Cruel

News today seems riddled with stories of physical cruelty. The media thrives on it as the public seems to derive morbid fascination from such stories. I found myself wondering what it is that drives men and women to commit savage acts of brutality.

Consider the recent tragic death of 20-year-old Julie Ann Rodelas. Her atraso was allegedly spreading a rumor to common friends that Althea Altamirano had two children (never mind that the rumor was actually true). Althea then plotted with her boyfriend towards Julie’s abduction and rape. All, according to another suspect, for the sake of teaching her a lesson. Apparently her subsequent murder came only as an afterthought when Julie recognized Althea’s boyfriend as one of the assailants. They shot her five times in the head and then dumped her body in the Cubao area. As far as lessons go, however, it will be Althea and her cohorts who will need to do the learning. They were arrested by the police after a fast food receipt which they found clutched in Julie’s hand helped reveal the perpetrators’ identities. Using a CCTV video clip, the cops matched the time stamp on the receipt to the time of the boyfriend’s purchase.

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Then there is the case of Mohalidin Guiamaludin. He is accused of being a serial killer, suspected of at least eight murders in the Manila area alone, who — if the police sources are to be believed — would just as soon kill people that stare at him.

The choice of the term “serial killer” struck me as odd since we do not hear much of them outside of murder mysteries. Curious, I did a Google search for serial killers in the Philippines and stumbled upon a blog site of a man (or woman) who goes by the name of Hunyango, who writes, “As far as I can remember and that was a very long time ago, there’s always this weird and strange obsession to kill! My first victim was our neighbor’s pet dog – “Hunter” back when I was in third grade. It took me several days of planning until the day when I fed him a piece of meat I got from my mother’s refrigerator laced with 2-4- D xxxx Not being caught, gave me the courage to become bolder and bolder until the time when I got tired of killing mere pets. This was around the time when I was in already in 3rd year high school where I promised myself that I have to kill a human being as a rite of passage to adulthood...” In another post he even boldly announces that he can be followed by fans on Twitter. It could all be a hoax (I sure hope so!) but I don’t know which is worse: that there is someone sick enough to write a blog like this or the fact that some people have actually left comments asking if he would be willing to kill someone for a fee.

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Finally, there is the disturbing case involving Dorma and Vic Ridon who were recently arrested by the NBI for the creation of “crush” videos. The latter — a type of sadistic and prurient paraphernalia — show half naked 12-year-old girls stomping and torturing live animals. Among other clips, they filmed a rabbit being skinned alive, set on fire, and mutilated; a monkey hit in the eye with the sharp end of a stiletto heel and a dog burned using a clothes iron. But these videos are not unique to the Philippines. The reality is these crush videos are produced around the world by twisted individuals for the gratification of their sexually deviant clientele. In 2010, President Obama signed the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act criminalizing their creation, sale and distribution. We have yet to see a similar law passed although I am told a bill is currently under review in the Senate.

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But while the cruelties of the human race have been well documented, I was surprised to find similar instances with the rest of the animal kingdom. For example, bottle-nose dolphins, one of the most beloved and intelligent of all sea creatures, would repeatedly spear porpoises in the gut until they died. Chimpanzees, have been documented cannibalizing the babies of other chimpanzees and lions reportedly kill the cubs of lionesses before engaging in sex. In this sense, one wonders whether it is in our DNA to be cruel?

On the other hand, the law appears to treat cruelty and inhumanity in the same light. The Constitution prohibits the imposition of cruel, degrading and inhuman punishment. Moreover, studies show a connection between altruism in humans and the gene AVPR1a (which is linked to arginine vasopressin, a hormone involved in social bonding). And while the propensity for cruelty is not unique to the human race, the capacity for awareness is. We are the only species that can reflect upon our nature and tread a different path than what we are predisposed to do. Indeed, we have the potential to be both the greatest or the worst of species. The choice is ultimately ours. 

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Syntax: Amidst the continuing raging debate in respect of the passage of the sin tax bill, I received an interesting e-mail about four columnists of competing Philippine newspapers coming out with similar anti-sin tax columns one after the other. The coincidences both in terms of tone and content are striking to say the least. You may judge for yourself at http://sintax.ph/.

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Greetings: One of the more prominent endocrinologists in the US is a Fil-American cousin of mine who celebrates her birth anniversary today. She is Maria Justina “Ina” Bautista Villano who was the first woman to graduate as Valedictorian-Summa cum Laude from the Ateneo de Manila University. She serves as Medical Director of Northwest Community Hospital, one of the leading hospitals in the Chicago area.

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“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”    — Martin Luther King Jr.

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