Two days ago, bloodthirsty thugs hurled grenades at innocent civilians, injuring a handful of them. Only mindless and senseless people engage in such cowardly attacks against innocent people.

Police findings are yet to be revealed, but what one can assume that there must be a group or groups behind such attacks. Nothing should be handled with laxity, especially when it concerns security matters.

Rwanda’s record is straight in terms of maintaining security; some spoilers however, may want to tarnish the trend, with acts of terrorism or similar to terrorism.

Is it a real act of terrorism? We shall be told as the police findings come out. However, any act aimed at causing panic and death of innocent people, can be regarded as terrorism.

We all know much as the thugs do, that terrorists can destroy buildings that took years to erect, or end lives that took generations to nourish.

Evil is the perversion of human perfection; it is the mind turned in on itself to hurt, harm, demean, and destroy other people, along with their possessions and their most valued symbols. Why do we have evil people?

Evil has always existed in many forms and will continue to flourish in different ways in different places. Surely, there are individuals we acknowledge as embodying evil, just as Lucifer and Satan do, which is why we must handle their activities with an iron fist.

Those who detonated grenades at residents of Kinamba and Kimihurura, should be hunted and punished severely. What should the population do to assist the police?

It is well for us now, to go beyond our tendency to focus on dispositional evil as a peculiar property or characteristic of despicable particular individuals.

Instead, we might consider focusing on the origin of evil in order to recognise its generic forces, to identify the breeding grounds—perpetrators of evil.

It is encouraging to notice that the efforts of our police and other security forces in tracking down and destroying evil perpetrators have had no collateral risk for years now.

It is done in a way that it leaves no room for revenge and retaliation at any level. This is what has made Rwanda unique in handling evil perpetrators—adhering to the principle of restorative justice.

Nonetheless, very few people would like to hear about restorative justice, and have gone as far as calling the abolishing of capital punishment as unfortunate.

Rwanda abolished capital punishment a couple of years ago, leaving the maximum sentence as life imprisonment. Scholars against life imprisonment say that it breeds evil, as it cannot act as a deterrent to criminals like the ones who hurled grenades in Kigali two days ago.

I would also certainly support capital punishment for capital offences-the Hamurabi’s, ‘Tit for a Tat and an Eye for an Eye’. But is it justified? Yes and No.

People disagree that capital punishment is immoral even if it is effective in discouraging crime. Many oppose the death penalty because they consider it cruel. Critics also believe that there is a risk of executing wrongly convicted people.

Nevertheless, people who take another human life deserve to forfeit their own lives. It is this threat of death that discourages crime.

Experience has equally shown that in countries where orders were given to shoot thieves on site, the level of crime has greatly reduced. You cannot handle a criminal who kills or intends to kill, with kids’ gloves. 

Even the Bible says that whoever uses a spear to kill will be killed with a similar spear. Criminals, who go as far as trying to kill individuals or groups of people for the sake of it, need to be subjected to similar treatment.

This is however tricky in a country where the death penalty was abolished. Leaving all other factors constant however, we cannot afford such ugly scenarios in Rwanda.

Citizens should vigilantly cooperate with the security organs to uproot these evil-minded people from our society by tracing their origins.

Some people tend to think that they can create instability in Rwanda, as it is in other countries. They are wrong and are greatly disillusioned. There are so many factors against their beliefs, no wonder their acts are mindless and senseless.

Contact: mugitoni@yahoo.com