NOTHING justifies robbery

Was telling Calvin about the robbery. I told him the robber deserves the beating. He then told me about this movie (Austin Power or something), where heroes kill bad guys. And when every bad guy was killed, the scene will change to show the bad guy's family, wife, kids. Guess the movie is trying to tell there's always 2 sides of a story. And when you kill the bad guy, his family suffers as well.

If you were to say that the robber has his reasons for being a robber, and that if he were beaten to death, his family member then suffers, I STRONGLY disagree on such sentiment. NOTHING, absolutely nothing justifies robbery. If the bad guy dies because of the bad things that he has committed, then his family has himself to blame. The wife can only blame her husband, the kids can only blame their father for landing them in such a situation.

What gives a person the right to snatch someone else's property from their hand?! People work to earn money, everybody works. We are not in Africa, we are not Sudan, we are not Somalia, whose country is a complete chaos. We are MALAYSIA. We are a DEVELOPING COUNTRY. People WORK. I do not think people here are in such a devastating state that they have to resort to robbery. People here rob, because it is an easier way to get money. Not because they are in extreme poverty.

You cannot tell me, maybe they couldn't find a job so they resort to robbery and we have to look at it from their situation. If the general public were to accept such thinking, our society will be chaotic. Numerous robberies will happen everywhere and when caught, the robbers will tell you "I can't find a job. I have a family of 6 (or 7, or 8, or whatever) to feed so I have to rob."

You can tell me, people should not beat him up, as we are not law enforcers, we should not take justice in our own hand. I agree with that. But I cannot accept the thinking that "the poor guy probably has his reasons".

What would you have felt, if the robbery happens to your own family?? If that particular girl ran across the road and hit by a car, paralysed, or died because of it, what would her family have felt??! Ask yourself, if it happens to any member of your family, would you still say the same? Would you still think, there's always 2 sides of a story??! Would you still think "Oh, poor man beaten up by so many people.." ??!!

We don't even have to consider the situation if that girl dies because of that robbery, she was definitely shaken but otherwise unharmed. When she goes back home and tell her family what has happened to her, what will the family members feel? Anger of course! Try telling her this : "Oh, he probably is very poor and couldn't find a job." She'd probably sever all relationship with the family member who tells her that.

If you feel sympathy towards people who commit such a crime because of poverty, then you are saying that we should sympathise the pirates from Somalia. But do we? No, we don't. Millions of people are in extreme poverty, you don't see millions of robberies happening everyday. The Somali pirates are so rich now that they can buy state-of-the-art weaponry to seize more vessels, super tankers, etc. People everywhere in Somalia are heading to the pirate town Eyl hoping to join them as pirates. They live in such unrest that the risk of being a pirate is nothing to them. So do we sympathise them? If we sympathise them, who sympathise the victims who were killed? A man was travelling the sea with his wife in his yacht and pirates came and killed the husband. So what do you make of this?

If I were so poor that I have to sleep on the street, if I were so poor that I might die of hunger tomorrow, I will NEVER rob or kill anybody. I will beg, I will dig the trash, but I will rather die to rob or kill. You can say that's because I'm a chicken. You can say I'm narrow minded. But there are some things that is totally unacceptable for me. Robbery is definitely one of them.



p.s. To be fair, there might be robbers who committed the crime because they are in extreme poverty and really couldn't find a job. But if you condone such thing, then where do we draw the lines?