FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS ARTICLE NO. 11. : WE ARE ALWAYS INNOCENT TILL PROVEN GUILTY : Article 11: (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence. (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed. I once sat in a downtown courthouse and watched a trial, a murder case in front of a jury. The first time this trial was conducted, a mistrial was called because one of the witnesses published material on a webpage that was not presented in court, and that could change the opinion of the jury. ltimately, the judge called a mistrial, and conducted a new trial with new jurors. WHY DID THE JUDGE DO THIS ? Because, if you call someone a killer, even without any evidence, over and over, the jury and judge hearing the case may buy into that. When you look at a person with the mentality that they are a criminal, even without evidence, you are more likely to believe they have committed crime. That is why criminals are suppose to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Recently, DNA evidence has freed so many people who were presumed guilty and serving life sentences, so you really don’t know if someone is guilty, unless you know. Now, many of us who have been following the news probably have read articles in where Tamils are labeled terrorists, and this label has been generously swapped on many of the articles that talk about the Tamil refugees who risked life, and made the journey to Merak in hopes of refuge. By labeling the refugees as terrorists, and inducing an ill-proven fear, the general public, and officials automatically associate terrorists with the refugees. If you can label someone as a terrorist, then you can undermine their rights, and justify their ill-treatment; the public wouldn’t protest if you held ‘terrorists’ in horrific conditions, and so that is exactly what medias and international governments have done. To free themselves of the responsibility of helping innocent Tamil refugees to find a safe haven, they [The Australian and Indonesian Governments in this particular instance] have labeled them as terrorists.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 05:53:10 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015