In Uttar Pradesh state in India, a couple was killed over a row over 22 cents’ worth of biscuits. The man was beheaded while his wife was hacked to death by a grocer who became angry when they told him they could not yet pay their debt.
The couple were Dalits, who used to be known as Untouchables —the lowest among the castes in India. The grocer belonged to a higher group.
The biscuits were bought on credit for the couple’s three young children. They said they could not produce the payment of 15 rupees until later that evening, when they collected their wages. The grocer apparently could not wait.
Back home this week, a cyclist died of gunshot after an altercation with a former Army reservist. Mark Vincent Geralde was biking along P. Casal Street in Quiapo, Manila when Vhon Martin Tanto’s car sideswiped him. The two engaged in a fistfight until Tanto drew his gun and shot the cyclist, killing him instantly. Videos of the encounter made the rounds in social media, showing Geralde alive one moment and sprawled lifeless on the ground the next. That Tanto was arrested on Friday in Masbate gives little comfort to Geralde’s bereaved.
Then, too, in the name of the Duterte administration’s fight against illegal drugs, hundreds of suspected drug dealers and users have been reported killed in less than a month. Often, the corpse would be left on the street with a sign hanging from its neck.
At first blush the apparent decisive action to rid the country of drug dealers sounds good—until one realizes that those whose lives were snuffed out likely did not have the choice to reform their ways, or were even aware that they had that option.
Indeed the Duterte administration still has to strike that sweet spot between acknowledging rights that are universally shared and ensuring that the campaign against illegal drugs makes considerable dent. It’s a fight that must be fought well but not mindlessly. The leadership must set the example of respect for life if it were to be credible in its quest to clean up what has to be cleaned up. Rage and unproven allegations do not justify any killing.
Human life, whatever the socio-economic class to which one belongs, is not cheap and dispensable, certainly worth more than a few packets of biscuits.
