You have been arrested. Accused of dealing drugs maybe, or stealing cars.
You are a poor man. You have no friends in high places, just a family that loves you, a family you work hard to provide for.
You are taken into the lockup. The police look at you as if you were some kind of worm. The interrogation begins while you are still in handcuffs.
Five policemen ask the same questions over and over. You give the same answers, over and over.
After a while, they lose their patience, and begin beating you. The pain is intense. Still, you cannot confess to something you did not do.
They force you to your knees, still handcuffed. Soon, the police move from fists to other things: a rubber hose, a rotan, a stapler, cigarettes, boiling water.
Beating, kicking, torturing. You beg them to stop. You plead for mercy, in tears. It just goes on and on.
Soon, you are confessing to everything. You answer yes to every question. It is too late. It does nothing to stop them.
Before you lose consciousness, a deep burning regret fills you, as painful as the blows. Regret that you did not leave enough for your family. Regret that your children will grow up orphans, your wife a widow.
Regret that the last thing you ever see, through tears, is the faces of five policemen, never stopping their beating, looking at you like you were a worm.
Why? How?
These are the first questions we ask. The rest of us who cannot imagine this degree of brutality, this extent of malice.
How is it one human being can do this to another?
If these had been the actions of one person, then we look to the study of psychopaths, serial killers and the like to understand his actions.
When it is an entire mob, or worse yet, an entire national institution, we must look elsewhere for answers.
In Sierra Leone, I saw men who had their hands and feets chopped off by soldiers, for sport and terror as much as anything else. In Rwanda, the whole world saw the brutal mass genocide of hundreds of thousands.
We are used to thinking of these things as distant savagery, so far removed from our own world, little knowing that the same mentality pervades atrocities taking place at the police station just down the street from us.
Dehumanisation
It was said in the book, A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin:“There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs. The scent of blood is all it takes to wake him.”
A group of people can only be taught to torture another human being once they are taught to stop seeing the victim as a human being and a person.
Once the target is dehumanised, then human empathy disappears. When human empathy disappears, then there are no more limits to what evil one man can do to another.
Throughout history, it is the teaching of dehumanisation that is the first and most important step. In Rwanda, in Yugoslavia, in Nazi Germany, it is all the same: those ‘other’ people are not like us, they are worms to be stomped on.
Here, it seems it is those perceived to be criminals - and often, as it has been throughout history, those of a different skin colour.
Once a man is in handcuffs, our men in blue are conditioned to think that he is a worm, and that is their duty to teach him a hard lesson.
Institutional brutality
It is the conditioning that is the most important. Deaths and brutality in police custody have been a part of our nation for years, if not decades.
This is not the work of one ‘crazed psychopath’. These are not isolated incidents.
Neither does our police force consist of men or women who are innately evil or cruel. The vast majority of us do not grow up with a desire to hurt others. It is something learnt.
Here, it has become something learnt from one generation of policeman to the next.
Looking at the frequency and geographical spread of cases, it is strikingly obvious that the problem is one of institutional culture passed around from policeman to policeman throughout the country - a pervasive culture of dehumanisation and physical violence against those who cannot protect themselves.
Policeman - who are in every other way perfectly normal fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, friends and neighbours - are taught by other policemen: this is the way we do things.
Omerta
It sometimes feels like there are no policemen of conscience who will speak up against this culture of violence. No men or women who will stand up and say: this is wrong. Why?
Men and women who are bound together by purposes of violence, be it criminal or state sponsored, have always adhered to one form or another of omerta - “an extreme form of loyalty and solidarity in the face of authority”. Emphasis on extreme.
There is nothing worse in such an organisation, again whether criminal or state institution, as betraying your brothers.
Anyone who has spent time with local police can see that those bonds are alive and well. Loyalty to a fellow policeman transcends race or any other social division. They protect one another.
The same goes for higher ranking officers. Whenever a death in custody or such case occurs, superior officers are the first to leap to their defence and declare the accused absolutely innocent.
Police are family, and omerta means much the same as ohana - we stick together, regardless of the transgressions, and no one gets left behind.
In a cold, hard, poor and violent world, such as our police inhabit, survival instinct breeds extreme group loyalty, and it breeds it blind. When so much is at stake, ethics become a luxury that must give way to group solidarity.
Yet, it is always, always only a matter of time before blind loyalty is abused. When either an underling or a leader starts to feel that loyalty is given and not earned, they no longer feel accountable for their actions.
There is always something to be said for watching out for one another, but that something does not and can not extend to human beings who beat other human beings to death.
Restoring humanity
I think the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) can be a good thing.
If the above is indeed the crux of the problem however, then the IPCMC is limited by being an outsider organisation attempting to enforce a set of values on a resistant police force.
Our police have been honed to very effective feudal obedience. The police leadership, and their bosses above them, must decide what kind of police force they want to be.
If their leaders decide that they are to be an organisation which lives on corruption and beating, torturing and killing the weak whenever they see fit with complete impunity, then that’s what the police will be.
If their leaders decide that they are to be a professional organisation that understands the difference between violent, vigilante retribution with no regard for the sanctity of human life on one hand, and effective crime prevention on the other, then that’s what they’ll be.
For our part, we too must remain consistent. If it is not right for criminals to be beaten half to death in the lockup, then it is not right for a mob to beat a thief on the streets.
It may sound naive, but perhaps instead of trying only to insist on non-indigenous notions of human rights, we might achieve more simply by going around and telling police the stories of each of these people who have died - who their families are, who and what they loved, what lives they lead, and who they were as human beings. Reverse the dehumanisation, and we have a chance of reversing everything else.
If there is no change in culture, and the higher-ups continue to worry more about their careers than they do about human lives, then the beatings will go on, and the bodies will continue to pile up.
It is stupid to accuse us of “demoralising” the police. We simply want to stop these brutalities. If we are wrongly accusing the whole police force of being complicit, then let those who are innocent and principled stand up and demand change within their profession.
I will not believe that there is no one in the police or the government who wants to do the right thing, and end this culture of brutality.
If indeed there are such men or women, then stand up. Now, and not later. Stand up now against a worsening culture of torture and murder, of making widows and orphans. Stand up now, regardless of where you are from, and we will stand with you.
You are a poor man. You have no friends in high places, just a family that loves you, a family you work hard to provide for.
You are taken into the lockup. The police look at you as if you were some kind of worm. The interrogation begins while you are still in handcuffs.
Five policemen ask the same questions over and over. You give the same answers, over and over.
After a while, they lose their patience, and begin beating you. The pain is intense. Still, you cannot confess to something you did not do.
They force you to your knees, still handcuffed. Soon, the police move from fists to other things: a rubber hose, a rotan, a stapler, cigarettes, boiling water.
Beating, kicking, torturing. You beg them to stop. You plead for mercy, in tears. It just goes on and on.
Soon, you are confessing to everything. You answer yes to every question. It is too late. It does nothing to stop them.
Before you lose consciousness, a deep burning regret fills you, as painful as the blows. Regret that you did not leave enough for your family. Regret that your children will grow up orphans, your wife a widow.
Regret that the last thing you ever see, through tears, is the faces of five policemen, never stopping their beating, looking at you like you were a worm.
Why? How?
These are the first questions we ask. The rest of us who cannot imagine this degree of brutality, this extent of malice.
How is it one human being can do this to another?
If these had been the actions of one person, then we look to the study of psychopaths, serial killers and the like to understand his actions.When it is an entire mob, or worse yet, an entire national institution, we must look elsewhere for answers.
In Sierra Leone, I saw men who had their hands and feets chopped off by soldiers, for sport and terror as much as anything else. In Rwanda, the whole world saw the brutal mass genocide of hundreds of thousands.
We are used to thinking of these things as distant savagery, so far removed from our own world, little knowing that the same mentality pervades atrocities taking place at the police station just down the street from us.
Dehumanisation
It was said in the book, A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin:“There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs. The scent of blood is all it takes to wake him.”
A group of people can only be taught to torture another human being once they are taught to stop seeing the victim as a human being and a person.
Once the target is dehumanised, then human empathy disappears. When human empathy disappears, then there are no more limits to what evil one man can do to another.
Throughout history, it is the teaching of dehumanisation that is the first and most important step. In Rwanda, in Yugoslavia, in Nazi Germany, it is all the same: those ‘other’ people are not like us, they are worms to be stomped on.
Here, it seems it is those perceived to be criminals - and often, as it has been throughout history, those of a different skin colour.
Once a man is in handcuffs, our men in blue are conditioned to think that he is a worm, and that is their duty to teach him a hard lesson.
Institutional brutality
It is the conditioning that is the most important. Deaths and brutality in police custody have been a part of our nation for years, if not decades.
This is not the work of one ‘crazed psychopath’. These are not isolated incidents.
Neither does our police force consist of men or women who are innately evil or cruel. The vast majority of us do not grow up with a desire to hurt others. It is something learnt.Here, it has become something learnt from one generation of policeman to the next.
Looking at the frequency and geographical spread of cases, it is strikingly obvious that the problem is one of institutional culture passed around from policeman to policeman throughout the country - a pervasive culture of dehumanisation and physical violence against those who cannot protect themselves.
Policeman - who are in every other way perfectly normal fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, friends and neighbours - are taught by other policemen: this is the way we do things.
Omerta
It sometimes feels like there are no policemen of conscience who will speak up against this culture of violence. No men or women who will stand up and say: this is wrong. Why?
Men and women who are bound together by purposes of violence, be it criminal or state sponsored, have always adhered to one form or another of omerta - “an extreme form of loyalty and solidarity in the face of authority”. Emphasis on extreme.
There is nothing worse in such an organisation, again whether criminal or state institution, as betraying your brothers.
Anyone who has spent time with local police can see that those bonds are alive and well. Loyalty to a fellow policeman transcends race or any other social division. They protect one another.
The same goes for higher ranking officers. Whenever a death in custody or such case occurs, superior officers are the first to leap to their defence and declare the accused absolutely innocent.
Police are family, and omerta means much the same as ohana - we stick together, regardless of the transgressions, and no one gets left behind.
In a cold, hard, poor and violent world, such as our police inhabit, survival instinct breeds extreme group loyalty, and it breeds it blind. When so much is at stake, ethics become a luxury that must give way to group solidarity.
Yet, it is always, always only a matter of time before blind loyalty is abused. When either an underling or a leader starts to feel that loyalty is given and not earned, they no longer feel accountable for their actions.
There is always something to be said for watching out for one another, but that something does not and can not extend to human beings who beat other human beings to death.
Restoring humanity
I think the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) can be a good thing.
If the above is indeed the crux of the problem however, then the IPCMC is limited by being an outsider organisation attempting to enforce a set of values on a resistant police force.
Our police have been honed to very effective feudal obedience. The police leadership, and their bosses above them, must decide what kind of police force they want to be.
If their leaders decide that they are to be an organisation which lives on corruption and beating, torturing and killing the weak whenever they see fit with complete impunity, then that’s what the police will be.
If their leaders decide that they are to be a professional organisation that understands the difference between violent, vigilante retribution with no regard for the sanctity of human life on one hand, and effective crime prevention on the other, then that’s what they’ll be.For our part, we too must remain consistent. If it is not right for criminals to be beaten half to death in the lockup, then it is not right for a mob to beat a thief on the streets.
It may sound naive, but perhaps instead of trying only to insist on non-indigenous notions of human rights, we might achieve more simply by going around and telling police the stories of each of these people who have died - who their families are, who and what they loved, what lives they lead, and who they were as human beings. Reverse the dehumanisation, and we have a chance of reversing everything else.
If there is no change in culture, and the higher-ups continue to worry more about their careers than they do about human lives, then the beatings will go on, and the bodies will continue to pile up.
It is stupid to accuse us of “demoralising” the police. We simply want to stop these brutalities. If we are wrongly accusing the whole police force of being complicit, then let those who are innocent and principled stand up and demand change within their profession.
I will not believe that there is no one in the police or the government who wants to do the right thing, and end this culture of brutality.
If indeed there are such men or women, then stand up. Now, and not later. Stand up now against a worsening culture of torture and murder, of making widows and orphans. Stand up now, regardless of where you are from, and we will stand with you.
NATHANIEL TAN hopes to always follow the example of K Selvach Santhiran, a witness who implicated police in a death-in-custody inquest.
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