Nothing is safe from the predatory instincts of man, neither animals, nor women, nor man himself. Creatures and fellow human beings are tortured, mutilated and variously put to death for food, for pleasure, to appease the gods, for service in after-life; to grab and consolidate power, to punish and to avenge; or to satisfy sexual lust.
Man against beast
According to a news report, Indian scientists have announced plans to use cloning technology to return the subcontinent’s cheetahs, which became extinct in 1947 when the last three, a mother and her two male cubs, were shot by a maharajah during a hunting expedition. My immediate reaction to reading this piece of news was that someone ought to have shot the maharajah. That’s because, like the maharajah, I am a man too. He shot the poor cheetah and her cubs for pleasure, and I would have him shot to avenge the shootings, because I can’t stand murder!
The Maharajah was merely enjoying himself, hunting for pleasure. It was quite common not so long ago to have oneself photographed, smiling and holding a gun, with one foot firmly resting on the limp body of a freshly-killed tiger or a lion. It was a thing to remember and went a long way in enhancing one’s social standing.
It is amazing what men (I deliberately use the word in its masculine form) will do for their sporting and eating pleasure, to satisfy their lust and ego, and for revenge, inflicting pain and death on other creatures and fellow human beings and causing havoc to mother earth.
Hunting is the most common of the “blood sports,” defined as “sports in which a quarry is hunted and killed or a spectacle is made of an animal being killed.” Among these are bull-baiting, bull-fighting, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, badger-baiting and fox-hunting.
Bearbaiting was once popular in Europe and is still practiced in some Asian and African countries. A bear, sometimes blinded, is chained to a stake in a bear pit and dogs are let loose to attack it, many being killed by the bear, which itself suffers grievous injuries.
Cockfighting, illegal in Britain since 1849, is still popular in certain parts of the world, including the subcontinent. It draws vast crowds in the Philippines, where it attracts heavy wagering. It involves two or more gamecocks fighting each other, often to the death. The cocks are carefully bred and trained, equipped with steel or bone spurs on their legs and set against each other in a cockpit.
Foxhunting is still legal in Britain in spite of the efforts of the League against Cruel Sports. Described by Oscar Wilde as “the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable,” it involves huntsmen on horseback with a pack of 20-30 foxhounds in pursuit of a fox.
When the “uneatable” is pursued with such ferocity, woe betide a creature that appeals to man’s palate or is unfortunately credited with raising his libido.
It is now routine for many animal species to be farmed and butchered on an industrial scale to provide meat on our dining tables, but in many parts of the world snails, frogs, snakes, even monkeys, cats, dogs and a motley other creatures are considered culinary delights. In Japan, monkey’s brain is extracted and eaten raw while the hapless creature is alive, held in a tight brace. In some parts of Nigeria, dogs are roasted alive over an open fire in the belief that it makes their meat tastier.
Oceans have been depleted of some species of fish; others are endangered. Man’s insatiable quest for aphrodisiacs has led to a demand for bear paw, shark fin and rhino horn, resulting in colossal cruelty to these animals and the threat of their extinction. Even the male genitals of some animals are devoured to enhance potency. Given that most of them will end up under the butcher’s knife or fall prey to a poacher’s greed or a hunter’s passion, extinction probably means liberation for many a specie.
Fellow humans have not escaped man’s lust for perverse pleasure. The practice of foot binding began in China during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), reportedly to imitate an imperial concubine who was required to dance with her feet bound. By the 12th century, the practice was widespread and more severe – the girl’s feet were bound so tightly and early in life that they were unable to dance and had difficulty walking, essentially crippling them. As only rich people could afford having nonproductive girls, foot binding was viewed as a show of wealth. It was banned early last century.
For many centuries eunuchs – castrated human males – were in great demand everywhere as “bed keepers.” The English word eunuch is from the Greek eune (“bed“) and ekhein (“to keep”), effectively “bed keeper”. This indicates the traditional role of the eunuch—as a reliable keeper of a ruler’s harem. Kings and sultans could trust neither the fidelity of the women of their harems nor their male guards. Other servants or slaves were also castrated in order to make them ‘safer,’ either in childhood or later. Capturing and castrating boys to meet the demand for eunuchs was a roaring business in some parts of the world.
In ancient Rome, gladiatorial shows were entertainment. Held in specially built amphitheatres, they involved slaves, prisoners of war, condemned criminals, or volunteers, who fought to the death unless the audience spared the loser. Their popularity was so high that statesmen sponsored shows to enhance their political prestige
Ritualistic animal sacrifice is a part of many established religions as well as animist cultures. Human sacrifice was practiced in many ancient cultures. Victims were ritually killed in a manner that was supposed to please or appease gods or spirits. On very rare occasions human sacrifices still occur today. Reasons for human sacrifice include:
- Sacrifice to accompany the dedication of a new building like a temple or bridge. Chinese legends hold that thousands of people were entombed into the Great Wall of China.
- Sacrifice upon the death of a king, high priest or great leader; the sacrifices were to serve or accompany the deceased leader in the next life. In many ancient civilizations, dead chiefs could take most of their household, including servants and concubines with them to the next world.
- Sacrifice for divination. Priests would try to divine the future from the body parts of a slain prisoner or slave. Celts stabbed a victim with a sword and divined the future from his death spasms.
- Sacrifice in times of natural disaster. Droughts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions etc. were seen as a sign of anger or displeasure of gods and sacrifices were made to appease the divine ire.
In India, in a practice called Sati, widows were burned alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Though supposed to be voluntary, it is believed to have been often enforced by various social pressures, as well as the use of mind altering chemicals, on the widow. Although its full extent is unknown, the practice was moderately common in Rajasthan and in parts of the Gangetic plain till the early 19th century, and a few hundred deaths were recorded each year.
Nothing is safe from the predatory instincts of man, neither animals, nor women, nor man himself. Creatures and fellow human beings are tortured, mutilated and variously put to death for food, for pleasure, to appease the gods, for service in after-life and, as we will see in the next part, to grab and consolidate power, to punish and to avenge.
(Published in Daily Times, 26 August 2004)
Man against man
Power prevails over blood ties and friendships. Shah Jahan, who dedicated the Taj Mahal to his beloved wife, became Mughal emperor in 1628 by putting all his nearest male relatives to death. In turn, for the last five years of his life, he was imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb, who had killed his three brothers to usurp the Peacock Throne in 1658. In Turkey, Selim the Grim ascended the throne of the Ottoman Empire in 1512 by killing his brothers. Russia’s Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584) had one of his suspected opponents doused alternately with boiling and freezing water until his skin literally peeled off.
More recently, General Ziaul Haque sent his boss and benefactor Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to the gallows to consolidate power, which he had seized through a coup d’etat. In Bangladesh, General Ziaur Rahman had no qualms of conscience in hanging his friend and comrade-in-arms Col Abu Taher to secure his authority as President. A power struggle in Afghanistan led Hafizullah Amin to have his old friend, President Nur Mohammad Tarahki, smothered with a pillow.
After Sergeant Samuel Doe seized power in Liberia by killing President Tolbert, he had all the deposed ministers taken to the beach, stripped naked and shot dead. In Uganda, Idi Amin executed military leaders who had not supported his coup, many by beheading. He reportedly fed the heads of opponents to crocodiles and boasted of eating human flesh. In Somalia, President Siad Barre was alleged to have castrated his opponents, while Equatorial Guinea’s current president, Nguema Mbasogo, reportedly prefers to eat the testicles of his political enemies to boost his sex life, besides teaching them a lesson.
Capital punishment for a whole range of offences still remains on the statute books of many countries. According to Amnesty International‘s annual report on official judicial execution, in 2003 there were 1,146 executions in 28 countries, of which 726 were carried out in China. The true figure worldwide is believed to be much higher, for China alone may be executing “nearly 10,000” people each year. Hanging is now the preferred method of sending condemned people to meet their maker. Some states choose to execute the death sentence by firing squad (most notably China), a couple by beheading or stoning to death (Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Talibanite Afghanistan), and one by lethal injection or gas or electrocution (USA).
But, by and large, we have come a long way from the times when, not so long ago, condemned persons were burned alive, boiled in oil, thrown to wild beasts, flayed alive, drowned, crushed, sawed, crucified, impaled, strangled, garroted, torn apart, smothered or disemboweled. Convicted traitors were cut down from the gallows while still alive. After their bowels had been extracted and burned before their eyes, they were beheaded and quartered.
One of the most horrible ways of inflicting death in ancient times was the Persian method called “the boats.” The condemned man was encased in two small boats, one inverted over the other with the hapless man sandwiched between them in such a way that his head, hands and feet protruded from the casing. He was forcibly fed with milk and honey, which were also smeared on his face. Exposed to the sun, he was eventually devoured alive by insects and vermin that swarmed about, entered his orifices and bred inside him.
It is hard to believe that the United Kingdom, which is now firmly opposed to capital punishment under any circumstance, carried out public executions as recently as 1868. This is how a public execution in 18th century England is described: “Frightful scenes were witnessed at executions in those days, the crowd standing awestruck as it watched the convulsions of the strangling culprit. Every contortion of the limbs was hailed with a cheer or a groan, according as the sufferer was popular or not; hawkers boldly sang the praises of their wares the while a fellow creature was being done to death. Rich and poor, thief and lord, gentle and simple, attended to see the hanging, and cracked jokes at the sufferer’s expense.”
Even now, the occasional public execution carried out in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan draws large crowds. In many more countries, frenzied mobs give justice the short shrift by carrying out public lynchings of alleged criminals. The most gruesome method is the so-called “necklace treatment,” where a burning tyre is put around the victim’s neck.
Riots bring out the worst in man. Killing for its own sake becomes the order of the day. Neighbours and passers-by are killed for no better reason than their religion, sect, ethnicity, language, dialect, race or skin colour. During the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in France in 1572, the victims were Huguenots (Protestants), a prosperous, educated Christian minority living among a Catholic majority. In one incident in Paris, “Police Chief Cosset arrested some two hundred heretics, put them in prison, then had them called one by one to the gate, where their throats were cut.” In Lyons, a crowd, “fresh from priestly incitement, broke down the prison doors and cut the throats of everyone inside, from the aged to the babe in arms,” some 700 Huguenots in all, after they had been put “in protective custody” by the Governor, who had conveniently proceeded on the more profitable mission of confiscating their homes and goods.
The worst recent example of mass brutality is Rwanda, where in 1994 Hutu mobs killed nearly a million Tutsis in about three months. In South Asia, male mobs, whipped into frenzy by opportunists, criminals and politicians, have set upon their hapless victims, male, female and children, stabbing and beheading them, beating them to death, throwing them from multi-storey buildings, sprinkling them with acid or burning their victims alive. The pangs of partition led to hundreds of thousands killed in riots – Muslim, Hindu and Sikh. More recently, in India, some Congress politicians instigated pogroms against Sikhs in New Delhi to avenge the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and the BJP-led Gujrat government let loose a reign of terror against Muslims to teach them a lesson.
If states organize executions, occasionally offering them as public spectacles, and officials, politicians and mobs act with such barbarity, it is hardly surprising that societies throw up an outrageous number of demented individuals who derive pleasure through deliberate acts of brutality. Thus, we have serial killers and assassins-for-hire, such as the 38 year-old Bosnian man recently deported from Australia, convicted over the brutal 1996 murder of 69 year-old Melbourne businessman, who was “bound, bashed, stabbed, cut and slashed before being choked.” If it wasn’t for his mother who came to bid him goodbye and – his only regret – the young son he was forced to leave behind, one would be entitled to ask if this man really belonged to the ‘human’ species.
Some men, like the above-mentioned, are pathologically more bestial than beasts, many more have a propensity to be ruthless in the pursuit of power, profit, pleasure, lust or revenge, but far too many can be whipped into a murderous frenzy for the most trivial of reasons, namely, differences of race or religion, sect or ethnicity. The collective record of man’s inhumanity is enough to make the mountains cry.
(Published in Daily Times, 2 September 2004)
Ashamed to be a man
After watching the news on television with my wife, sometimes I am ashamed to look her in the eye. At other times, I hope she has not been watching the news. If you, dear reader, read newspapers and watch the news, you will understand what I mean.
Considering how many men – young and old, priest, layman and congressman – are exposed as sexual predators, I wonder what women think of men in general. They can be excused for thinking, at best, that no man can be trusted and, at worst, that every man is a potential sexual pervert or predator.
In August, Natascha Kampusch, who had been abducted at the age of ten by 38-year-old Austrian Wolfang Prinklopil, escaped after more than eight years in captivity. During her long ordeal, she was mostly confined to a small, secret underground room without windows.
In September,USCongressman Mark Foley had to resign after it became known that he had been sending sexually explicit instant messages to young men who had previously served as congressional pages. As chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children, Foley had introduced legislation targeting sexual predators and created stricter guidelines for tracking them. In other words, it was as if the wolf had appointed himself to guard the chicken.
In November, Milton Orkopoulos, a minister in the state ofNew South WalesinAustralia, was sacked after police charged him with multiple child sex offences. One of the children was aged nine.
In the same month, Pastor Ted Haggard, one ofAmerica’s most famous evangelicals, married with three children, was forced to confess that he made a monthly payment to a male prostitute for years in exchange for sexual gratification at the same time as he denounced immorality and homosexuality. A study found that 4,392 (or 4 percent) Catholic clergymen had been accused of sexually abusing 10,667 people, including minors, since 1950.
Hardly a day passes when newspapers or television do not carry news of some sexual pervert or predator, who is a male without exception, preying on women or children. Police inEnglandare now hunting for a serial killer, who has murdered five prostitutes and dumped their bodies near streets, some stripped of their clothing.
According to Joseph Diaz, an associate professor of criminology in theUSand an expert on the subject, there are 20 or so serial killers operating in the world at any one time. They are always male and are “almost uniformly sexually motivated”.
The most infamous of them was, perhaps, Peter Sutcliffe, nicknamed the Yorkshire Ripper. He was convicted in 1981 of murdering 13 women and attacking seven more in the north ofEnglandfrom 1975 to 1980. In 2003 it was revealed that when Sutcliffe was stripped of his clothing at the police station, he was found to be wearing a v-neck pullover under his pants; the arms and been pulled over his legs, so that the v-neck exposed his groin.
In the US, Edward Kemper went on a murdering spree in Californiain the 1970s, killing and dismembering six female hitchhikers, then murdering his own mother and one of her friends. As a 15 year-old he had shot dead both his grandparents telling police that he had “just wanted to see what it felt like to kill grandma and grandpa”. He admitted to necrophilia and cannibalism.
In 1972, while returning home from school in Merced, California, seven-year old Steven Staynor was abducted by Kenneth Parnell and kept as a sex-slave until he escaped with another abducted boy, five-year old Timmy White, in 1980. Steven’s sensational account was turned into a TV mini-series “I know my first name is Steven” (also known as The missing years), then into a feature length movie and, finally, into a book.
InJapan, ten-year-old Fusako Sano was kidnapped in 1990 and kept captive for over nine years by a 28 year old unemployed man. Tanya Nicole Kach was kept in illegal confinement inPittsburgfrom the age of 14 after being seduced by her 48 year-old school security guard. She was found ten years later in 2006.
Also in theUnited States, 20 year-old Carol Smith was kidnapped while hitch-hiking and kept captive from 1977 to 1984, mostly in a box under a bed. InRussia, Lena Simakhina, 17, and Katya Martinova, 14, were abducted by 53-year-old Victor Mokhov, who had offered them a lift. He kept the teenagers as sex slaves in an underground purpose-built cellar in his home nearMoscowfrom 2001 to 2004.
InFrance, Michel Fourniret confessed in 2004 to kidnapping, raping and murdering nine girls in a span of fourteen years during the 1980s and 1990s. The youngest of them was 12 years old and the oldest twenty. He is also suspected of ten additional murders.
Marc Dutroux was arrested in 1996 inBelgiumfor having kidnapped and sexually abused six girls, ranging in age from 8 to 19, four of whom died as a result. Several hundred pornographic videos with underage victims were found in Dutroux’s houses, of which he came to own seven.
An unemployed electrician, Dutroux had previously (in 1989) been arrested and sentenced to thirteen years for abducting and raping five young girls. Within three years he was not just able to obtain his release on parole for “good behaviour”, but also succeeded in persuading a psychiatrist that he was disabled, thus becoming eligible for a government pension. He used the sedatives and sleeping pills he fraudulently obtained from his doctor to drug his victims.
Dutroux used three of his seven houses to imprison and sexually assault his victims. In one of the houses, where he lived most of the time, he constructed a concealed dungeon in the basement, hidden behind a massive concrete door concealed as a shelf. The cell was 2.15 metres long, less than a metre wide and 1.64 metre high. It is believed that two abducted eight-year-old girls starved to death when Dutroux was detained by police for three months in 1995-1996 for car theft.
I am certain that Dr Diaz’s figure of twenty or so serial killers operating in the world at any one time is a gross underestimation, for statistics fromThird Worldcountries are virtually non-existent. These countries are unable to connect or relate multiple murders to one killer because of lack of forensic expertise, corruption and incompetence in the police force, as well as woefully inadequate record-keeping and data-matching. Sex-crimes are rarely reported or discussed.
If one just went by the information made available to the public or highlighted by the media, one would think that serial killers and sexual predators are only found in the West. Listening to the government-controlled radio and television inPakistan, it is easy to conclude that there are no serial killers and few incidents of sexual abuse and sex-related murders in the country.
Unfortunately, even the private television channels are too focused on international affairs and religious issues. There is little investigative reporting involving various kinds of crimes in the country, particularly sex-related crimes.
And who can blame them? In a male-dominated society where men in power and authority can do as they please, where discussion of sex crimes is frowned upon if not totally taboo, delving into these issues can be an unpopular and dangerous vocation.
(Daily Times, 28 December 2007)