A hungry man

Poverty, bad education and youth unemployment; those ingredients feed the breeding ground for drugs and gang related gun violence in Curacao.

This observation, made by NOS-correspondent Dick Drayer after the shooting of four young men in Curacao on Saturday, is not even an eye opener. It is very much stating the obvious.

Everybody knows that these are the elements that poison societies – not only in Curacao, but certainly also in St. Maarten and elsewhere.

One would expect therefore that decision makers know this too and that they come up with adequate measures to turn the tide.

For now, that remains wishful thinking. Poverty breeds desperate people and desperate people – as the example in Curacao shows – are capable of anything.

A hungry man is an angry man. People knew this already in the 17th century – that’s the origin of the saying – so the world has had some time to think about this (more than 300 years) but a real solution proves hard to come by.