Every crime has its own reasons. If I, let’s suppose, steal apples from the market, it is very likely that I love apples and I do not have money to buy the fruit. And when I stand before the court for that it is highly likely that human rights defenders will appear, who will urge to go into the reasons for my crime, as well as they will qualify my detention as a limitation of freedom of speech, since I’m a journalist.
If we do not deal with incurable pathologies of an insane person then there are always explanations, excuses, and “motives”. For example, when elections of any level are falsified, officially, of course, they say, “it’s a lie, it’s not falsified, bring proofs”. But there is also an informal explanation: “what else did you expect? How could we let this or that person govern? He can’t”. Should we “go deep into the reasons” in this case, or should we admit that a legitimate idiot is more useful to the state than a non-legitimate genius? At least, I am for this viewpoint.
In the United States, some armed individuals regularly enter schools and kindergartens and start firing. But why don’t we go deep into the reasons? Maybe shooters are veterans of the Vietnam War, are heroes, are good people, maybe they are in a serious social or psychological state, maybe they rebel against Obama or Trump administration. So why not considering that the US Declaration of Independence states that the people have the right to an armed rebellion? Not to mention the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
A woman killed her sleeping husband with an axe. Definitely we need to get deeper into the reasons. Maybe this way she was fighting against domestic violence? And why not to think that it was a rebellion against the situation in Armenia, where men keep their wives in slavery and restrict their rights? What else should she do if the government does not protect her?
Or another case, a brawl took place in Sevan, a man was killed, after that, the son of the killed man took revenge, as a result of which there was the second victim. We have to go into the reasons: maybe in the first case, the killed man had got on the killers’ nerves, and in the second case, the son, not believing in Armenian justice, did not see any other way out than lynching.
Such discussions, I think, indicate the serious illness of our society. Most of the authorities, opposition, human rights defenders and citizens in general are convinced that in some “exceptional cases” laws can be violated for the sake of some important, “high” purposes. We will have a state when the violation of the law will definitely be condemned, and only then we can “go into the reasons”.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
