Only it wasn't isolated. Two men, both from Poland, allegedly refused to buy some youths alcohol from an off license in Drimnagh. Walking home, they were followed by those youths, one of whom had gone home and returned with a screwdriver. The two men were stabbed in the neck and head respectively and died of their injuries early last week. The reasons are unclear. The Polish community, hard working and often reticent, don’t seem to be the focus of a racist attack, despite reports, that the men were verbally abused as they walked home from the off-license. Thank God, it was an isolated incident.
Many are wondering what has become of our society. The turnout at the memorial service says a lot about how people feel about the event. Then again, the behaviour of our young people says even more, and this reflects more accurately how we interact as a society, as opposed to reflecting our aspirations. A visible minority of our young people are out of control, and some might say that violence is now a staple means of social interaction. As people try to come to terms with this incident, the Archbishop of Dublin has called for a community based “summit” to tackle the increase in violent crimes in Ireland. His suggestion is noble. We must debate, discuss and act upon what has the potential to become one of the defining tragedies of the last five years. Sadly, I don’t think it’s that simple, and the Archbishop's response reflects the difficulty we all have in confronting the issue of violence in our society. All the more frightening is the mess of conflicting, misleading stories and an almost total absence of cooperation to date from those young people who allegedly witnessed the tragedy.
And yet we still seek an explanation. Sociologists might tell you that some people do it to relieve their boredom and sense of isolation. Others do it to exercise some power in their lives over others, like kids pulling the legs off unfortunate spiders. Problematic is that these people aren't the ones who take part in the types of dialogue that Archbishop Martin suggested. They don't recognize their role in society, or the existence of society in the first place .
The killings may not have been racist, but also can’t be explained away as being a freak attack. Maggie Thatcher said there’s no such thing as society. True, when people act as if there is no higher sense of justice. To me it’s like believing in ghosts: if you don’t accept the idea in the first place, then it won’t be there when it should be. The next few days will tell us a lot of where we have come to, and where we may be headed.
