Last week, I posted this quote by Maria Ivanova, the widow of Aleksandr Ivanov, a Kyrgyz citizen truck-driver who was shot and killed by a US soldier at a Ganci airbase checkpoint on December 6, 2006.
America shouts about their democratic rights which it imposes everywhere, but today we have seen that this has not been the case. In the US, for the moral damage of a spilled cup of coffee or quality goods, far higher payments are received than those of the moral damage that they have caused with such a vile act.
When I originally posted the quote, I thought that Ivanova’s relation between America’s promotion of democracy and a McDonald’s tort case was illogical and overly emotional.
Recently, a friend (who didn’t want his name posted here) unpacked it this way for me. To much of the world, McDonald’s represents America, along with the Lion King and Lindsey Lohan. As for the Kyrgyz that shun Ivanova’s outrage at the US’s offer of $55,000 in moral compensation as opportunistic greed, Ivanova’s point holds.
In America — relatively the land of opportunistic greed — a tort case over someone’s scalded knees can fetch 10 times more than your murdered husband. What’s more, there’s nothing you can do about it. American democracy for Americans, and democracy for the rest of the world. Go figure.
That’s not to say that this case is not being hijacked politically. Media from all over the spectrum, local and foreign, have their two cents to chip in. Timing and nationality are key however, as Erica Marat points out here. Kyrgyz blogger Naryn Ayip also points out the stark lack of prostest when the son of the Russian Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan shot a local Bishkek girl in a disco after she refused to dance with him.
1 Comment
May 30, 2007 at 12:37 pm
It’s a good point she makes, regarding tort payments. on the other hand one can’t help but be a bit cynical that she rejected the first offer from the US government because it was too low, and took a higher offer from a private company. Some might say that no amount of money is enough. The quote, while accurate perhaps, sounds a bit like she is disappointed that dead husbands aren’t a more profitable business.