Dear Editor,
Twenty-one-year-old Rodney Beckles, son of the principal of the University of the West Indies Cave Hill campus, was yesterday charged with the murder of 28-year-old Khalil Campbell. He is to appear in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court early next week. Beckles is being represented by attorney-at-law Robert Fletcher. ( news report Sat 6th January 2007 )
This dreadful news has come as a bitter reminder that events like this do not engulf only the poor, the ignorant or the criminally inclined. No one is exempt from the violence that is becoming almost an accepted reality in our daily lives. The ‘ganja’-smoking background to this incident might seem to suggest that ‘drugs’ must be blamed as the reason for the violence. But murder is not usually associated with the smoking of marijuana. It is, in any case, surely too easy to simply blame ‘drugs’, though drug-related crime ( especially where ‘hard’ drugs are used ) is a fact of life. A thorough investigation into all the facts that led to this tragedy should provide the background to the incident. Only then can we begin to understand the violence that caused the tragedy.
Violence is certainly what we see and hear every day, whether it’s the bombing of Lebanon, the horror of Darfur or the carnage in Iraq and the grisly public hanging of Saddam shown in loving detail on television to millions of viewers ( I refused to watch that footage ) including our children and grandchildren. The Guardian (U.K.) newspaper and others carried the cell-phone pictures of the hanging on its front page for days, each day providing a different ‘view’.
We have become a passive, worldwide audience for violence. Killing, knifing and shooting involving young people ( Columbine was merely one example among many ) has become merely another item of ‘breaking’ news. Violence as a first response, or indeed ‘pre-emptive’ violence, are blatantly promoted as an acceptable way for entire nations to behave when threatened. The absurd ‘war on terror’ is an oxymoron : war is terror, but visited on large numbers, sometimes millions, of people. Bloodletting and violence have become ( as they were in the days of the Roman Empire ) almost a form of entertainment : an ‘extreme’ spectator sport .
The question of violence, including violence committed by the State, should be a subject for study and discussion in all schools and universities. What are the springs of violence? What gives anyone the right to ‘invade’ ( however you interpret that term ) another person’s space or life ? Is violence acceptable in some cases ( say, in hanging criminals )but not in others ? Why ? As with love or religion or politics we have to keep on asking questions, using our critical, creative intelligence instead of simply following the conventional paths laid down by previous generations. No real change is possible without this, and the world is changing faster than ever before. If ‘the proper study of Mankind is Man’, why then – as the African writer Ben Okri once asked – is there no faculty of ‘love’ or of ‘human and gender relationships’ in our universities, in addition to ‘social science’ ( where the emphasis is on the academic ‘science’ of observing human behaviour ), and the even more catch-all study of the ‘humanities’ which translates loosely into ‘the arts’ – still generally regarded as less important than the study of business, law and economics ? All education should be based on the human person and his/her potential for good or ill. Any of us might be a potential victim or murderer. Every person’s death through violence diminishes us all.
These are some of my immediate thoughts on this dreadful news. The families of Rodney Beckles and Khalil Campbell must be suffering terribly right now. The thoughts, prayers and love of all of us, I am sure, go out to them.
Yours faithfully,
Michael Gilkes
