On the stage and on loud speakers, politicians rant and rave about hanging them high. Others in drawing rooms indulge in loose talk of killing lakhs as a panacea for socio-economic problems without addressing the milieu. 800,000 of the Tutsis of Rwanda were killed in 100 days in 1994.
Accountability is easy as long as one is the prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner.
Certainly not the purveyors of pelf and patronage. Big talk, in effect, is a decoy for little action on serious issues. Close to home is a matter worth looking into. Two and a half years ago, in Maryland, teenager Samuel Sheinbein murdered a Hispanic youth, Alfredo Tello, and absconded to Israel where he claimed citizenship and sanctuary on the grounds that his father, Sol Sheinbein, was born in pre-Partition Palestine. Under the plea deal worked out in Israel, Sheinbein will plead guilty to a 24-year prison sentence, making him eligible for parole by age 33.