In Colombia, life is a disposable good
Featured articlesBy Marsares
Wednesday 1 October 2008 0:01 COT
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Photo: Bachmont / Flickr, CC-BY licence
We are living an extraordinary moment. An 11-month-old baby, Luis Santiago Lozano, is murdered in lurid circumstances, with his father’s complicity. Kidnapping, choking, and a futile reason, to avoid his current partner to find out the baby’s existence. Outrage grows everywhere and the sponsors of a referendum to punish these crimes with life imprisonment, rise their voices and swell their "ranks." The slogan is "maximum sentence."
Awareness
As the UNICEF Deputy Director in Colombia said, beyond what we should do to prevent these events to ever happen again, the main highlight is the country’s awareness in these cases. Recently, thanks to the solidarity of the citizens, the fast spreading of the news and the quick response from the authorities, several children have been rescued safe and sound from their captors, the latter being processed by the judiciary.
The country feels as its own these crimes and mobilizes around them. An effective way to raise awareness about the problem. But to feel that this mobilization is an efficacious way for the criminals to be jailed, sends an effective message to society. If there is a timely reaction, there is citizen solidarity and the judiciary will act promptly, impunity will stop being an immutable rule.
These kind of cases are exemplary and, as they repeat, they will take roots in the ordinary citizen, becoming an educational factor and, in the future, a discouraging factor for crime.
Life imprisonment?
Ordinary people, politicians and, of course, the promoters of a referendum collecting signatures, want life imprisonment. The primitive purpose of the sentence, revenge, comes back vigorously. Life is paid with another life. With their seclusion until they die, society should feel satisfied, quietly breathe, and feel sure these kind of events will not occur ever again.
But, is it enough with that? If so, these crimes should have already disappeared in societies with these kind of extreme penalties. But they have not, they still occur, or they live in grub state so it will be only needed that a society enters into chaos so it happens with great cruelty, as in the Balkans.
It is true, these criminals must be severely punished and, if we consider the Colombian legislation, little Luis Santiago’s first degree murder and kidnapping could set a sentence up to 60 years in jail for its perpetrators which, it should be said, can be reduced more than 50%, with some legal benefits.
Nevertheless, society’s assignment does not stop there. Imprisonment’s only purpose is not to make amends for the crime. The other one is rehabilitation. The penitentiary system must provide the criminal the necessary tools in order to make possible they reintegrate into society as an useful citizen. Resocialization is the main aim, and it must be achieved.
Social treatment
Imagination should not be boosted. A society does not evolve by hiding individual manifestations of the most serious disorders which afflicts it in jails for life. It may be an obvious truth, but society should start by curing itself. In societies like ours, where the most important things are social promotion, easy money, intolerance from fanatism, and hedonism, life becomes a simple obstacle in the road to the "triumph."
Recovering life as the foundation of our society is the priority. Unfortunately, that is a slow, tortuous, zigzagging road, which can’t raise any votes because its results are a long-term objective, but there is not another way. Life is sacred. No one, not even the very State, has the right to take it away. Nothing justifies the violation of this fundamental principle of our existence as a social group.
As long as we do not understand and establish the lecture of life as the most important to give at home and at school, events as Luis Santiago’s death, the disappeared of the suburbs made false positives, the murder of indigenous leaders, unionists, football teams supporters, or simply anyone we do not like, will be the top story of the day.
We have marched against the death-makers. There will be any march in favour of life, the same we are disrespectful to every single day?
This article was originally published 30 September 2008 in equinoXio. Translated from Spanish by Julián Ortega Martínez.
Tags: child abuse, child murder, children, Colombia, Colombian justice, Colombian penitentiary system, Colombian society, cruelty, death penalty, kidnapping, life, life imprisonment, Luis Santiago Lozano, murder, revenge, solidarity, violence
wednesday 1 october 2008, 3:01 COT
In 10 years 270,000 people have been displaced by the paramilitary and the military, about 20,000 slaughtered and tehir land stolen, a record number of union leaders have been killed and the government justifies their deaths claiming connections with FARC, one political party was exterminated under the same excuse, and etc., etc.
Killing has been the only way the ruling elite has reacted to every challenge to their power in Colombia, and now, because an ordinary Colombian does what an ordinary Colombia ordinarily does you claim that Colombia is living extraordinary times.
C’mon! What else could you expect in a country where a gangster like Alvaro Uribe is the most admired role model? (At least that’s what Colombia’s brilliant journalists want us to believe with their claims of over 90% public support). There is nothing extraordinary about that, absolutely nothing.