Bijan Ebrahimi was beaten to death & set on fire in Bristol after being repeatedly harassed with hate crimes for years. His requests for help went unanswered & ignored. He was failed by his neighbours and all the agencies who came into contact with him. His killer admitted murder & was sentenced yesterday.
He was different. he was disabled & foreign. He was alone. The most poignant image I saw was of his house bedecked with flowers lovingly tended by him in an area of stark deprivation.
What is it about human beings that makes us behave like this? At best ignoring the wrongs we can clearly see happening. Are we simply afraid of standing out & standing up for weaker members of society? Is it just self preservation if we are unfortunate enough to live in a less than desirable area? Or is it some deeper unacknowledged instinct to behave as a pack & turn on the weak & unprotected? Malthus theory of population & Darwin survival of the fittest reduced to the worst common denominator.
I found this story deeply harrowing & upsetting. I cannot imagine what the relatives & friends of Bijan must feel about their adopted "democratic" & fair country. This sort of behaviour calls into question the whole basis of our society. How civilised are we if this can be allowed to happen? How effective are our laws, our sense of justice & those who supposedly enforce them?
Equally how have these young men grown up to become so lacking in any sense of right & wrong or empathy with another human being? How is it possible to treat the head of another human being like a football? It is sickening. What is wrong with their family background & the parenting skills which brought them to this? If they came from disfunctional families why didn't our education system repair some of the damage done over the 11 years of public education?
So many questions & so few answers. Sometimes I feel we are on the edge of chaos & mob rule. I just have to hope that the good defeats the evil.
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