Today, as a nation, we are ashamed of what we have become; we are ashamed of the barbarians amongst us, who find perverse pleasure in the torture and death of a child, so much so that they record the act and share it gleefully on Facebook. We have no words to describe our shock and revulsion at the heinous behaviour of the four men who tied up a 13-year-old child and beat him over a prolonged period, as the boy begged for mercy and a glass of water. A 28-minute video, uploaded by these men to flaunt their torture procedures, shows the extent of the perpetrators' monstrosity; it is so horrifying that it's all but impossible for a sane person to sit through the whole thing and witness in full the criminals' warped mentality. 

The brutes allege that they were teaching the child a lesson for "stealing". Such vigilante violence is unacceptable as it is; but the sadistic nature of it, with the men jeering and egging each other on to hit harder, goes beyond "ordinary" instances of vigilante violence; it speaks of the depravity of the human soul to such an enormous extent that it ceases to be human at all. 

The incident must have happened within the hearing distance of a number of people; why, we wonder, did they not find it in themselves to dissuade the perpetrators or report the act to the police?  

We offer our condolences to the family of the victim, who must live with the inconceivable pain and horror of knowing how their child met his death. We demand the most stringent of punishments for these perpetrators for whom torture and murder are sadistic entertainment.