Diabolical murder on a London street

The recent murder that took place in Woolwich, London has been catching some serious coverage primarily on BBC and even on various other international media; maybe because it didn’t happen in Syria, where murders are a part of everyday life, and it occurred in London where the British media (lots of prodigious cameras from what I saw near the site) and anybody from the twitter community could instantaneously broadcast everything happening straight from the crime scene.

Since the past two days, the police have sealed off the roads that lead to the crime scene and from where the bus I take usually pass by. But since yesterday, from a distance, I could see gatherings of journalists, forensic officers, reporters with oversized cameras and various floral tributes; and I couldn’t help but wonder how long the commotion would last before something else would become breaking news.



Prime Minister David Cameron termed the event as ‘betrayal of Islam and of the Muslim communities who give so much to the country’ because one of the killers who swung at the victim’s head said that the only reason why they were doing so was because of the number of killings of Muslims every day. Unreasonable, this just shows how some people have the ability to delude themselves into behaving and psycho-analysing things in such a dysfunctional way that even killing someone can be thought of as a reasonable thing to do.[break]



I feel terrible for the 25-year-old drummer of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers who lies dead now just because some seriously deranged and distressed men considered it the right thing to do; but what freaks me out more is that the incident happened a few miles away from where I am currently living, and for all that we know, I or perhaps another Nepali soldier could’ve been annihilated in that incident. Even if the murder might’ve been meticulously pre-planned, my guess is that they could’ve attacked anyone - because brandishing knives and trying to slit someone’s throat in broad day light in a city like London doesn’t actually count as a sane thing to do. Despite the incident being treated only as a ‘potential terrorism’ incident, which it probably was, it begs some thought provoking questions; how long will some people not see the end to violence, and how lucky were other random drummers or bugle players of the Royal Regiment who fortunately weren’t targeted?



We hear of such appalling and gruesome acts in the news every other day but unless it happens to someone we know or somewhere near our own living space, we might never even consider the extent of the horror that the victims go through and we may never reckon doing something about it. In this case, I saw some pictures of the victim’s wife crying and I really felt sorry for her loss, but I should be feeling sorry for every other life lost due to idiotic perpetrators in this world. The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, attended the ‘Cobra Emergency Committee Meeting’ in Westminster and said that Londoners could go about their everyday routine in a normal way and the killers would be brought to justice and I certainly hope that justice is done; ‘justice’ is one of the few things that kind of exhibits ‘reason’ for me right now even though I might seem irrational to the transgressors.



The writer is a student at Cardiff Metropolitan University in London, UK.

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