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Asking for a lynch
by Thanos Kalamidas
2006-09-16 09:42:49 |
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For the last few weeks I’ve been watching really carefully the news and the online reactions, blogs and forums, regarding the kidnapping of the Austrian teenager, Natascha Kampusch, now 18.
After reading her interview for Austrian television, I have to admit that I didn’t read anything new apart from what I was expecting, since physiologists and psychiatrists had already analysed in detail her reactions. Actually, they had protected her own parents from the shock since the girl was suffering from the results of Stockholm syndrome. You didn’t need to be physiologist to understand that; the information is just everywhere.
The 44-year-old communications technician, Wolfgang Priklopil, killed himself when he realized that his victim had finally escaped, saving himself from the mob that was screaming, ‘Kill him! Kill him!’ and that’s where I stop. There is no doubt that the man was guilty, I haven’t read anywhere anything stating the opposite. There is no doubt that the man paid the worst way with his own life and that shows that he was aware of his crime and the sequences of his actions. Even his Stockholm syndrome victim admits that he was guilty and her action to organise an escape shows that she knew the whole thing was wrong, no matter how strong the effect of the syndrome was on her.
A long time ago, which is why I don’t remember the title, I saw a film where a man is sentenced to death by hanging. The event is going to take place at noon in the central square of the town and the crowd has started to take their places from seven in the morning, so they can have the best view. Gradually fights break out in the crowd over who has the best view and who should have the front seat. Suddenly the judge who sentenced the man to death comes out of his house and stands in front of the gibbet watching the fights become more violent, he says in a very angry voice: Has anyone of you realised that we are going to kill another man? Has anyone of you realised that in the name of justice we become the same with this man? How are you going to sleep tonight remembering his face?
The film was dramatic Hollywood, the judge’s voice was thunderously loud, but the crowd had become a mob and pushed the judge aside, run into the prison and ‘conferred justice’ by lynching the criminal. Is that what has become of us? Have we become a mob that is against lynching a man somewhere in Africa because it is so far away, but ready to stone somebody because the place committed the crime is familiar or next-door?
The story of the girl naturally saddens me, but I trust the system in Europe. I know that the state of Austria will take care of her and look after her future. I know that her family will do everything possible to give her back the lost years, I know that society will be there at every single step she’s doing and the very same society will suffer from guilt for long time since the girl was there, next door imprisoned.
The kidnaper is dead, he took his own life. I don’t judge his actions, whether he faced the fear of the punishment or from guilt, he’s dead and it is over. What saddens me more is the reaction of the mob. They feel angry because they didn’t have the chance to lynch! They become hysterical because they didn’t have the chance to lynch; they are a cacophony to what we call 21st century’s western civilization!
Austria crime |
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