Minister for Home Affairs and Law, K Shanmugam posed an ethical debate to netizens on Facebook yesterday morning.
In his post, he shared a photograph of a man taking a selfie with an accident scene on train tracks.
This incident occurred in northern Italy on Monday, where a Canadian woman was hit by a train and badly injured. As paramedics were treating her on the tracks, a journalist caught an image of a man taking a selfie with the injured victim. According to BBC news, the man was making a “V for victory” sign with one hand while taking the selfie with the other.
Minister Shanmugam then posed the following caption:
“[ Ethical? ]
A young man took a selfie in a train accident scene, while a victim was being rescued.
It is becoming a world where anything goes.
What is right, and what is wrong?”
The photographer of the entire incident, a news journalist, wrote about his entire experience in the Italian newspaper and titled his article: “The barbarism you don’t expect: the ‘selfie’ in front of a tragedy.”
Most netizens who responded to Minister Shanmugam’s post said that while the man might have been morally flawed and very unethical to take such a picture, his act was not in any way criminal.
obbana@theindependent.sg