Let’s make all lives matter
ARE THE authorities even keeping record of how many people are killed and maimed due to gang violence and related crimes?
If the injured and deceased are professional people and from non-working-class areas, feature prominently in politics or are related to some well-known person, it is usually mentioned in media reports.
These seem to be regarded as important factors, and these cases are treated with great urgency.
If the many people killed last month due to these crimes were businessmen or doctors, for example, we would have already seen quite a few arrests.
Attacks in working-class areas, however, seem to be treated as mere statistics, as nothing significant usually comes from it. Yet all lives have the same value and matter equally in the sight of God.
The government has erected walls of remembrance displaying the names of those who died in wars and political struggles, and those who were victims of major disasters, to honour them. Should walls of remembrance not also be erected at civic centres and community halls as a memorial to the innocent victims of these terrible crimes in that particular community, and as a more concrete indication that their lives also matter?
The student protests over fees received lots of government attention and finances at the highest level, yet the same level of urgency cannot be paid to gangsterism – which is a far greater problem than high student fees.
The unwillingness to send in the defence force, and the lack of gangster profiling and arrests, are just some of the key indications that there is a serious lack of capacity, competence and effective strategy to safeguard our communities.
Perhaps an annual detailed report should be published in the city and community newspapers of the number of victims of gang- and drug-related crimes as per the following categories: gender, race, types of injury sustained/death, occupation and area of residence, and the current status of the case – that is, whether the perpetrators have been apprehended or not.
This would give everyone a clear picture of the magnitude and handling of these and other key crimes. Hopefully this, as well as the walls of remembrance, could also serve as more concrete motivation for communities to co-operate better with one another, and with the police, to really try to stamp out criminal activities.