One of the interesting things to become apparent recently is that quite a large number of people live in an alternate universe where there is one law for the famous and another for ordinary people.
Roman Polanski raped a thirteen year old girl. That his victim was underage at the time exacerbates the crime, but had she been twenty-two year old, it would remain a crime. It remains a crime even thirty-two years later. There are no excuses or mitigating circumstances.
Now that the Swiss authorities have done the right thing and arrested him, a huge number of people from this alternate reality have stumbled into ours and said some rather ridiculous things. The common undercurrent is an indignation that such a virtuoso of cinema would be subjected to something as common as arrest, and a weird paranoia that Polanski is somehow being "singled out" for being famous. It's true that the trajectory of his case has been affected by his fame - but only in the sense that a non-famous criminal doesn't get to escape to France, remaining untouched by the authorities there.
Rape, when committed by someone sufficiently famous, is apparently a mere faux pas, and to arrest Polanski for it impinges on his tremendous dignity as an artist. But there is no way his dignity could be damaged by his arrest, because he already threw it away when he forced himself on Samantha Geimer.
One common apologist tactic is to ignore the fact that the sex was clearly non-consensual and concentrate on the Geimer's age at the time, and to then argue that a charge of pedophilia is unfounded, as Geimer wasn't really a child. But this is beside the point. Let me reiterate: Polanski raped her.
As for the people why cry "hasn't he suffered enough" - the Boston Globe hits the nail on the head, writing: "By reminding us that he lived through the Holocaust and his wife’s 1969 murder, Polanski’s apologists insult other survivors. Being a victim of genocide or violence needn’t engender and never excuses more violence".
Polanski currently remains under detention in Switzerland, though he has just been granted bail. Given that the last time he was granted bail he ran away to France, this sounds less than sensible, though he is being fitted with an electronic tracking bracelet to prevent this from happening again.
What can you do? Well, for starters, don't listen to the apologists, and don't let them spout their garbage unchallenged. If you are a fan of Woody Allen, Whoopi Goldberg, Pedro Almodovar, Wes Anderson, Natalie Portman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Darren Aronofsky, Diane von Furstenberg, Julian Schnabel, Martin Scorsese, Tilda Swinton, Gael Garcia Bernal or Penelope Cruz (etc) - you may want to reconsider your fandom. Or send them a letter expressing your disappointment.
Showing posts with label justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label justice. Show all posts
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Saturday, 3 October 2009
More Willkür?
Burning cars are a regular occurrence in Berlin.
Ever since the G8 protests, cars all over the city keep being set aflame - in the first seven months of 2007, some 143 of them. Unsurprisingly, the police and the city government are under a lot of pressure to do something about this - the destruction of property is immense, and burning cars are dangerous. [1]
In the early morning of the 18th May, a Berlin police patrol noticed a person hiding between parked cars, and went to investigate. On exiting their car, they saw that a nearby car had been set on fire. They rushed to extinguish the flames and lost sight of the person. Given that that person was likely the arsonist, they went looking for him or her.
A few blocks away they saw a young woman, entering a 24-hour shop. She, Alexandra R, looked like the person they had glimpsed earlier, so they followed her in. When she saw the police, she started shouting at them to leave her alone. They took her in on suspicion of arson. Berlin police opened a case against her, but let her go home on Monday afternoon, having decided that she was not an urgent suspect.
The next day, the case was in the newspapers: they called her an arsonist, a car-hater, a "hate-burner". [2] Alexandra R is a leftist activist who organises demonstrations and has been known to throw stones at them. She is the kind of person, the newspapers said, who sets cars on fire.
The pressure from the newspapers and the opposition parties was powerful: the next day, Alexandra was arrested again and detained [3] on suspicion of arson. Two months later, on the 27th July, a judge ruled that she could be released on bail, but then the state prosecutor intervened, now stating that there was a risk of re-offence.
Alexandra has been under detention for more than four months now, and has lost her apprenticeship place as a result of this. At the time of this writing, the case has just gone to trial and so far, its outcome is uncertain, as there is an absence of hard evidence. [4]
Needless to say, I don't think setting cars on fire is a good and righteous thing to do.
What it boils down to, though, is that if you live in Berlin, and have the wrong politics and the wrong friends, you can end up being locked up for months for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because it's perfectly possible that she was not that person the police saw. Equally, it is possible that she set that car on fire. But it's not proven. And maybe Berlin police have locked up an innocent for months, for political reasons, because they want to be seen to be doing something.
If she is convicted of arson, her sentence will be one to ten years of prison. The difference being that this sentence will be meted out on someone the legal system has found guilty. The current detention - four months of being locked up so far - is being inflicted on someone who should be presumed innocent.
The state prosecutor claims that if released she would flee. Others point out that she made no move to do so when she was first released, despite fully knowing that she would end up in court. Equally, the likelihood of her setting cars on fire when she's already under bail on suspicion of arson is probably rather low.
Since this case has firmly entered the realms of politics and opinion, I would like to invite you to write to the state prosecutor. You don't have to agree with setting cars on fire - I don't. You don't have to agree with her politics - I don't, by and large. All you need is an unwillingness to let the state lock up someone because it's politically convenient.
So what I've done, and what I would like you to also do, is send an email or letter to the state prosecutor, stating the following things:
Address:
Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin
Turmstrasse 91
10559 Berlin
Deutschland
Email: poststelle@sta.berlin.de
Main Sources (all in German):
[1] According to the chief of Berlin's Landeskriminalamt.
[2] Die kranke Welt der Hassbrennerin, Berliner Kurier
[3] Put into Untersuchungshaft, which is not quite the same thing as detention in the UK or US.
[4] Ein Feuerschein, eine dunkle Figur, Der Tagesspiegel
[5] Linke Gruppe besetzt Wahlkreisbüro von Ströbele, Bild.de
Ever since the G8 protests, cars all over the city keep being set aflame - in the first seven months of 2007, some 143 of them. Unsurprisingly, the police and the city government are under a lot of pressure to do something about this - the destruction of property is immense, and burning cars are dangerous. [1]
In the early morning of the 18th May, a Berlin police patrol noticed a person hiding between parked cars, and went to investigate. On exiting their car, they saw that a nearby car had been set on fire. They rushed to extinguish the flames and lost sight of the person. Given that that person was likely the arsonist, they went looking for him or her.
A few blocks away they saw a young woman, entering a 24-hour shop. She, Alexandra R, looked like the person they had glimpsed earlier, so they followed her in. When she saw the police, she started shouting at them to leave her alone. They took her in on suspicion of arson. Berlin police opened a case against her, but let her go home on Monday afternoon, having decided that she was not an urgent suspect.
The next day, the case was in the newspapers: they called her an arsonist, a car-hater, a "hate-burner". [2] Alexandra R is a leftist activist who organises demonstrations and has been known to throw stones at them. She is the kind of person, the newspapers said, who sets cars on fire.
The pressure from the newspapers and the opposition parties was powerful: the next day, Alexandra was arrested again and detained [3] on suspicion of arson. Two months later, on the 27th July, a judge ruled that she could be released on bail, but then the state prosecutor intervened, now stating that there was a risk of re-offence.
Alexandra has been under detention for more than four months now, and has lost her apprenticeship place as a result of this. At the time of this writing, the case has just gone to trial and so far, its outcome is uncertain, as there is an absence of hard evidence. [4]
Needless to say, I don't think setting cars on fire is a good and righteous thing to do.
What it boils down to, though, is that if you live in Berlin, and have the wrong politics and the wrong friends, you can end up being locked up for months for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because it's perfectly possible that she was not that person the police saw. Equally, it is possible that she set that car on fire. But it's not proven. And maybe Berlin police have locked up an innocent for months, for political reasons, because they want to be seen to be doing something.
If she is convicted of arson, her sentence will be one to ten years of prison. The difference being that this sentence will be meted out on someone the legal system has found guilty. The current detention - four months of being locked up so far - is being inflicted on someone who should be presumed innocent.
The state prosecutor claims that if released she would flee. Others point out that she made no move to do so when she was first released, despite fully knowing that she would end up in court. Equally, the likelihood of her setting cars on fire when she's already under bail on suspicion of arson is probably rather low.
Since this case has firmly entered the realms of politics and opinion, I would like to invite you to write to the state prosecutor. You don't have to agree with setting cars on fire - I don't. You don't have to agree with her politics - I don't, by and large. All you need is an unwillingness to let the state lock up someone because it's politically convenient.
So what I've done, and what I would like you to also do, is send an email or letter to the state prosecutor, stating the following things:
- I make no claims as to Alexandra R's guilt or innocence - this isn't about whether she did it, it's about how she has been treated while a suspect.
- I am disturbed by her being denied bail despite the unlikelihood of flight or reoffence.
- I feel that she has been singled out for harsher treatment because of her political associations and because of media pressure.
- She should presumed innocent until sentenced, and yet has been in prison for four months.
- The state prosecution should apologise to her, and in case she is convicted, should lobby for the time already served in detention to be subtracted from the sentence.
Address:
Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin
Turmstrasse 91
10559 Berlin
Deutschland
Email: poststelle@sta.berlin.de
Main Sources (all in German):
[1] According to the chief of Berlin's Landeskriminalamt.
[2] Die kranke Welt der Hassbrennerin, Berliner Kurier
[3] Put into Untersuchungshaft, which is not quite the same thing as detention in the UK or US.
[4] Ein Feuerschein, eine dunkle Figur, Der Tagesspiegel
[5] Linke Gruppe besetzt Wahlkreisbüro von Ströbele, Bild.de
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