perpetrators, there is, I fear, no hope unless the civilised sections of society (NOT to be confused with anybody who claims to be rich, educated and well-connected) organise and rise to protest very strongly, and demand that the laws be suitably amended and applied strictly, without fear or favour, not only to punish the guilty but shame them into changing their ways. I am convinced that much torture happens because the perpetrators are allowed to bask in the feeling that they have done something ‘in’ and ‘cool’ and ‘macho’…
Dear Suvro Chatterjee,
I will suggesat to you that this sort of sociopath cannot ever be taught to feel shame. Their conscience seems not to exist. Even in prisonthey will continue to terrorise those around them.
*Takes a deep breath* These people probably cannot help what they have become, any more than a rabid dog can be responsible for being sick. And, like the rabid dog, they represent such a danger to socirty that they should simply be executed, euthanised, killed, not in retribution, but in self-defence. I know this approach is not politically correct and I’ll probably be called nasty names, which is OK.
Amrit, thanks for reading about Junko ji and writing about this. We are both parents. Can you imagine if this were your child? This girl deserves to be remembered. It won’t undo anything; sometimes doing the right thing seems futile. Being people of certain moral standards, we still find it necessary to do SOMETHING.
i agree .. if proven guilty .. they should be killed (better still in exact the same fashion as the victim was killed). this will also help prevent/discourage more such acts ..
Dear J…As satisfying as it might be to torture these monsters for 44 days and – for me personally – to watch Jagdish Tytler doused with kerosene and set alight while his erstwhile victims jeer and laugh at him, I cannot allow myself to indulge in that sort of behavious without becoming something of a monster myself. And then, in another way, the monsters would win.
Death by toture would not discourage these monsters anyway, as this typw of sociopath has a touch of megalomania, as well, and simplly believes he’ll never get caught.
No, just quietly, carefully and thoroughly remove them forever from our society in a quick, peaceful death. Better than they deserve? Probably. But without brutalising ourselves any more than is absolutely necessary.
Killers should be executed and the girl’s parent’s should demand a separate Furutatistan for their family. Since it happened in Japan so the whole country and its every citizen is responsible and the parents of the girl must demand a separate homeland.
Dear Anon, But only if they chant a mantra before they poop.
Oh then they can wait till eternity. Sweet dreams.
SIPAB (sleep in peace and blessing), dear Anon ji!
I already have. I don’t need good wishes from you. Save it for your near and dear ones and make sure they are resting in peace.
Anon ji, Whether you need my good wishes or not, dear, you have them. Lighten up!
As for my near and dear ones, they are most certainly at peace since their shaheedi in 1984.
Chardi kala!
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