EDITORIAL - An eye for an eye...

There seems to have been a bloody segue to the killing of the former mayor of Lamitan, Basilan, and two others in the Ateneo de Manila University last Sunday; the father of the accused killer was also shot dead in Lamitan yesterday.

According to reports, Rolando Yumol, father of Ateneo shooting suspect Chao Tiao Yumol, was shot dead by two unidentified men onboard a motorcycle while he was outside his house in Barangay Maganda, Lamitan City.

While as of this writing the police could not yet say that the killing of Rolando was in retaliation for his son’s killing of former Lamitan mayor Rosita Furigay, many cannot help but see it that way.

If the title of this editorial led you to think we are justifying the killing of Rolando, this was not our intention. While the original statement can be drawn from Exodus 21:23–27 which recommends punishment as "eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe" this is not something we push for.

Allow us to finish what we meant. It is something that Mahatmi Gandhi once wrote in his column: “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”

Same as the killing of Rosita Furigay, the killing of Rolando, who may even have had no knowledge of or nothing at all to do with his son’s despicable actions, should also be condemned.

Again, despite how slow the justice system in this country grinds, no matter how righteous a cause a person thinks he or she has, no one has the right to become judge, jury, then executioner. No one has the right to take another’s life in pursuit of some twisted interpretation of justice, if it can even be called justice in the first place.

The pursuit of justice must always be coursed through the legal means, otherwise it is not justice at all, but some twisted, corrupted form of retaliation more akin to revenge, more in fulfillment of a personal vendetta than anything else.