& çâÌæÚUæð´ ·¤è ¥ôÚU Îð¹Ùæ ÁæÚUè ÚU¹ð´ ¥ÍæüÌ ¥ÂÙð ÜÿØ ÂÚU ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´Ð ãæÚU Ù ×æÙð´, €UØô´ç·¤ ·¤æ× ·¤ÚUÙð âð ¥æÂ·¤ô ©gðàØ ·¤è Âýæç# ãôÌè ãñ ¥õÚU ÁèßÙ ·¤æ ¹æÜèÂÙ ÎêÚU ãôÌæ ãñÐ ÖÜð ãè ÁèßÙ ×ð´ ç·¤ÌÙè Öè ·¤çÆÙæ§ü €UØô´ Ù ¥æ°, çÁ™ææâæ ¥õÚU ©ˆâæã ÕÙæ° ÚU¹ð´Ð ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´, ÜÿØ ã×ðàææ ¥æÂ·Ô¤ Âæâ ãôÌð ãñ´ çÁ‹ãð´ ÂæÙð ·Ô¤ çÜ° ÂýØæâ ¥æÂ ·¤Öè Öè àæéM¤ ·¤ÚU â·¤Ìð ãñ´Ð

PLEASURE IS ALL MINE

Breivik punishment a licence to kill?
Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, has been let off with light punishment. He has
been sentenced to 21 years in prison with a guarantee that he will be able to seek parole after just 10 years. Norwegian law prescribes this as the maximum sentence an offender can face "whatever the scale of the offence."
Even one year per murder would have added up to 77 years in jail, still that would not even marginally heal the trauma and wounds inflicted on the families of the victims and in an extended sense on the Norwegian people and the world at large. There have been sentences up to 150 years or more, knowing full well that human longevity does not extend that far. The rationale for handing out such an impracticable conviction lies in its power of deterrence.
A parallel to Breivik's monstrous act can be drawn in the Timothy McVeigh case, the latter killed 168 people with a truck bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995. But the difference is he was executed and his motivations were slightly different than Breivik's.
Timothy said he was avenging the US federal government's sieges on Ruby Ridge in Idaho and Waco in Texas in 1992 and 1993 respectively. The confrontation in Ruby Ridge originated in one Randy Weaver refusing to be an informant for the
federal government. The Waco siege began and ended violendy after "the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), accompanied by several members of the media, attempted to execute a search warrant at the Branch Davidian ranch at Mount Carmel” betraying a religious sensitivity.
Mark the fact: Timothy was driven by a sense of heroics, he boastfully asked: "Isn't it kind of scary one man could wreak this kind of hell?" Breivik too might have had a perverse motivation of megalomania.
Timothy McVeigh claimed as an afterthought in an essay he wrote in the prison that "terrorist bombing was 'morally equivalent' to US military actions against Iraq and other foreign lands.”
For his part, Breivik believed that the government's immigration policies were adulterating "Norwegian blood" and leading to war with Muslims. The Labour Party's youth camp that Breivik massacred on the Utoya Island has long backed "multi-culturalism to accommodate Norway's different ethnic communities."
The country has had neo-Nazi groups in the past but assumed that such groups had been largely eliminated and did not pose a significant threat, going by BBC's Richard Galpin's take from the spot.
Far right militant sentiments are nothing new; in fact, it had been sweeping Western Europe largely as an undercurrent for long. In Britain, there have been right-wing National Front, skinhead and latterly English Defense League (EDL). Remember,
Enoch Powel's "River of Blood" speech as an anti-immigration metaphor, a throwback to the past. There was also Oswald Mosley, the founder of British Union of Fascists.
EDL in various forms is associated with European right wing parties. There are the extremist fringes propagating Germany for Germans and France for French.
But in all fairness to countries
with colonial experiences they have a degree of acceptability for multi-cultural societies, besides recognising the economic need to welcome immigration, especially in countries with negative population growth. Although Norway had no colonies, it has been fairly liberal to immigration.
USA is a somewhat different ball game which likes to see a mosaic of
cultures being a traditional melting pot, but an element of Islamophobia lingers even over a decade since 9/11. Ideological extremism would have to be countered with interfaith bulwark.
Back to Breivik; he shouldn't have had any right to live — but the Scandinavian countries keep no provision for capital punishment. Yet, the truth is the tradition of
forgiveness in Norway subordinates cold-blooded murder of human lives and the emotions and agonies of the maimed and the bereaved families to a high standard of punitive legalism. Did it somehow work at the back of Breivik's mind, who can tell?
If, however, a court still considers a prisoner dangerous after the jail term has been served it can keep him inside indefinitely. This is said to be rare in Norway because it has the tradition of seeking rehabilitation.
If Breivik serves full term he will be freed at age 54, still a danger to society. For, he has vowed in court testimony he would do the killings again if he ever has the chance to. He showed no sign of penance when it was pointed out to him that he had murdered teenaged children. In fact, he has had to be cut off by the court when after sentencing in his brief statement he was about to apologise for "not killing more people.”
If Einstein's brain has been studied to fathom the mysteries of its power, that of Anders Behring Breivik should interest criminologists for the power of the evil it held in his neurotransmitters. Was he genetically encoded to enact the monstrous single-handed annihilation of 77 teenager compatriots or a product of extreme-right reactionary undercurrent gripping the imagination of the idle youth? We need a new breed of experts to interpret such mental giganticism.
The writer is Associate Editor, The Daily Star. E-mail: husain.lmam@thedailystar net