Wednesday 10 December 2008

Gang violence in Maldives

Another death, another young man is buried and the search is on to nab the killer. So who feels safe in Male' now?
Me, because it has not happened to me or to any one in my family, yet and neither do I have any connections with gangs or druggies who are engaged in this sort of gang violence. So it has nothing to do with me and I am safe!
Have you ever thought like this and gone for a peaceful night of slumber?Well, you may be lucky today. I just wonder how soon violence caused by gangs and related to gang subculture is going to spill into all aspects of our daily living?
How many of us can recollect the early days when drug abuse was happening as a hidden phenomena with just occasional arrests ?Remember the time when many of us kept pointing our fingers at the other person and giving reasons about why there was an addict in that family and not in our own.But today, see our status, how many of us can truthfully say we do not have a victim of drug abuse among our family members now?
Now, ....the same story may repeat with gang violence. Today these news reports seem to shock or bewilder us but we seem to be reacting to these incidents in a sort of detached fashion. Perhaps for the time being we will just wait for the news that the police has nabbed killer, end of story!
Perhaps after a decade of gang violence and gang related violations of human rights....may be , just may be some of us would get onto a lorry and go shouting wake up....!!!!! Wake up and stop gang violence.But by then it may just be too late. Perhaps by then the roots of this would have infilterated the soil of our entire nation.
So if we want to shout 'WAKE UP' we must shout now, as what we are seing here is just the tip of the iceberg. The government and the people need to get ready to tackle this better than we did with the drug problem. Before this escalates and snowballs any further, we need to do research to identify whats really going on here, and hence develop a comprehensive public policy and plan which can be implemented. Unless we have a thorough understanding of whats really going on, we cannot deal with the situation in a proper way. We must not make adhoc attempts and assume gang violence has got under control. I seriously dont think we can afford to make blunders like bringing the gangs in front of the media and making them the future heroes and role models to our sons.
We, the Maldivians have to become proactive in dealing with issues which reflects the deteriorating social and mental health situation of our country.Lets all wake up...as we bury our last victim of gang violence. Lets think of his human rights....? Lets think why the police have to arrest an 18 year old for murder. It is time to tackle the neglected psycho-social problems of our society...and understand what has led these youths to organise themselves to terrorise our society and begin to change them.

(read on what other communities are doing to deal with gang violence, here is a link ; http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20081217/tuk-communities-urged-to-tackle-gangs-dba1618.html

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

the real problem is people like you and I and every one else not doing what is necessary to stop all this. its simple as a push of a button. we all know that will stop all this. as a russian expression goes fish rots from the head. chop of the head and fish stays longer. no compromises, no exceptions