Emmett Till, Stephen Biko, Daniel Ritcheson and now Khaled Said. Biko was the victim of a brutal beating during Apartheid in South Africa. His murder at the hands of suppressive police forces compelled Peter Gabriel to write "Biko" and galvanized support for South African civil rights worldwide.
Emmett Till's brutal murder and the subsequent kangaroo court convened to try his self-avowed and unrepentant killers made it impossible for half of a democratic country to ignore the daily abuses in the other half, just next door. Till's blood washed the eyes of the northern states, who could no longer pretend to not see.
Ritcheson was knocked unconscious and brutalized. Like the other young men, his attackers tried to hide evidence of what they had done, leaving him for dead. Later, broken in body and betrayed by the president of his country - a man from his own state - he leapt to his death from a cruise ship.
Khaled Said's murder was brutal, public and unresisted. Like the others, he was alone, undefended by witnesses and his attackers lied about his murder - so ineptly that their obdurate denials constitute either that they don't care if they are seen as lying, or trust that fear within their immediate constituency will render the masses docile.
In the cases of Till and Biko, the image and the knowledge of the manner of their deaths, in Till's case the unrecognizable meat of his face, was so shocking it burned through denial and apathy, and allowed the living to be heard.
Humans hide wrongdoing. We don't like to be blamed, by others or ourselves. We falsify evidence, perjure ourselves, tell our parents we really didn't, we were at the library and we haven't had any cookies. We bully. We lie. And we hide the evidence. Fortunately, most of us grow out of this and grow to be functional civil creatures who can go through a day without flinging poo at others of our kind. We discover the social contract.
Then there are those of us who exchange cookies for power, schoolmates for anyone convenient and poo for invective or injury. These people still lie, they still bully. They still hide the evidence and dare someone to say anything.
Eventually, if left unchecked, they lose perspective and do something so horrible and so big, they can't hide the evidence or bully silence any more. The one thing these victims have in common was that they were innocent. Their crimes, if any, were small, venial, petty...and they were tortured, rent asunder and murdered. Their faces were savaged. Three of these men were beaten so badly they were unrecognizable - their murderers tried to obliterate
their identities not only as specific people, but as human beings at all.
This is not accidental. This is typical. We've seen it before. We know what to do about it.
Tyrants should be afraid, not of their opponents, but their oppressed. Once you go too far for negotiation and compromise, there is only one option left, and a million angry people stoked by decades of fear and rage and righteousness is a monstrous mob to run from. That the perpetrators of these acts tried to hide the evidence is acknowledgement of their crime - they knew they had gone too far...and tried to bluster their way through it by intimidation and the assumption of having cowed the masses. They felt above law, outside justice...until they looked at what they had done.
People do these things. Movements don't kill people, other people do. individuals choose the path they take, they choose to swing their fists, throw a stone, beat a child, hang a teenager, pour bleach into a young man's wounds. They choose to crash planes into buildings, to kill thousands. People do these things. They deserve public pillorying. They deserve excoriating understanding. They should be SEEN. They intimidate, menace and hold hostages with their eyes, with the understanding and implication of monstrous violence. Eyes then, should lay them bare, see the crimes they have committed, see the monstrous paths they've chosen.
We cannot deny the evidence of our eyes. The act of witnessing is a vital one...even when it is a cruelly unpleasant one. Especially then. When we see, we understand. When we understand we can decide. When we decide, we can act, so no more of these young men need to die for our apathy. Until we do something, Said's eulogy will only be "who will be next," and it will be sung by his countrymen and women.
The Ministry of the Interior has an English web site, and is responsible for police activity in Egypt. Write them. Share your thoughts, please keep it civil. Do not link sites unless you have permission - blogging can be dangerous for folks there.
"You can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out a fire. Once the flames begin to catch, the wind will blow it higher."
