South African Miners charged with murder..for Police shootings?

reply to post by halfoldman

I would actually agree with the archbishop Tutu on the invasion of Iraq and the role of Tony Blair, but I just can't stand this snooty behavior, and this notion of: "I'm so perfect and my legacy is so perfect, and my head's so far up my own bottom that I'm not even going to share a stage and debate with you".

All this while the ANC-British Marikana mine saga continues ... I mean really.
Grow up!

OP, your facts are wrong and your argument sucks. And I mean that with all due respect.

-South Africans dont protest with plackards and signboards, they protest with handguns, rifles, spears, machettes and panga's.

-In this instance they protestors had already killed two sucurity guards by slitting their throats, and killed two fellow police officers by HACKING THEM TO DEATH.

-When these guys were shot the police was already in a stand off position. If you watch the videos you can see about 50 protesters charge the police, each and every one of them with a weapon in hand. They were mere metres away from the police when they eventually fired.

What do you think those protestors were going to do when they got to the police, talk to them? Try to reason with them?

No! They were going to kill them in any way possible and police have a right to protect themselves.

Under SA law, criminals are held responible for any and all deaths caused by their actions.

I am a South African and I stand with the police on this one. There's a difference between protesting for a better living and taking the lives of others.

Let Justice be done!


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

reply to post by Monkeygod333

So... You agree with the arrest and prosecution of 270 men for the actions of a few individuals? Perhaps..to some degree..I can see a collective charge for the whole mob participating that day. I'd have fully expected something criminal if the Occupy group I was with had carried through on one of a couple half baked ideas they had for the World Series... People would certainly have gotten hurt, and maybe killed. Should EVERYONE who was with Occupy at that city camp have been charged with Murder? Should all 270 here?

I'd also note..according to the reports carried out from South Africa on this, and please correct with a link of you have better info, but they are being charged with the murder of their FELLOW protesters...who were shot by the cops now seeing them charged. Wouldn't it have made more sense to at least have charges related to the dead security people and not fellow protesters the Police themselves shot dead?

I get what you're saying in a collective guilt approach to a mob on a rampage....if in fact, authority views this in that light. That perspective is where I find local people adding their views to be invaluable on a story like this. I just get lost entirely on charging miner with the murder of miners the OTHER side actually shot dead......while NOT charging them with the actual deaths miners DID commit in the same all/nothing way? Weird stuff?

Latest from today: The murder charges are dropped.

The miners will be released in batches with an official warning, beginning with those whose addresses have been verified, and those who must still be processed will be released by the 12th.

Charges may still be brought against some after the inquiry,

For more details see: news.iafrica.com...

Thank goodness for that, because this was not taking our country to a good place.

Originally posted by halfoldman
Latest from today: The murder charges are dropped.

The miners will be released in batches with an official warning, beginning with those whose addresses have been verified, and those who must still be processed will be released by the 12th.

Charges may still be brought against some after the inquiry,

For more details see: news.iafrica.com...

Thank goodness for that, because this was not taking our country to a good place.

edit on 2-9-2012 by halfoldman because: (no reason given)

Oh, this is the best way I could ever imagine to bring a closing report to a thread which started as disturbing as this one. Perhaps..just maybe...Public pressure from wide spread coverage of the outrage contributed? I mean of all nations to have really seen the worst end of world public opinion for an extended period of history, right? Would it be fair to say they'd go through a lot to avoid any major P.R. disaster of a lasting world wide nature?

Whatever brought the change, thanks for coming back to share it. You've really made my night in this area. I needed a good lift from other things I'm doing now.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by Monkeygod333

 

So... You agree with the arrest and prosecution of 270 men for the actions of a few individuals? Perhaps..to some degree..I can see a collective charge for the whole mob participating that day. I'd have fully expected something criminal if the Occupy group I was with had carried through on one of a couple half baked ideas they had for the World Series... People would certainly have gotten hurt, and maybe killed. Should EVERYONE who was with Occupy at that city camp have been charged with Murder? Should all 270 here?

I'd also note..according to the reports carried out from South Africa on this, and please correct with a link of you have better info, but they are being charged with the murder of their FELLOW protesters...who were shot by the cops now seeing them charged. Wouldn't it have made more sense to at least have charges related to the dead security people and not fellow protesters the Police themselves shot dead?

I get what you're saying in a collective guilt approach to a mob on a rampage....if in fact, authority views this in that light. That perspective is where I find local people adding their views to be invaluable on a story like this. I just get lost entirely on charging miner with the murder of miners the OTHER side actually shot dead......while NOT charging them with the actual deaths miners DID commit in the same all/nothing way? Weird stuff?

Well, look at it this way. If there is a cash-in-transit heist involving 5 criminals, a high speed chase ends up in a shoot-out with police, the police shoot three of the criminals and arrest two. Those two surviving criminals are then charged with the robbery, fleeing police and all that AND three counts of murder each for the deaths of their friends.

At the end of the day it is South African Law, I agree with the law, those criminals will never be rehabilitated of they are not held accountable for the death of their friends.

reply to post by Monkeygod333

However, the following situation could also happen under the "common purpose law".
For example, a student takes the train to go to college in an urban center, and after disembarking he walks up the street and suddenly finds himself in a demonstration.
Things suddenly turn violent and the police kill some people.
In the chaos the cops then grab the student and charge him as a murderer for the people they killed.

That's pretty close to how "common purpose" was used during the late 1980s, except that it was in township situations where cadres did kill people before crowds, but not all the people arrested were willfully or intentionally in that crowd, or involved in the crimes.
Innocent people were sentenced to death under that law, although I believe all were pardoned after major international and local outrage, and political changes.
So this law does have a loaded political history, especially for the ANC, and the recent comparisons to the apartheid state must sit very uncomfortably with them.

I can understand that most South African want the police to be tough on violent crime, but there are also rouge elements and criminals in the police, and the wider use of such laws can be abused.
Policing is also not always professional or unbiased.
I think of a home-owner whose defense against an intruder is already highly limited in a legal sense.
What if the cops shoot the intruder and then charge the homeowner with murder for forcing their hand?
It's a very slippery slope.

It's also unsure to what extent these miners are regarded as criminals.
Currently there are very divergent accounts of the events on that day.
One account sees the police as acting in self-defense against an armed and violent mob.
Another (shown on Carte Blanche yesterday) views the police as arriving with no intentions for crowd control, driving part of the crowd into a turkey shoot, and then massacring more miners on the other side of hill, and driving over some lying on the ground.
I'm not going to judge which view is correct.

What's relevant is that the miners could have easily become a catalyst for wider political action.
Unlike two common criminals in a heist, there was mass community support for these miners, which would only have snow-balled.
They would have been denied initial bail, and then languished in jail until their trial (probably only next year), with a health and legal system that was simply too over-burdened to cope, all at the expense of the taxpayer.
Meanwhile there probably would have been mass strikes, possibly laying the whole country lame, and the political opportunists would have upped the racial tensions.
And for what?
Not a single legal expert could see the charges sticking at their trial, and the rationale was never explained.

So I'm glad a lot of them were released this evening.
Charging citizens for crimes they blatantly didn't commit (murdering their own colleagues who were visibly shot by the police), really wouldn't make me feel any safer against criminals.
In fact, the ramifications of such a blatant injustice both locally and internationally was becoming quite concerning.
Hopefully that situation will now deflate somewhat, instead of a constant questioning of why the miners were kept in jail on false charges, and what the state was trying to hide.
A state secure of its own legitimacy wouldn't resort to such obscure tactics.

If such laws are used, for example, to catch a mastermind behind a heist who had a clear intent of risking the lives of his henchmen (I heard in the UK it's called the "lazy cop" law) then sure, but in this case it seemed very inappropriate and baffling outside political factionalism.
Of course having the charges suddenly dropped could also be political interfering from another faction behind the scenes, although it wasn't really surprising, and it's probably foolish to think that any of these bodies like the NPA are truly independent.
But all things considered, it was the right choice in this case.

For the speculative Greg Marinovitch interview on Carte Blanche (broadcast on the 02 September 2012) see: beta.mnet.co.za...

Law Professor Pierre De Vos writes more on the law and the technicalities, and why withdrawing the charges was sound in this case: constitutionallyspeaking.co.za...

reply to post by Monkeygod333

I take your example but hasten to add, we can rationalize the BAD application of good laws until the cows come home. In a situation of a crew of guys pulling a robbery, the association guilt makes perfect sense.

When 270...TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY men are arrested and initially charged for the actions of a few, it isn't good sense anymore.

What honestly came to mind when I first heard this were the Nazi reprisal policies of World War II. Kill 1 German Officer and you'll watch 10..or even 100 civilians from your own village lined up and shot in direct group reprisal for the actions of 1. In Israel it was the destruction of homes for the actions of a suicide bomber.

Any case of reprisal against the many for the actions of the few or the one is EVIL...and a law in this case which makes sense in a small scale is just evil when attempted on the scale of hundreds of protesters.

* Thankfully these men don't have to ride this to the end and someone came to their senses in dropping the the matter against them all as it appears now. Whew...... That was a close one, this time.