When I read scary news stories, I often shudder, I sometimes twitter, I may even email a link or two. It has been a rare occurance that I have found myself blogging about a story. I suppose that when something strikes me as so horrific that it borders on the absurd, especially when the details therein expose the savagery of humanity, I feel thankful of where I live and the ability to not fear.
So what inspired this blog entry? The incredulous "wow" rating. The following quotations from a single story out of Malaysia:
"Police detainee A. Kugan was beaten to death over a six-day period which also saw him being "branded" 20 times." - wow.
"He died of kidney failure caused by muscle injury." - wow.
"The report also revealed intensive haemorrhage in several internal organs including the gall bladder, pancreas, adrenal glands and inside his skull." - wow.
"The report stated that Kugan's death was because of rhabdomyolysis, the rapid breakdown of skeletal muscle tissue caused by injury. The destruction of muscles lead to the release of the breakdown products such as myoglobin, which may cause acute kidney failure." - wow.
"the report also showed that Kugan's stomach was empty at the time of his death 'probably due to the fact that he was starved during six days of interrogation.'" - wow.
All of these facts come out under a headline that reads: "Beaten, branded in police custody" ...as though the six day duration ending in death wasn't important enough to make the headline. It boggles the mind and leaves me with my common syllable of incredulity: wow.
In an effort to cover up the beating, I suppose the doctor doing the autopsy must have been on the take as "the first post-mortem only examined the body from the chest up." - wow.
The follow-up autopsy, which I'm guessing is a common practice in a place where like doctors must treat broken ankles by trimming a patient's hair, revealed "the second, which examined the entire body, found 42 other marks, burns and contusions from the sole of his feet right up to his head. The pathologist declared, based on the post-mortem, that Kugan was beaten so badly that his tissues broke down and his kidneys failed." - wow.
Oh, by the way, the police were interrogating the man. Apparently they thought he must have known a shitload of information that they couldn't have got out of him after 72 or 96 hours of starvation and beatings.
This story gets 8 wows out of 5 on a rating system that makes more sense than the Malaysian police.
