Responsibility
March 09, 2004
From the Mainichi News website that I visit daily: Poultry farm chairman hangs self over bird flu.
In case you’re too lazy to go there and read the article, I will give you a brief summary.
About 2 weeks ago in Kyoto, someone tipped off the police that a local farm tried to cover up the deaths of 10,000 chickens. The authorities raided the place and found the crazy bird influenza in some of the birds and even in some crow carcasses around the farm. The chairman and later his father the previous chairman held a press conference to apologize because, “(they) caused great trouble.”
The reporters jumped on this opportunity and grilled him with questions about the former chairman’s personal responsibility, what happened, who’s to blame, and all sorts of questions. I watched some of the footage and all the 67 year old said was, “Shirimasen. Shirimasen” (I don’t know / I don’t understand). In the article it even said that he leaned over and asked his lawyer for advice on what to say.
Personally, it seems like a crock of shit that he didn’t know anything. BSE, Bird Flu, and SARS have dominated the airwaves in this paranoid country for months now. When your poultry suddenly die off in massive numbers, you can’t just hide behind a veil of silence and possible criminal negligence (I believe hiding so many deaths is against some sort of Poultry Farm law here).
The kicker.
He hangs himself.
To mine eyes, this just cements his guilt in this whole case. It’s like an admittance of guilt in front of a supreme court judge. He couldn’t accept the outcomes of his actions and ran away in the only way he knew. He, and his wife, hung themselves. Apparently in this culture, to kill oneself is an honorable thing. You’ve seen The Last Samurai when the general guts himself before the enemy. I see CEOs, education workers, Politicians kill themselves in face of social and legal accusations.
Running away never solved any problems. There are still 10,000 dead chickens with an infectious disease and someone must be held accountable.
I feel sorry for the guy, I really do. He was doing what many people in his position would’ve done – he protected himself, his family, and his business in a way he thought most appropriate but unfortunately for him and fortunately for the general populace, someone saw that this was wrong and called the cops. Now, his son faces the press and the authorities alone.
Way to go, dad.
