The right not to be murdered

A trope noticeable on Thursday from various quarters of the left was this one. Chris Bambery for Socialist Worker:

A majority of those killed and wounded will have opposed the war in Iraq; some will have joined the huge marches for peace.

These bombings target ordinary people travelling by bus and underground to work and study; people who oppose Tony Blair's support for George Bush and their occupation of Iraq.

George Galloway:

No one can condone acts of violence aimed at working people going about their daily lives.

Ken Livingstone:

This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old.

Did the authors of these statements mean to say that, had the victims been supporters of the Iraq war, or people not going to work, or not working people, or not working-class people, but... gamblers, idlers, layabouts, playboys, aristocrats, plutocrats, the mighty and the powerful, elected leaders, and so forth, the outrage would have been any more acceptable than it was? Let's assume that they did not mean to say this; that they were just giving what they thought was a 'majoritarian' description of the victims without intending any moral exclusions from the taboo against murder and mass murder. All the same, when this is what one is talking about - murder and mass murder - there is only one qualification you need in order to possess the right against it, the qualification of being a human being.

Victor Serge:

Defence of man. Respect for Man. Man must be given his rights, his security, his value. Without these, there is no Socialism. Without these, all is false, bankrupt and spoiled. I mean: man whoever he is, be he the meanest of men - 'class enemy', son or grandson of a bourgeois, I do not care. It must never be forgotten that a human being is a human being.