This content was extracted from www.thestar.com.my

ON THIS earth, only human beings are capable of inflicting cruelty. The worst form of human cruelty is man’s cruelty to man. 

When we see or hear about horrific acts of cruelty and barbarism, we often describe such acts as “inhuman”. No, they are not inhuman. They are acts of humans. 

Sadly, the past few weeks have provided ample graphic testimony to this sickening form of humiliation – man’s cruelty to man. 

First, we saw the pictures of various forms of physical and psychological torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners of war by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib camp outside Baghdad. 

Then, the terrible video of the beheading of kidnapped American businessman Nick Berg at the hands of Islamic militants in Iraq. 

Now, we have pictures of the horrific wounds inflicted on a 19-year-old Indonesian maid allegedly by her mistress. 

Malaysians are naturally repulsed and outraged by all these incidents of man’s cruelty to man, especially the abuse and torture of Nirmala Bonet because it happened on our own home ground, Kuala Lumpur. 

There is simply no excuse why a teenage maid should be subjected to such horrific abuse almost daily for the past five months. No excuse at all. 

A simple girl from a poor farming family, with little knowledge of the outside world, had to travel 3,000km from Kupang in Indonesian West Timor to Kuala Lumpur to earn money to help her family. Little did she know that she was walking into hell. 

The person or persons who did this to her must be brought to trial, and when found guilty be given the maximum punishment provided under the law. 

There are common strands running through the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the beheading of Berg, and the violence against Nirmala. 

First, they were completely under the control and at the mercy of their captors.  

Yes, Nirmala was, to all intents and purposes, a helpless captive.  

The people who did all these cruel deeds must have a twisted and sadistic sense of power. Their purpose was to debase and dehumanize their victims, inflict pain, strip them of their dignity, and in the case of Berg took his life. 

But the tragedy of it all is that by subjecting their victims to the cruelest forms of abuse, the perpetrators had humiliate themselves and stripped themselves of the human dignity that they sought to deprive their victims of. 

Humans are capable of the most noble and self-sacrificing acts and in doing so achieve the status of living saints. 

At the same time, there is evil lurking in the deep recesses of the human brain. Occasionally, it breaks out to wreak pain and misery. It’s on these occasions that I concur with the ape rulers in the movie, Planet of the Apes. 

I am also reminded of the words of the historian Thomas Carlyle: “There is always a dark spot in our sunshine. It’s the shadow of ourselves.”