Currently reading:

Istanbul: memories and the city

-Orhan Pamuk

*****

My appetite was half gone by the time I finished reading the High Court judgment on an appeal case of murder- the shocking "Hello Kitty" doll murder* some years ago. Despite the gravity of the offense committed, I guess I wasnt at an age that I would pay much attention to current affairs than showbiz gossips. So this morning as I came to know the details of the case, the process of the entire offense was completely disturbing. Not only was the acts and behaviors of the defendents callous, brutal, and inhumane, but what they've done also indicates that they had little empathy of the pain they inflicted on the body of another human being. I could hardly accept Defendents' pledging of being young or in violent trait. I have zero tolerance of torture of this kind and any human being should have no right to put another human being in such an indignity.

I don't know why I had such a strong opinion on that. What I'm convinced, though, is that a basic respect to another human being should be upheld in whatever circumstances. Nothing should make us give way to it.

Further reading:

* Trio sentenced to life in jail for gruesome killing in H.K
Asian Economic News
HONG KONG, Dec. 6 2000 Kyodo

Three men were sentenced to life imprisonment by a Hong Kong court Wednesday for abducting and torturing a nightclub hostess to death, cutting up her body and stuffing her skull into a Hello Kitty doll.

The trio was convicted of manslaughter and unlawful imprisonment by a jury of the Court of First Instance last month after a six-week trial, which revealed one of the most gruesome cases in the territory.

Before sentencing Wednesday, Justice Peter Nguyen said that never had a Hong Kong court heard evidence of such ''cruelty, brutality, depravity, callousness, violence and viciousness'' committed by ''a human being on another human being.''

The court was told Chan Man-lok, 34, Leung Shing-cho, 27, and Leung Wai-lun, 21, kidnapped Fan Man-yee, 23, in March last year and tortured her for a month in a flat in Tsim Sha Tsui, a shopping district in Hong Kong, over a debt dispute.

Fan was beaten and tortured daily by the three, who are all triad members, the court heard.
After the woman's death, the gang was said to have spent hours dismembering and then boiling down her body.

They hid her skull in a giant-sized Hello Kitty mermaid doll and discarded most other body parts.

Only the woman's skull, one tooth and some internal organs have been recovered and the exact cause of her death has not been established, the court heard.

The killing was exposed after the 14-year-old girlfriend of one of three men reported the case to police in May last year. She said her dreams were haunted by Fan's ghost.