Bill's posts with tag: law
It's kind of fashionable, these days, in India, to look at the Bush regime with something akin to worship.
No, I'm not kidding. When the rest of the world, including the people of the US itself, have turned against Bush with the ferocity of the disillusioned believer, what passes for public opinion in India - the right wing Hindu-fascist dominated Great Indian Muddle Class - has decided Bush is God come down among us.
Not quite surprising, because, like Bush, the Great Indian Muddle Class hates all Muslims and supports Nazi measures as long as such measures don't impact on it.
So when the Hindu right was in power here in India, not that long ago, it imposed "tough anti-terrorist laws" - called TADA [Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act] and POTA [Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act]. Under these lovely little laws, both since repealed at the national level, an accused is guilty unless he proves himself (yes, the burden of proof is on him) innocent; no warrant is required to arrest anyone; and any confession before a policeman, even if obtained by threat or torture, is evidence. You get the drift?
Naturally, both TADA and POTA were meant to be used exclusively against religious minorities and left wingers, and so they have been used. But even with all the dice loaded against the accused, in truth, hardly one in ten of the accused under these laws has ever even been brought to trial and fewer than one in ten of those have been convicted. That's how effective those "tough" laws are. And if one thinks they were effective in stopping terrorist and "terrorist" attacks, well, just check the recent past of this would-be-fair land...
But since those laws were meant basically as a legal means of locking up Muslims and lefties, a sort of modern-day Nacht und Nebel decree, any Hindu fascist spokesman worth his trident would be bound to shriek from the temple-tops about how they need to be brought back at once if the evil terrorists are to be stopped, and that Bush's Guantanamo is the way to go.
And if one points out the utter uselessness of these laws, the response is always the same, whether from the Hindunazis themselves or their Muddle Class followers: "Well, OK, so the laws don't achieve anything directly, and some innocents do get locked up. But that's precisely the point. It shows that we won't even hesitate to imprison innocents.It sends a strong message, it shows we aren't a soft state!"
OK, so I have a suggestion: since India is now the murder capital of the world, let's send a strong message to would-be murderers: every time there's a murder, let's at once hang everyone at hand from the nearest tree, lamp-post or gallows, even if those persons are obviously innocent passers-by.
No, to ensure that the message is at maximum strength, let's hang everyone at hand, especially if those people are obviously innocent passers-by. Or even more especially if they weren't within a thousand kilometres of the murder.
How d'you like them apples?
 Y'know, of all the professions in the world that arouse instantly negative connotations, lawyers must make it to the top of just about every list. They'll be right up there along with politicians and (most) journalists, and far above (illegal, that is) criminals.
Why?
Uh, well, take a look at your average smarmy lawyer. Unlike anyone else, in any profession, a lawyer has absolutely no worldview, no opinion, nothing, on any subject. You give a lawyer a situation. You ask for his help, you pay him a retainer, and he'll begin forming his opinion to suit your side of the story. You might be a rape-murderer, but he'll try to show
1. That you're innocent; or, failing that
2. That rape-murder is socially acceptable; or, failing that
3. The victim asked for it or somehow provoked you.
If you're involved in a civil case, for instance, and he's representing you, and the other side pays him a bit more; since he has no personal viewpoint, no principles, he'll switch sides if he can, or "accidentally" sabotage your case for you.
A lawyer, in other words, is the ultimate whore, making real hookers look chaste. That's what everyone recognises, and that's why they're so hated.
Or maybe I'm wrong, and Perry Mason exists, but somehow I don't think so.
And to the point - a new contact here is Aaron, who is in prison on murder charges though he never even knew the man he was alleged to have murdered. Less than adequate legal representation there. After all he couldn't buy the best brains in the business...
We're such a wonderful, deep, great democracy. We're the best and most liberal and so on and so on and so on...
In fact, we're so good that anyone who even thinks anything against us has to be evil, am I not right?
So, suppose there's a doctor who works in the villages for poor people, a doctor, moreover, who dares to claim that poor people may have some human rights, after all, and that just perhaps, big companies shouldn't be allowed to do just as they please, especially in connivance with the government and its security forces and its illegal private militia. Also assume that the heretical bastard just won't keep his trap shut. What should you do with him?
Well, Geez Louise, as one of my friends here would say, since we're such a liberal democracy, anyone who's against anything we do is evil, isn't he? So call that bastard a Maoist (he must be one, since he opposes free enterprise and the rights of companies to do what they want), get him in jail, and throw away the key.
Meanwhile, of course, we can go on forming illegal private militia (it's strictly against the constitution) and unleash them on their fellow villagers. it's all in the name of fighting terrorism - or Maoism in this case.
In fact, I'm not making all this up. There is a doctor, a paediatrician named Binayak Sen.
 He also happens to be a vice president of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), one of those pesky left wing organisations, who, you know, are subversive enough to ask for the poor and marginalised to be given the same rights as SUV-driving upper middle class city people. He also was misguided enough to write of the depredations of the Salwa Judum.
 Salwa Judum is a (strictly illegal as per law) private militia set up by the government to "fight Maoism", which, predictably, instead just turned into another gang of gun-toting goons intent on robbery and pillage, who are, in connivance with the state (which in India is now synonymous with big business concerns) forcing people from their homes by beatings, murder, and loot. The fact that he also criticised Maoist violence was unimportant.
One might have been able to predict what would happen to Sen. I think I can say he was lucky - he wasn't shot dead in a staged "encounter", which is the standard way the Indian government disposes of its opponents. Instead, he arrested in May of last year, on charges of being a Maoist (during his visits to jail inmates, he had treated an alleged Maoist prisoner, you see) and thrown into prison without producing any evidence, under one of our "tough anti-terrorism laws". He was in solitary confinement for months, and despite winning international humanitarian awards, there's no sign of him being released soon, if ever.
To quote the writer Anand Patwardhan, "As the system we live in successfully crushes or co-opts all movements of opposition, the term (Maoist) has become synonymous with any form of uncompromising protest. The charge that anyone believes in violence or abets violence need not be substantiated. In a corrupt system, it is enough that a person cannot be bought to mark him as a mortal threat."
But that's quite all right. What's the fate of one man more or less when there's so much money to be made?
 So you want to be famous for a while, the easy way?
If you live in India, there's nothing simpler.
For example, take a look at this photo. It shows the Indian tennis player Sania Mirza, and was taken during the Hopman Cup in Perth, Australia, on New Year's Day. It shows Mirza with her bare feet propped up next to an Indian flag.
Some moron of a lawyer or other found this outrageous. He went to court with a petition against Mirza for "insulting the national flag", and the court admitted the petition.
I'm no fan of Sania Mirza; I think she's 10% ability and 90% hype, and I'm more than sick and tired of listening to her talk on TV (in the faux American accent she acquired overnight) on how she is going to be a top ten player in the near future. But this petition against her is worse than ridiculous; it's a travesty of any sort of sense or rationality.
It's not as though the Indian courts are exactly underworked, with a backlog of cases which will take decades, literally, to clear. That they should admit this sort of idiot petition is moronic enough; what's worse is that this is far from an isolated incident. There seems to be a brigade of these people with nothing better to do but sit watching TV and scanning the newspapers to try and find something to launch litigation over. They get their fifteen minutes of fame, and also, most certainly, get some other morons to support them.
Of course the courts will, after months to years of wrangling and appeals and summons, throw out the case. Meanwhile serious legal matters will stay filed away and forgotten.
Mirza says she thought of quitting over this "row". With her own relentless self-promotion, I kind of doubt that; but I have no doubt at all that this sort of thing is a major disincentive for any Indian who wants any sort of public life.
It's just too damned easy in this country to get people to say you've insulted them in some way or other.
 Imagine being arrested at the age of 23 and jailed for a crime that you no longer remember, kept in prison for 54 years, and never seeing the inside of a courtroom or getting a trial. Imagine having to be told by others that you allegedly hit someone over the head with a bamboo stick in a fit of rage - but you don't remember it. The police can't help; it was so long ago that the records have all been lost.
There was a man (in the photo) named Machal Lalung. A tribal villager in Assam, he was arrested in about 1954 for an unknown crime and imprisoned. As mostly happens in India, except in high profile, media visible cases, he spent years in prison without his ever getting a trial. In jail he developed epilepsy - and because he developed epilepsy he was put in a mental hospital. Yes, this makes as much sense to me as it does to you.
He stayed committed in the hospital even after the authorities there pronounced him cured of his epilepsy, because the regular jail people showed no interest in taking him back. And there he stayed, memory gone, gardening to pass his time, until discovered during a prison review in 2004. In July 2005 he was finally released after a court order, and that too on bail. The court ordered the state government to pay him a compensation of 300,000 rupees (that's about US$ 7500) and a monthly stipend of Rs 1000 ($25). Princely, did I hear someone say?
Machal Lalung's friends and acquaintances were almost all dead, of course, and he was almost eighty years old. He had no memories of anyone or anything in his past life. He pottered around for a few years and finally died two days ago after a fall at his village home. The media rediscovered him briefly at his death. Tomorrow he will be forgotten again.
He's hardly unique. India's jails are full of people who have spent many times longer imprisoned while waiting for trial than the maximum sentence they'd have got if they were convicted.
The moral of the case: kill someone high profile if you want to get tried quickly and if you want to get away with whatever you do, make sure you're a real big-shot first. Nobody will dare touch you.
...that you aren't a woman in Saudi Arabia.
A 19-year-old rape victim - a gang rape victim - was sentenced to 90 lashes for being in the same car as an "unrelated male" - a former boyfriend - when both were abducted and gang-raped. When her lawyer appealed the sentence, it was increased to six months in prison and 200 lashes. And her lawyer was disbarred - or whatever they call it in Saudi Arabia - for daring to appeal.
What strikes me most forcibly about this is that Saudi Arabia and similar oppressive Muslim regimes are close allies of the Bush gang (not to mention their "liberal" Clintonite predecessors) while liberal, forward looking (at least socially) Muslim states like Iraq, Syria and Libya have always been the targets of American hate-fests.
(While I'm on the topic, don't forget the Taliban were Washington's bosom buddies till the late 90s.)
I don't really know what more to say about this one.
| |
