tamago's emergency exit

Sunday, September 17, 2006

The Cannibals

A segment shown on the current affairs program 60 Minutes tonight shocked me...

Two reporters, together with their cameraman, took us back to the Stone Age to meet a tribe living in the jungle of West Papua. They are cannibals, one of the few surviving tribes in the world to engage in such act. The tribe is called the Korowai. And their universe is filled with witchcraft and all kinds of spirits. They would eat any human beings. Once they believed you’ve been cursed by evil spirits of some sort, regardless of whether you are their father or uncle or the tribe leader, you are to be executed.

A tribe member (forgot his name, just call him TT for now) was interviewed with a broken human skull, which belongs to his best mate. And guess what? TT was the one who killed him. And yet, TT didn’t show any signs of guilt or sadness, nothing!! He explained he would expect his best mate to do the same if he himself was convicted of possessing the evil spirit.

The tribe seems to be very warm and friendly to the reporters. The kids were jumping around. Everyone was dancing, mucking around and showing the reporters they homes and showed them food etc….so it’s extremely hard to believe that they could “change” so dramatically to actually killing people they know and eating human flesh. It was also mentioned that they would eat the brain first, while it is still warm!! Yuk!!

The intention of shooting such segment is to save a boy called Wawa. He is only 9 years old. The Korowai are convinced he's possessed by evil spirits because both his parents died of mysterious causes. For this, tribal law says he can be killed and eaten. Both they can’t do this until the boy reaches their adult age of 15.

So we have no doubt to act quickly and save Wawa and that’s what this TV segment is all about.

But have we thought of what would happen if we bring the boy from the Stone Age into our 21st Century??? It’s like watching Back to the Future huh? Can he cope, mentally and physically? How will it affect him when he is faced with computers, cars, people of different skin colours, speaking different languages? And how about his physical health? Can he survive in our oh-so-polluted environment?

Plus, we have no right to remove him from his tribe, really. He belongs there. In our society nowadays, when someone from our country commit a crime overseas, we are doing everything to have that person return home and have the trial run in our own country instead, which is ridiculous really. So imagine what should to be done when we try to do a deal with people from the Stone Age!!

It’s tough. I dunno.

1 Comments:

Blogger B. Rasse said...

Cannibals by Tamago ;O
I can't read all the text. But I wanna write you :)

:***

10:37 AM  

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