Necessary ‘Vigilantism’

The world is full of vulnerable people, including those targeted for some visible and immutable physical trait. A recent New York Times article (and other articles on the BBC News website) discusses the plight of albinos in Tanzania attacked for their lighter skin. For some people, albino body parts are considered to have special properties and are used to make amulets – all with the aim of presumably making certainly people who wear such amulets rich.

Although efforts have been made to curb these criminal acts of mutilation resulting in immense suffering if not death, albinos continue to be besieged. The police force in particular is not trusted by the albino community, for at best, some police officers are paid to look the other way while albinos are attacked. At worst, policemen have been amongst those who have been arrested for being responsible, in some way, for various mutilations and/or deaths of albinos.

So what happens when the very people charged with the responsibility of protecting others turns a blind eye or takes part in their demise? According to the New York Times article, Tanzania’s “Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda[,] took up the cause, saying that if the police did not act, vigilantes should kill would-be killers on the spot.” Pinda has since dialled back the language after concerns voiced by human rights activists.

Vigilantism normally involves an unlawful act by an individual taking the law into their own hands to carry out some punitive purpose due to the failure or unwillingness of law enforcement to enforce the law. Here the attacks on the albinos are both waged by state and non-state actors and represent the execution of other non-state norms. The Prime Minister’s call to kill would-be killers on the spot might be considered a rare and brief open endorsement by a prominent state actor of vigilantism as a form of resistance against the non-state norms, upon which the attacks are based.

There are, of course legitimate reasons why such summary executions should raise concerns. Yet criminal law also permits individuals to kill either in self-defence or in defence of others in the event of an imminent lethal attack. As such, an act of ‘vigilantism’ in this context might not be an unlawful act of resistance if done to save the life of another under circumstances prescribed by law. Yet that it is done to resist the acting out of a (prominent?) norm that harms albinos, demonstrates its characteristic as an act of resistance nonetheless.

Sources:
Donald G. McNeil Jr., Bid to Stop the Killing of Albinos, New York Times, February 16, 2009