Law and disorder

My dear Billy, Sexual assaults these days, especially on children, are perpetrated not by complete strangers but mostly by complete relatives and acquaintances – fathers, brothers, grandfathers, uncles, cousins, neighbours – in fact, the whole lot of depraved male pigs and piglets. Of course, many people seem to be concerned and are genuinely worried that violence has now become a way of life in Mauritius. In the good old days of George Bernard Shaw, violence used to be the repartee of the illiterate. Today it has progressed and achieved bigger proportions. But frankly, my dear Billy, like you, I don’t see any point in lamenting or agonizing. If murder, killing in all manners and styles as taught everyday on television and in cinema halls, mass destruction of human life in wars and terrorist attacks, arson, rape, torture and violence of all imaginable and unimaginable types are the daily diet of the whole universe, there is no reason why Mauritius should be lagging behind. If today violence has assumed such an unprecedented scale in all the worlds, from the first to the third, it is only following a natural course. That’s the way it should be. Those who have tried to interfere with this natural process, like Christ and Gandhi, have been politely reminded that they were out of place and date, and have been dispatched where they belong. It is therefore a matter of rejoicing that Mauritius has caught up in time. Otherwise, it would forever remain an anachronism in a world which is moving so fast. And we are also lucky to live in a country where pizza gets to your house before the police do. Violence has a number of good points to it, my dear Billy. While it shows that you are not backward since you are following the general trend of the world, it also shows your superiority. Some simply have to resort to it to prove their manliness. I know a guy who beats his wife everyday to remind her that he is the husband at home and that he is strong, superior and above all, masculine. Violence is also almost always a handy way to settle scores and disputes. No satisfaction can ever be greater than that of taking the law in one’s own hands. Your neighbour refuses to give you a lift? Smash his car. His dog barks at night? Give him some poison in the morning. A father reprimands you because you teased his daughter? Give him the trashing of his life. You’ve had a dispute with one of the men in your locality? Rape and sodomise his 2 year-old daughter the following day. You have been punished at school? Burn it, or at least give your teacher a taste of your knuckles. Your 13-year old neighbour doesn’t want to love you? Stab her grandmother until she dies, and lie in wait for the little girl and butcher her with at least a dozen cuts. Somebody prevents you from poaching on his territory? Shoot him. Your father tells you something about your bad habits? Slash his throat. There are so many ways in which you can apply your own brand of justice. There are thousands of situations that call for violence in our daily life, my dear Billy, and we should always be ready and prepared to satisfy our instinct and ego. Violence is a way of life, as I told you. It does a lot of good. In extreme cases, violence even helps to reduce the population. Crime should therefore be encouraged. Not that the authorities are not doing what they can in that direction, or leaving certain stones unturned. Successive (not successful) governments have been immensely contributing by making it simply impossible to live in this country, what with the number of workers being laid off, the ever-increasing prices, the prodigious availability of drugs, the leniency of our police, life is turning into a gnawing ordeal. Thank God, the criminals are there to rid you of your daily miseries and worries. But it now seems that our Prime Minister is trying to swim against the current and to put the clock back by increasing the criminal’s time in prison. He is even thinking of having a fresh recourse to capital punishment. I believe our Prime Minister has more pressing things to do to than adjusting sentences to be meted out to criminals. In any case, he runs the big risk of rousing the wrath of amnestying people. Our prisons should be liberalized and made to become a home outside home. It is heart-warming to note that they are already doing whatever they can in that respect with a free flow of drugs, mobile phones and other amenities there. Many ex-prisoners want to go back there and eventually manage to land there again after a short spell in the hazardous, polluted atmosphere outside. I am told of one freshly-liberated prisoner who went into a shop in Rose Hill minutes after his release, bought himself a knife, and plunged the instrument into the tummy of the first person he encountered on the street, just so he might be taken back where he belonged. Isn’t that progress, my dear Billy?