Thus far, 50 people have been shot and killed.
And though the park is targeting poachers, they are not the only ones being murdered. We’re also talking about innocent lives here—anyone who accidentally sets a toe over the line into the rhino park that is NOT marked by signs or fences, mind you.
Allow me to humanize this for you even further.
Kachu Kealing and his wife live in a village that borders the national park. According to a report by BBC, one day, their son Goanburah was shot and killed by the guards after walking into the park. The boy was tending to the family’s two cows, and Kachu believes one of them wandered into the forbidden area. Their son, who suffered from severe learning disabilities, likely did not recognize the danger he was in when he went to chase after it. After all, their property practically merged with the park, and there were no markings to even warn him he was trespassing. It’s a mistake anyone could have made.
Nonetheless, park authorities shot him after he didn’t respond to a single warning. But how could he?
“He could barely do up his own trousers or his shoes,” said his dad. “Everyone knew him in the area because he was so disabled.”
And the worst part?
Justice will not be served. Due to the high level of protection surrounding park guards, Kachu lost hope that there’s any legal action he can take.
“I haven’t filed a court case. I’m a poor man, I can’t afford to take them on,” said the heartbroken father.
The only physical representation that he has left of his son is a blurry photo of his face that the rest of the world has long forgotten, or worse yet, never even heard about.
WOW.
If that doesn’t just tear your soul right up, I don’t know what will. But these are the stories that go unnoticed in our small, sheltered American culture. We create shrines for gorillas and dish out $100K for a Cheeto, while a poor man in India can’t even afford to go to court to seek justice for the brutal murder of his son over a precious rhinoceros.
So I must pose an unpopular question.
As a largely Christian culture, when we talk about advocating for the sanctity of human life, do we really mean our white, conservative, Bible-belt-wearing fellow Americans?
Do we mean the people who look like us, talk like us, hold the same values as us, and live in the same media-soaked society that tells us what to care about? (Like gorillas, for the sake of example.)
Or do we mean the gay people who were brutally murdered at Pulse, the Syrians who are being bombed, The Turkish who are being torn apart by terrorist attacks, and the Indians who are being killed over RHINOS?
