AN EYE FOR AN EYE

Hokitika Guardian, 30 October 1928, Page 8

AN EYE FOR AN EYE

FULL PENALTY DEMANDED

There is at least one country in the world.where the old Mosaic law is followed literally, writes Keith Anderson in Overseas. For in Abyssinia, when a person is found guilty of murder or even of nmnslauglier, lie is handed over to the .relations of the deceased to be disposed of in exactly the same niannei as his victim has-been slain. In Addis Ababa, the Capital, a special stretch -oi ground is set aside for these informal executions, and there one may. see a wretched assassin held down firmly while the dead man’s son or, it may be. his widow, stabs, shoots, or strangles, as the case demands. There is no public sympathy for murderers in those parts. When the prisoner has been tried, convicted and condemned, the rest is a family matter, and* nobody else’s business.

“Bloxl money’’ may be accepted by the relations, but it /is quite usual for tliis /. payment to be refused and the full penalty demanded. . 1 >

In this connection -an amusing story is told. The Emperor Menelik (a,direct descendant, be it noted of the great King Solomon) had before him. a poor woodcutter who, whilst working high up in a tree, had overbalanced and fallen on a peasant who was sleeping below, killing him outright. The brothers of the dead man refused to accept the blood money which the innocent life-taker had perforce to offer to save his own skin. “A life for a life,” they demanded, and Menelik had no choice but to deliver the poor fellow over to the' inexorable avengers. He/ pointed out, however, that in order to fulfil the letter of the law it would he necessary for the brothers to be taken to the highest branches of the fatal tree and,, from there jump or be thrown down upon the prisoner ~as often as necessary until' they succeeded in killing him. The tree was high enough to induce them to change their minds.

Another example of -the intimacy, so to speak, between accuser and accused is afforded by the custom of chaining a debtor to his creditor until the little matter between them «has been arranged. It is no uncommon thing in Addis Ababa to see two men, or even a man and a woman, linked together by a yard-long chain and wandering unconcernedly. among the crowd. Night and day they remain so shackled,until the debtor’s relations are able to ranson him.

It is open to doubt whether certain people of to-day would be quite so eager to lend money on note of hand alone if the collection of his debts involved sleeping, eating and walking with a cable-length of defaulters firmly in tow.