THE EDITOR, Sir:
THE SOCIETY needs to decide whether mobs are free to decide summarily who are the perpetrators of crime in particular cases and to thereafter exact their own justice. Do the police ever investigate cases where bloodthirsty, enraged citizens hunt alleged perpetrators and set upon them with unrestrained viciousness, beating and hacking them to death? When last has an arrest been made in a case involving 'mob justice'?
There is a clear impression that the society is now willing to allow this form of modern barbarism to take root in our country, which is already struggling against a complete gamut of archaic and animalistic tendencies. Recently, several residents of a district in southern Trelawny openly expressed their intention to kill a man who they alleged had escaped their hunt after an alleged robbery was committed in their area. They had already caught and butchered one of three men who they say had robbed a shopkeeper in the district. As the television camera rolled, one woman proclaimed the intent and determination of the villagers to finish the 'job'.
As I watched I remembered the recent tragic case of the two little girls who were found murdered in a cane field near to their school in Townhead, Westmoreland. After the bodies were found, the outraged residents of the town decided that the murderer was a man who worked in a cane field near to the crime scene. They claimed that he was an ex-convict who had served a prison sentence for murder. This apparently was enough evidence of his guilt and led to the mob inflicting a most brutal attack on him. His life was spared only because the police arrived in time to rescue him from the enraged residents who also attacked and damaged the service
vehicle. Of course, the police investigations revealed that the man was not involved in this heinous crime and he was released without being charged.
How many such innocent persons have been slaughtered across the island by irate mobs? Does anybody really care, or is this another instance of the anarchy which is rapidly engulfing every civilised facet of our beleaguered nation?
I am, etc.,
MARK A. DOUGLAS
markadoug_6@yahoo.com
Montego Bay P.O.
