The Oak Creek Tragedy

This Sunday, fifteen days after the Aurora, Colorado massacre when a disturbed young man opened fire in a movie theater causing 12 deaths and wounding 58, a 40 year-old ex-serviceman entered a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, south of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and pulled the trigger, causing six deaths and serious injuries to three people, dying himself after being taken down by the police. Those opposed to gun control in the United States – where there are almost as many guns as inhabitants (at a 9 to 10 proportion) are of the opinion that two unbalanced individuals out of a population of 300 million is not considered to be a significant percentage; or, that for each death by firearms in the U.S., there are three due to automobile accidents, without it having occurred to anyone to demand the prohibition of cars. On the contrary, those who would like to modify the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which authorizes the possession of arms, and impose a more severe control over their possession, assure, statistics in hand, that their use has more to do with aggression than self-defense.

For much of the population, whether North American or not, these types of attacks which leave an unacceptable trail of innocent victims are a phenomenon that repeats itself in the U.S. with worrying frequency. In recent years they have emerged in movie theaters and temples, and also at political rallies, supermarkets, parks, universities or schools. The killing at Columbine High School (Colorado) in 1999, when two teenagers killed 15 people and wounded a score more, remains in the collective memory.

The information relative to the crime at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek is still incomplete. But the hypothesis taking shape is that of a crime motivated by racial hatred. After the 9/11 attacks, American Sikhs have suffered numerous aggressions. These have been committed by perpetrators who know little of the Sikh faith – a religion founded in South Asia in the 15th century, today the fifth largest in the world, with 27 million faithful; and that, in their slothful ignorance, they confuse Sikhs with radical Islamists for the mere fact that they wear colored turbans and neither cut their hair nor shave their beards.

It is superfluous to remember that we live in a heterogeneous world, marked by political, religious or social tensions due to inequality or disparity in material or cultural development. Further, it is yet to be remembered that differences cannot and should not be resolved at gunpoint. Consequently, faced with these outbreaks of violence it is not possible, in the first instance, but for the most decisive police action; in tandem with a tenacious pedagogy relative to diversity and the promotion of tolerance, and exemplary conduct on the part of those who hold public responsibilities. This is because any racist message, thoughtless or simply inappropriate, is able to light a fuse of terrible delayed explosions, like that which just shook Oak Creek.