AT a time when people all around the world are demonstrating their compassion and generosity toward the millions of victims of the Asian tsunami, some evil individuals are cashing in on the desperation of the suffering and behaving with unspeakable callousness and wickedness.
From the Indonesian province of Aceh come credible reports that child traffickers have been luring away orphaned kids and using cell phone messages to advertise them for “adoption” by people who would use them as servants or worse in the sex trade. It is feared a young Swedish boy may have been abducted from a Thai hospital. In India there are claims that women among the disoriented and traumatized refugees have been seized and abused. In various countries looters have been at work combing through the ruins of homes and businesses, not even stopping short of robbing the corpses. In the seas around Sumatra, pirates, long a danger to shipping, are reportedly homing in like carrion crows on ravaged communities. There have even been hoaxers in areas unaffected by the tsunami, who have unleashed rumors that a further great wave was coming. After terrified inhabitants fled their homes and businesses, the hoaxers moved in and pillaged their deserted properties.
For the vast majority of decent people around the world, even the greatest leap of imagination makes it virtually impossible to understand how these creatures could behave with such gross selfishness. It is not that that they are extremely poor and will thus seize any opportunity to enrich themselves. Plenty of pitifully poor people have lost everything in the tsunami, yet they are conducting themselves with dignity and propriety and in as much as they can, seeking to help each other.
Nor have they been confined to these poverty-stricken regions. In England, thieves used a wheelchair to carry away a large collection box from Salisbury Cathedral, into which donations had been pouring. Someone in Hong Kong set up an appeal website on the Internet asking for money to be paid into a local bank account. Many thousands of dollars may have been sent there. The account has since been cleaned out.
Trying to figure how anyone can act in such a reprehensible manner leads to only one answer. They represent a craven minority for whom compassion, love, generosity, indeed any normal decent feelings are a complete mystery. There is no crime, however merciless, which will seem to them wrong, if it helps them gain whatever perverse desires they have. The only emotion they possess is the fear of being caught. They do not in truth deserve to be thought of as human beings.
As the world struggles to heal the terrible wounds caused by the tsunami, the authorities should also be alert to the depredations of these thugs and should deal with them mercilessly whenever they are caught. Their behavior is so disgusting, it is beneath even contempt and must not be allowed to soil the worldwide tidal wave of compassion that has followed the tsunami.
