Vladimir: (remains silent)
Messenger: I don’t think so. You used your power to trample on those you knew they couldn’t defend themselves like your neighbor and extorted money from those you knew were vulnerable. You were a law enforcement officer and always claimed to be representing the law. Rape was a crime you were supposed to punish but there were a good number of women under your command who came complaining of being raped by their male colleagues. You promised doing something about it but did nothing at the end of the day. Many young girls and women who lived around one of your bases came complaining to you that they had been raped and in some cases gang-raped by some of your men. You took no action. When they carried their complains to the journalists who came to interview you, you claimed that your men were decent and honorable and could not do what they were accused of. You defended your men without first carrying out any investigations. Not taking action made you an accomplice. Those you tried to apply the law on were the poor and you applied it by making them pay money to you. Once they paid what you wanted, you released them. Added to that, you gave your weapon to armed robbers who went around terrorizing and robbing poor-innocent citizens, the same people you took an oath to protect and defend even with your life.
Vladimir: I asked them not to kill or harm anybody in the course of the operations.
Messenger: Giving instructions is one thing and those instructions being respected is quite another. You asked your friends not to kill anybody but you were never there to ensure that they carried out your instructions. Well, let me inform you that they killed, raped, cut breast, tore open the stomachs of pregnant women and sent thousands down the road to poverty. You were not there and didn’t care. All you were interested in was part of the stolen booty your friends brought to you after frustrating their victims. You who gave the orders were as guilty as they who carried out those barbaric acts. No one could be in trouble and run to you for help because you were going to find ways of getting money out of the individual who sought your protection. Yet, all those victims were people you were supposed to protect and on top of that you got promoted by your superiors. Can you tell us what happened in Delta district?
Vladimir: One of my commanders was killed there and when I sent some of my men there to go and carryout investigations, they were attacked as soon as the inhabitants spotted them. They had to defend themselves and a serious gun battle ensued in which many people were killed.
Messenger: Was that the real story or was it what you wanted people to believe? You have left out too many details there. The truth which you are afraid to say here is that most of your men were fond of supporting armed robbers, kidnappers and were in the ranks of those who committed crimes. Your commander decided not only to give weapons to some armed robbers to go and carry out a robbery in Delta District but he decided to be part of the gang. Unfortunately for him their target on the night of the operation was a well armed man who fired a shot from a hidden angle of his home. Your commander died in his yard and he dragged the body and dumped it in the street a distance further from his home. You did not send your men there to go and carryout any investigations. You sent them there to go and carryout revenge. They killed hundreds on sight and arrested many who were last seen alive only in your custody. Before their deaths, you paraded them in front of TV cameras as suspected thieves and kidnappers. You treated them like condemned criminals when the law clearly stated “Innocent until proven guilty.” When you were accused of extra judicial killings, you always claimed you acted within the law. Well, you could tell such lies to get away from justice down there but here, you can’t escape. You must render account because everything Everyman does, think or say is recorded here. That was not all about the revengeful acts you carried out. You personally went to the home of Jay Charles when he accidentally knocked down your kid brother with his car and he unfortunately passed away. Jay Charles presented his condolences and took total charge of the funeral program from start to finish. That was not enough to tell you that he was sorry for what he did?
Vladimir: He might have been sorry but that did not appease my family members who piled pressure on me to avenge the death of my brother because if I didn’t, his soul was not going to rest in peace.
Messenger: Did it dawn on you that by carrying out the revenge act, you were instituting a cycle of revenge? It seemed you forgot that you yourself carried out some killings. What would have happened if the families of those you killed directly or indirectly also decided to come and carry out revenge on you and your family? Did you think of the creator who created everything including you and His command concerning revenge? By carrying out the revenge, did you know that you violated your creator’s fifth command? Revenge is not for you or any human but for my master alone. You preferred to please your family members and displease your creator. That was not good at all. That not withstanding, what happened on 6th April?
Vladimir: The president decided to modify the constitution to remain in power but most people in our big towns and cities were against it. They turned out in the numbers on the streets to manifest but the authorities were against it because the manifestations obstructed traffic and paralyzed businesses. That was costing the state billions and they became afraid that if the manifestations were not stopped, the government would crumble. The official version of the cause of the manifestation which the government wanted the international community to believe was that there were some individuals who wanted to seize power and were inciting the population to move out to the streets. I was asked to disperse the crowd in my town and in the course of trying to do so, many protesters were shot dead while thousands of others were arrested and imprisoned without trial.
Messenger: Did you at any one moment think that the population was being manipulated to descend to the streets?
Vladimir: No, because no one needed to incite anybody who was hungry to manifest. There was grinding poverty every where and a lot of inflation too.
Messenger: Were you in favor of the modification of the constitution?
Vladimir: If I became a colonel, it was thanks to those who were in power. I was gaining a lot from their system of governance. I had to be on their side.
Messenger: Do you think the people had the right to manifest?
Vladimir: The constitution made provision for that. Yes, they had the right.
Messenger: Were those manifesting in the majority or the minority?
Vladimir: Well, because of the economic hardship, most people in the villages left for the big towns and cities. On television I could see thousands in each town that television cameras went to. I think they were in the majority.
Messenger: If those who were against the revision of the constitution were in the majority, don’t you think that their will should have been given a chance to prevail?
Vladimir: I think so.
Messenger: In that case, the voice of the people was the voice of my master. By refusing to listen to the voice of the people, you refused to listen to the voice of my master.
Vladimir: But I had no choice. I was just following orders. And if I didn’t obey, I would have been made to face court-martial and possibly sent to prison.
Messenger: Someone is rejected by a population but you use guns to impose him on them. Someone preaches separation instead of integration and you go ahead to see into it that what he preaches is implemented. Tell me something….if you are asked to jump into a deep river when you do not know how to swim and know that if you jump in you would die, you would do it simply because it is an order?
Vladimir: I don’t know.
Messenger: Of course you know. Listen, my master created Everyman and endowed Him with the ability to reason. My master did not give you a brain to serve as a decoration or for you to be sleeping on. My master wanted you to act out of your freewill after making use of that brain because you were to be responsible for your actions. Have you seen any of those you took orders from
here? Is any of them here to answer questions in your place or on your behalf? You are here to face your fate alone just as they would face theirs. Orders were not supposed to mar your sense of reasoning. Being a man in uniform does not mean that you would be given special considerations simply because you were trained only to take follow orders. Do you know why? It is because the Ten Commandments were meant for Everyman irrespective of race, origin or occupation. By the way, did I hear you say you had no choice? You did have a choice. You knew that those people who were manifesting were given the right to do so by the constitution and they equally had the right to vote in or vote out anybody they no longer wanted to be their leader. You had the choice to either fight by their side and by so doing disobey your superiors or to obey your superiors and slap the people in the face. You preferred to stand against the people you were supposed to defend under the pretext that you feared for your life. Well, anybody who tries to save his or her life looses it and he or she who looses her life for the sake of my master gains it. My master never forgets those who undergo persecutions for His sake. Your statement to most of those you arrested and imprisoned was that “Nobody is above the state.” A state can never be a land surface or the trees and rocks and animals found in it. If there are no people, there will be no state. The people make up the state and if majority rejected someone who was not supposed to be above the state, you had to stand by them. Your actions proved that your commander in chief was above the state. Is that not ironical? The truth is that you thought of only your self and that explains why you did the things you did. You were supposed to, through your job make yourself worthy of my master’s kingdom by serving those that came to you and those that you met on your way.
Vladimir: (Feels dejected with his head bent to the ground. Raises his head after a while) If really the people were manipulated by some individuals who wanted to seize power, would I have been justified in intervening in the way I did?
Messenger: let’s not get into conditionality. Conditionality has its place only when there is room to make amends. It is possible in that world below your feet and my master being very patient always gives Everyman many chances to make amends. But amends must be made only down there. But since you’ve asked, I will give you an answer. I will not say if your kind of intervention would have been justified or not. But let’s look at the reasons why someone would want to seize power in the first place. There could be disparities in chances between competitors. That is, the incumbent could decide to use state resources in his campaign while the other competitors get just tokens which might not be enough. The incumbent might be that one who promise a lot and delivers very little and yet want the people to continue entrusting their destinies into his hands by either constantly modifying the constitution, putting in place a sophisticated rigging machinery which rejects the choice of the people or he or she could decide to cook up reasons to sideline the other competitors who might pose as ‘threats’. If rules are laid down and anybody who comes to power serves his term and at the end leaves without trying to change initial rules, there will hardly be anything like forceful take-over. Forceful take-over occurs mostly because man by nature likes to cheat. And anybody who wants to remain in power or get to power by any means possible is out not to serve the people, though they would always claim to want to serve the people. But in reality, they are out to serve themselves. But in such situations you are supposed to use your head and be on the side of justice.
Vladimir: (In desperation) I was just trying to serve my country and to prevent it from sinking into chaos.
Messenger: He who knows the right thing and fails to do it is as guilty as the one who consciously and out rightly does a wrong thing. If you stood by those people whom in their vast majority objected to the touching of the sacred book of their land, then you would have been serving your country. But you preferred to serve a handful of those in power who did not care about the poor and sick populace or what ever they had to say. Are you trying to make me understand that a handful of government officials became synonymous to a nation? You and I know that is not possible. Those people you dispersed, killed and imprisoned formed the nation and they were the ones you ought to serve. But no, they were not the ones you served… you served your bosses and yourself. By doing that you implemented the policy of “let the poor, the underprivileged and the unemployed die so that those in power or those who matter can survive.” They reminded you and your superiors of your failure as leaders. That not withstanding, you were asked to personally execute some of the people you arrested during that unrest. Weren’t you told that you were not supposed to kill?
Vladimir: I was just doing my job.
Messenger: You violated my master’s fifth command in the name of doing your job? Are you telling me that you preferred human laws over the laws of my master?
Vladimir: The people I was asked to personally execute were a danger to many people and the state. They had ideas which could set the country ablaze and the only way to save the state was to eliminate such people.
Messenger: Eliminating such people was violating the fifth law of my master. As far as I know, life imprisonment behind solid iron bars can prevent any man alive from being a threat to the state if at all, the accusation is founded. Let me tell you something about crime and punishment. When my master was down there doing his evangelization mission, a woman was one day brought to him. The people who dragged the woman to my master accused her of committing adultery. The penalty for such an offense was death by stoning. The people had expected that my master would just give His accord that the woman be stoned to death but my master saw things differently. “Let he who has never committed an offense be the first to cast the first stone,” my master said. No body dared to do it and those who dragged the woman to my master started dispersing one after the other until at the end the woman was left alone. By saying that he who has never committed any offense should be the first to cast the first stone, my master was asking those present to do self examination. That means that before you set out on a condemnation path, you should examine yourself first. You executed many people because they committed offenses. How were you different from them? By ordering the death of someone, supervising or carrying out the execution of someone for whatever reason, you are casting the first stone. Casting the first stone is telling the world and your creator that you’ve never committed any offense which is not true. By sparing the life of the adulteress, my master restored life and no man has the right to destroy it. You cannot create life and so, should not destroy it in the name of doing your job. (A brief silence follows) One last question; what happened between you and Hakim Willis, who was an officer under your command?
Vladimir: Why all these questions? Can’t you see you are torturing me? There is no lawyer here to defend me and no witnesses here to back me up. Why do you ask me all these questions when you already know the answers?
Messenger: You do not need a lawyer or witnesses here. My master sees and knows everything. My master does not want you to feel that you have been unjustly treated and that is why these questions are coming up. So, should I ask the question again?
Vladimir: Please stop torturing me.
Messenger: Ok. But I will tell you what happened between you and Willis. He had a very beautiful wife who was not working and had children to look after. One day they had an occasion and invited you. As soon as you set your eyes on his wife, you started imagining and feeling what her body could feel like. You put her in a very desperate situation by threatening to have her husband fired if she didn’t comply. She thought of her jobless situation and the children she had to raise and was forced to give in. To keep away her husband, you always sent him on missions that lasted for days and weeks. Whenever Willis was away, you did whatever you pleased with his wife even though she never wanted it. Just as anything that happens under the sun and can never be hidden forever, you were caught one day when Willis returned earlier than expected. Instead of apologizing as
any normal person would do in such a situation, you felt that it would be so humiliating to do so to a junior officer. You instead were insisting that he go complete his mission. A fight ensured in which you exchanged gunshots. Your shot caught him in the left shoulder while his caught you below the abdomen. You died eight minutes after the gunshot without making amends with either him or my master. That act with Willis’ wife was a violation of my master’s ninth commandment. Do you still feel you are unjustly kept here? Are you worthy of that kingdom over there?
Vladimir: (Remains silent with eyes and mouth wide open as if in a trance)
Messenger: I know it is not easy coming face to face with reality. Since you wouldn’t want to be bothered with further questions, I would tell you what happened to Ted Jennifer. She was appointed to fight against the production, sale and distribution fake pharmaceutical products. There were a number of men who became rich and powerful thanks to the sale of the illegal and harmful drugs. Seeing that their empire was going to crumble because of the successes registered by Ted Jennifer, they waged war against her. They sent assassins to murder her and they succeeded. Your blame in that was that you were benefiting from the production, sale and distribution of the fake pharmaceutical products as those involved paid you money to allow them do their business. Ted Jennifer was kilt just a few blocks from where you were. You did not intervene and ordered your men to stay away because you had earlier been paid money and after receiving the money, you promised not to intervene. Saving people in danger was your job but you facilitated the murder of Ted Jennifer. When questioned by reporters after the incident, you claimed that things happened very fast and you were not aware of what was happening a few blocks from where you stood. The reporters had no choice but to believe what you said because they were humans. Here you cannot tell such lies because the evidence would be played before your eyes. You were as guilty as those involved in the sale of the fake drugs as well as the assassins. However, there is one more thing I have to tell you before I take my leave. What I have to say concerns my master. When He was down there in that world where you’ve just come from doing His teaching mission, a man one day walked up to him. “What must I do to gain eternal life?” the man asked. My master gave him some prescriptions and they were the Ten Commandments. “I have followed all those prescriptions all my life,” the man said. My master admired and praised him for that and told him that there was something still lacking. When the man sought to know what the missing thing in his life was, my master told him that he had go and sell everything he owned and give the money to the poor and after doing that he should come and follow Him (my master). The man went away very disappointment because he was a very wealthy man. Do you know why the man went away disappointed? It was because he was too attached to his wealth and could not imagine himself living a life of poverty. That is to tell all of you here that respecting the Ten Commandments and being religious are not enough. Those two are just stepping stones to the kind of life that lead to eternal life. You have to associate action to the respect of the commandments and being religious. The action my master wanted the man to associate was using just a small fraction of his wealth to buy clothes for those that were necked, buy food for the hungry, buy some medicine for the sick,…. In short, little acts of charity. But the man got disappointed and did not want to include action to his religious life which in effect was service to humanity. Almost all of you here went to prayer houses and knew the commandments. You had to associate that ‘service to humanity part’ or action part to it through the posts of responsibility you all occupied. Did you serve humanity? You start preparing for eternal life when other people’s problems become a preoccupation to you and you help them find solutions to them. That is associating action to your religious life.
Within the Walls of Hell Page 9