Unburied: Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Lessons of Greek Tragedy : The New Yorker
peter.suber's bookmarks 2013-05-16
Summary:
" “Bury this terrorist on U.S. soil and we will unbury him.” So ran the bitter slogan on one of the signs borne last week by enraged protesters outside the Worcester, Massachusetts, funeral home that had agreed to receive the body of the accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev —a cadaver seemingly so morally polluted that his own widow would not claim it, that no funeral director would touch it, that no cemetery would bury it. Indeed, even after Peter Stefan, a Worcester funeral director, had washed and shrouded the battered, bullet-ridden body for burial according to Muslim law, the cadaver became the object of a macabre game of civic and political football. Cemetery officials and community leaders in the Boston area were concerned that a local burial would spark civic unrest. (“It is not in the best interest of ‘peace within the city’ to execute a cemetery deed,” the Cambridge city manager, Robert Healy, announced.) While the state’s governor carefully sidestepped the issue, asserting that it was a family matter, other politicians seemed to sense an advantage in catering to the high popular feeling. “If the people of Massachusetts do not want that terrorist to be buried on our soil,” declared Representative Edward J. Markey, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, “then it should not be.” "