In other words the incidence and report of crime and violence no longer cause any large degree of social outrage.
The sadness in the matter relates to the pathos in a situation, where only old timers who know of a less violent time can reflect on how life was in a Bahamas, where there was more respect for life and limb.
This upsurge in crime and violence in The Bahamas, is apparently due to the confluence of a number of forces: some of them involving reports of war and violence; terrorism; the drugs trade; human cargo smuggling and, most tellingly, glamorised stories concerning the lives and experiences of gangsters who have been able to ﾑget overﾴ.
Additionally ﾖ and most potently ﾖ are images and depictions of people who boast about the pleasures of the ﾑthug lifeﾴ. All of this and more, explains the circumstances, situations and forces which are pushing more and more impressionable youth to violence and sometimes sudden death.
The situation in the Caribbean has reached such an alarming extent, that Catholic Bishops have been compelled to respond by way of pastoral letter.
It notes, in part, that: Each day the news media report terrible acts of inhumanity against our children, our women, our neighbours. There is anxiety about our security and about the future.
The history of the Caribbean people has been a story of the long struggle for freedom: emancipation from the oppression of slavery, independence from colonial powers for self-determination. It has often been a painful story, filled with injustice, bloodshed and suffering for its people of many origins. But there have also been triumphant moments of liberation and accomplishment.
Yet the path to freedom has not yet been fully travelled by our Caribbean people. As we look around, we continue to see inequality, poverty, exclusion, prejudice, hatred, high levels of crime and horrendous acts of violence. These are challenging us to take responsibility for our society and to seek ways to address its social problems. As Christians we need to try and understand the situation in the light of our faith and see what remedies it offers. For as St. Paul told the Galatians, ﾓwhen Christ reed us, He meant us to remain free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.ﾔ
The grave sin of social slavery, and of colonialism as well, is that they are systems which dehumanise the person. They imply that a particular people, because of race, colour, nationality, gender, age, class or religion, are non-human or marginal.
They are mere objects to be used for the gain of the oppressor. They attempt to destroy the dignity of a people by giving no value to the sanctity of their lives.
In the same way, criminal violence threatens to take away the dignity of the victim(s). It treats the person as an object to satisfy some desire: the hunger and struggle for material goods, for status, for money, for power and control of territory or people. To act on these desires is to return to a situation of slavery.
It is to return to the oppression of Egypt and Babylon, or in colonial times to the so-called ﾓNew Worldﾔ, where persons were treated as dehumanised objects.
There is today an abundance of evidence of support the conclusion that crime and violence, if left unattended, will destroy this nation of ours.
Editorial, The Bahama Journal
