"I can't breathe"

A giant mural in Washington DC honouring black lives

At the dawn of the new millenium, we dreamt of a world with equality and justice as integral parts of its social structure.

Twenty years down the lane we are now living in a world full of hatred based on race, religion, caste and creed.

The United States of America, which champions itself for its human rights and is seen as the leader of the free world, saw massive, wide scale protests after the killing of George Floyd, an African American man, on 25th May 2020 by a policer officer in Minneapolis state. The police officer, named Derek Chauvin, kept his knee on the neck of a handcuffed, non-violent man for 9 minutes as Mr. Floyd wailed and begged for his life before becoming unconscious. Mr. Chauvin could be seen in a relaxed pose with hands in his pockets, as he ignored the pleas of Mr. Floyd and the bystanders who also recorded the whole incident on video. Fellow police officer Tou Thao was protecting his colleague from the crowd which had gathered around them urging to take off the knee and check the pulse after Mr. Floyd went unconscious. In a different angle of the video two more police officers could be seen as accomplices of this killing. The last words of Mr. Floy were 'I can't breathe'.

This was not an isolated incident of police brutality on African American people in USA. Over the past few years there has been an alarming rise in the number of Black people getting harassed or murdered at the hands of police officers or law enforcement agencies for supposedly petty crimes and sometimes on mere speculations. On few occasions police raided wrong houses at night and killed people of colour by mistake. Most of these incidents goes without much accountability for the involved police officers.

All the incidents of police brutality ignited anger in the Black community of America and started the movement known as 'Black Lives Matter'. Not long afterwards a National Football League (NFL) player, Colin Kaepernick, took a knee and refused to stand up for the flag during national anthem as a symbol to protest against police brutality on people of colour. This practice was later adopted by more footballers, eventually leading to a backlash from some quarters and the end of Mr. Kaepernick's career for NFL.

After the Mineapolis incident in May, protests erupted all over USA and abroad, quickly reaching Europe and even as far as Japan. However the response of US authorities was not so warm. The police officers involved in the incident were initially just fired from job, and were charged with murder only after the protests began. Soon the protesters were blamed for extensive looting and burning of public and private property. The statements from the White House and President Trump condemned the protesters. This did not stop the spread of the protests, with all 50 US states recording massive protests by last Saturday. Not even the Coronavirus pandemic could stop the protesters from coming out in large numbers. Soon millitary was deployed in areas witnessing most unrest in the wake of protests and disturbing visuals of clashes between protesters and police/ army emerged.

While the future remains uncertain we hope that the societies like USA, which boasts of high democratic values, may soon find solutions to diffuse tensions and come up with reforms to prevent future brutalities.

However in the war torn regions like Middle East, Yemen, Palestine and Kashmir, the concept of law, justice and equality is no longer present. Innocent civilians have been attacked, leaving them with permanent disabilities and blindness; homes which took savings of a generation to build were destroyed in minutes; sons, fathers and husbands murdered and the futures of the entire families stolen. Almost all over the world brutality in some form is crippling human beings with fear and desperation. From child labour to corporate greed, from honour killings to murders based on religious sentiments, the fabric of society seems so brittle and weak that it may collapse any moment.

The question that remains to be asked is whether this the best we could give to this world and ourselves? Is this the social system that we dreamt of building and living in? When there is law of the jungle and only might is considered right, there is no chance of ever achieving our full potential before the human race chokes itself to extinction! 

Perhaps this moment in history is our chance for using all our energies in order to express the beautiful values of love, brotherhood and empathy. An ordinary citizen just wants a peaceful life where he is not discriminated because of any factor other than his own conduct. 

It is our duty for the future generations to rise above the differences of race and religion in order to help build a beautiful world where equality and justice prevails.