There is a state relatively small in size but teeming with people. It was once the pride of the country but has now become a cautionary tale. In what follows will be depicted what many in the state have had to experience over more than a decade.
Those with influence, such as eminent journalists, or with money to spare, such as many businesspersons. are left alone. This leaves those who are judged to be vulnerable, to have neither money nor influence. In the cities, in case an apartment is fancied by a political influential for himself or herself, an offer to buy is made, at a low price. Should the owner decline, he may find his children accosted by unfamiliar men with an air of menace, who tell them their father is being foolish. Strange men would come ring the bell to the apartment and should the housebound wife open the door, warn her that her husband by not making the sale is putting the family at risk. Sometimes knives are kept on the persons of the visitors, sometimes guns, where the housewife can and does see them. The same evening the husband and wife go to the nearby police station to lodge a complaint, a First Information Report, and ask for protection. The Station In-charge refuses to do so when told the names of the visitors, who are prominent in the local chapter of the party in power in the state. Often they threaten to prosecute the by now perturbed intending complainant, for “seeking to defame good people”. Sometimes a few hold out against such a situation for months, but eventually give in and make the sale. There are occasions when the buyers show magnanimity by offering to sell them another, much smaller, apartment elsewhere in the city for almost the same amount they got for their own apartment when it was forcibly sold. Nothing is off limits to the politically well connected, neither the wealth nor the family of their victims. In some cases, a recalcitrant seller gets beaten by the intending buyer and the henchmen he has brought with him. When the victim later goes to a police station to complain, a case is indeed made out. By the complainant for “attempting to beat up” the intending buyer, which of course caused the intending buyer to react similarly in self-defence. It is a situation from a horror movie, where right is ignored and might always prevails.
In the rural areas the situation is if anything worse. Gangs go to houses where desirable women stay and assault them sexually, sometimes in the presence of the helpless husband. Or the women are told to change their faith or face assault. An atmosphere of terror is pervasive, for each night a husband and wife go to bed without knowing if unwelcome to the extreme visitors will come calling. The official machinery serves the interests of the perpetrators of such crimes and not that of the victim. And yet the highest positions in the state are held by those who claim to be believers in humanity and in particular the rights of women. The state has an international border that is supposed to be sealed, but in several places is unsealed for a price. Smuggling is endemic, as is the violence that usually accompanies such a profession. For decades politicians have promised to seal the border but never have. Sealing the border brings with it no illicit monetary and other rewards to officials as smuggling does. Priests at certain places of worship are threatened, and items, some priceless, get stolen for auction abroad. There are indeed islands of rationality, of genuine intellectual attainment in such a cesspool of greed and ignorance, but these are shrinking. A state that was once famed across the country for the culture and civility of its people has by now become notorious for the opposite qualities. Politeness has been replaced by the rough cadence of bullies. Traditional respect for women has become a distant memory. Every day the mobs take over the streets, delaying already crawling traffic. Few dare to complain, for if they do, it is they who will face action, not the mobs and their leaders. Argument has become a slanging match, often settled by blows. Despite all this, the traditional culture of a state that has gifted so much intellectual treasure for the world survives. Those in power were complacent, confident that fear would ensure that their rule of the outlaw would continue. Instead, on 23 and 29 April the voters silently went to the booths, women especially, and brought to a close on 4 May the dystopian pit of terror and horror that the state had been for well over a decade.
Given al l that has happened, it is difficult to understand why political leaders from internationally known families are standing by those who had ruled, rather than the people who had endured enough, and who shed their fear and exercised the right to vote to excise from office the rulers of the state. Study the ground situation gentlemen, please, before racing to defend the indefensible.
