Alejandro H. Rodríguez-Giovo

Petrol Bombs Are a Murderous Weapon / El cóctel Mólotov es un arma homicida

Diciembre 15, 2008 | Por alejandro-h-rodriguez-giovo | # Enlace permanente | Tweet

I cannot claim to have a full understanding of the complex political baground and the exact concatenation of events that led to the recent explosion of seemingly random street violence in Athens in particular and Greece in general. Obviously, the shooting of a 15 year-old by the local police, even if accidental, is an abomination anywhere in the world, and particularly in the cradle of democracy.

However, by international standards, Greece remains a nation in which human rights are today fundamentally respected by the state, and democratic processes – corruption notwithstanding – by and large function effectively. I’m sure the Greeks have plenty to be disgruntled about (unfortunately, this is true for the citizens of most nations), but it can hardly be said that they are experiencing intolerable hardship under a ruthless tyranny that must be deposed by any means available.

It is high time that demonstrators in countries that are essentially democratic, and in which the human rights of its citizens are not habitually violated, should realize that their police forces are also entitled to be treated as human beings with equal rights, and not merely as targets for every object the demonstrators can lay their hands on, including the most irresponsibly sadistic and murderous of them all: the petrol bomb.

That the casualty figures among policemen and policewomen are not higher is certainly not due to any humane restraint on the part of demonstrators, but is largely the consequence of the extraordinarily elaborate precautions the police now have to take when facing them, including body armour and shields that would have been envied by mediaeval warriors. It bodes ill for democratic societies when the civil servants whose difficult job it is to safeguard ordinary, innocent, decent citizens, can no longer guarantee law and order simply through their uniformed but unarmed presence, and are treated by angry mobs in a state of self-induced frenzy as mere cannon-fodder.

Such reckless violence on the part of citizens in nations where their basic democratic and human rights are, by and large, respected, deprives them of the right to self-righteous indignation when one of their number is seriously hurt or even killed as the level of violence they have initiated begins to escalate. Such indignation is legitimate when peaceful demonstrations (parading, shouting, banner-waving and passive resistance à la Gandhi) are roughly repressed, and violent action may be understandable when there is no alternative but to overthrow a ruthless dictatorship by force; but what has been happening in Greece is inexcusable.

People who attempt to burn policemen alive are in no position to complain when they are harshly treated as a result. Molotov cocktails in a democratic republic such as Greece are not a romantic gesture of revolutionary idealism – they are a murderous weapon, and those who throw them at police officers, when the latter are merely carrying out their duty of maintaining the order that has been willed by a majority of the citizens, are criminals, and they deserve to be treated as such.