Wednesday 19 December 2007

Funny, but still awful.

News from Angola:

The director of an Angolan crime film says police have shot dead two of his actors after mistaking them for real armed robbers.

The duo were carrying unloaded firearms as they filmed a scene in a rough suburb of the capital Luanda, director Radical Ribeiro told AFP news agency.

He said police roared up to the set and began shooting at close range.


This is hilarious, of course, but only from a distance. Two men dead, due to some sort of administrative error and a trigger-happy police force. And they're not just trigger-happy:

"They went on shooting until I shouted out: 'Please don't shoot, this is a movie.'"

The officers then stopped firing and left without attending to the wounded, who were taken to hospital, Mr Ribeiro said.


Yes, once they realised their error and that they were shooting innocent unarmed civilians, the police left the wounded and sodded off. From their point of view, it seems that their terrible mistake was that they were wasting their time, not that they were killing people. We could talk about the various structures of civil society that we have and countries like Angola don't, but, really, isn't this sort of thing supposed to be covered by basic humanity?

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