I know I said that I would talk about conflict areas but then I also had something else on my mind recently that I wanted to discuss briefly.
First of all I wanted to say that I think that it is absolutely horrific that so many people have died recently in countries that are deemed as safe. Violence, especially when executed through weapons, should not be allowed and needs to be punished as no one should have the ‘right’ and the means to randomly take someone’s life. But I think that we can all agree on that.
The issue that has also been in the media quite a lot recently which I want to discuss is about the handling of the attackers. There have been so many attacks and somehow it seems to be a good thing when the attacker is dead too. Which if I am honest, I absolutely do not agree with.
Yes, I get that many people are angry and yes, I get that there often seems no other way than to shoot at the attacker to stop them but let’s take the most recent case that happened in Bavaria, Germany. A 17- year old BOY is on a train and injures three people with an axe, two of them severely and while leaving the train he injures a fourth one. A SWAT team that by chance was close by followed him and when he tried to use the axe to run away they shot him dead. A 17 year old boy.
Yes he injured people, but he is a child, does he deserve to die?
What I mean is there is a group of highly trained police officers, who are a special force, so they have special skills, but they see no other way to solve the situation than to kill him? I don’t understand when shooting to injure someone to stop them from running became killing them. Like he cannot answer any questions, he cannot take responsibility, he cannot get help, because he is dead.
Now we are back to assumptions about why he did it. They found a hand drawn IS flag in his room. He was a refugee from Afghanistan, so it seems obvious to people why he did it, but is it?
I think we have to ask ourselves a much bigger question as to why a child that comes to Germany feels the need to do something like that. I mean he was a 17 year old boy who was one of many children arriving without family, without any support. After what he has probably been through I think we need to look at it from another angle as to, when people come here they have been through a lot and are often traumatised and need psychological aid. He had been moved to a foster family but I think that even that can only help people feel at home, often probably depending on the language level, I mean how welcome can you feel when you have no idea what people can’t really communicate with you. I have been in that situation and it feels horrible when you have no clue what is going on around you.
I want to say quite frankly that in many situations I feel like we make it a little bit easy for ourselves. I feel like the assumption that an attacker is sent from the IS when they have roots in a Middle Eastern or Northern African Countries, is now the easy way out. The IS is a problem that we have to deal with, yes, but what makes the individuals go that far is not discussed open enough and given not enough importance. I mean when white people attack someone it is always a psychological problem. I am not saying that these things are never the case but if it is generalised by politicians, the media and the people we are missing an important part of the whole problem that may be more difficult to face than the realisation, but that should hopefully in the end reduce the potential for attacks.
castawayminds 