Just reading through the Indonesian language newspaper Kompas and I find tucked into the second section an article entitled Mayat Dalam Tong Sampah.
Corpse in the Trash Bin.
It sounds somehow particularly ghastly in Indonesian, doesn't it? I don't know why. The smaller print below the headline tells us that while the police are not yet sure of what happened, residents in the area suspect that the victim was murdered. A pretty good guess, as it seems to me, as one naturally suspects that one about to die of natural causes would not be inclined to climb into a garbage can just beforehand--especially head first, that being the condition of the corpse as described in the body of the article.
The garbage can itself was closed with a lid and the lid was taped fast with black duct tape. The corpse was initially discovered by a scavenger, who may have thought, one imagines, that such careful securing of the lid (we all know how strong duct tape is) might suggest something of uncommon value within.
We are told that a similar incident occurred in the same general area about a year before, the only difference being that the duct tape in the former case was blue. And that the victim in the former case was female, whereas the victim in the case at hand was male. Otherwise, the police did not know whether the cases were related. There has been no further report over the ensuing year concerning what may have happened with the female in the garbage bin. And probably never will be.
A psychologist from Jakarta states, for the readers' edification, that 80-90 percent of the murders in Indonesia are committed by people who know the victim through day-to-day interactions, the motive for murder most often being money, romance (gone wrong, one assumes) or revenge. This is different outside the country, she says, where people are often killed by perfect strangers and for more diverse reasons--including, she adds rather oddly, "ritual killings" and "faith killings".
Well, if nothing else, it seems clear that folks outside of Indonesia exercise a greater inventiveness when it comes to murder--a diversity in motive, which might make things seem a bit less trite. But perhaps there is some small comfort in knowing, here at home, that the perpetrator was not a total stranger, but was once your friend or neighbor.
Corpse in the Trash Bin.
It sounds somehow particularly ghastly in Indonesian, doesn't it? I don't know why. The smaller print below the headline tells us that while the police are not yet sure of what happened, residents in the area suspect that the victim was murdered. A pretty good guess, as it seems to me, as one naturally suspects that one about to die of natural causes would not be inclined to climb into a garbage can just beforehand--especially head first, that being the condition of the corpse as described in the body of the article.
The garbage can itself was closed with a lid and the lid was taped fast with black duct tape. The corpse was initially discovered by a scavenger, who may have thought, one imagines, that such careful securing of the lid (we all know how strong duct tape is) might suggest something of uncommon value within.
We are told that a similar incident occurred in the same general area about a year before, the only difference being that the duct tape in the former case was blue. And that the victim in the former case was female, whereas the victim in the case at hand was male. Otherwise, the police did not know whether the cases were related. There has been no further report over the ensuing year concerning what may have happened with the female in the garbage bin. And probably never will be.
A psychologist from Jakarta states, for the readers' edification, that 80-90 percent of the murders in Indonesia are committed by people who know the victim through day-to-day interactions, the motive for murder most often being money, romance (gone wrong, one assumes) or revenge. This is different outside the country, she says, where people are often killed by perfect strangers and for more diverse reasons--including, she adds rather oddly, "ritual killings" and "faith killings".
Well, if nothing else, it seems clear that folks outside of Indonesia exercise a greater inventiveness when it comes to murder--a diversity in motive, which might make things seem a bit less trite. But perhaps there is some small comfort in knowing, here at home, that the perpetrator was not a total stranger, but was once your friend or neighbor.
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