Workers arrested at South Africa's Marikana mine have been charged in court with the murder of 34 of their colleagues shot by police.The 270 workers would be tried under the "common purpose" doctrine because they were in the crowd which confronted police on 16 August, an official said.Police opened fire, killing 34 miners and sparking a national outcry.The decision to charge the workers was "madness", said former ruling ANC party youth leader Julius Malema."The policemen who killed those people are not in custody, not even one of them. This is madness," said Mr Malema, who was expelled from the ANC (African National Congress) earlier this year following a series of disagreements with President Jacob Zuma."The whole world saw the policemen kill those people," Mr Malema said, adding that he would ask defence lawyers to make an urgent application at the high court.The killing of the 34 was the most deadly police action since South Africa became a democracy in 1994.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
South African miners charged with murder after police shoot miners
What? [Link]
4 comments:
Okay, so you have armed police officers vs armed protesters. Their law says that if someone is killed during the course of a disturbance, everyone involved in the disturbance is guilty of the murder. Am I reading that correctly? It's the same here, isn't it? The police get to say it was justifiable, self-defense, all of that. The bad guys were all aiding and abetting in a crime, so it's their own fault some of their number got shot. Okay so far? The problem is, I don't remember ever hearing of the bad guys being charged with the deaths of their compatriots, even though they were all involved in the incident. Could they be? Three guys commit a bank robbery. The cops come, there's gunfire, and one of the robbers is killed. Can the other two robbers be charged with the death of their guy, as well as the bank robbery itself? Interesting question.
Sean's cousin is a lawyer in MI. He says I'm right, that there is something called capital murder that would hold the robbers liable for just being there. That's what's happening in South Africa, too.
it still seems excessive and punitive. The law that was invoked was used under apartheid to suppress dissent. http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/marikana-no-common-purpose-to-commit-suicide/
It should always be taken on a case by case basis. I see the argument for the interpretation that the miners did not, in fact, conspire with the police to have their comrades killed. What they did do was provoke the police into shooting. Given the atmosphere, they could not have been naive enough to believe that the police would not shoot, so you could just as easily argue that they knew someone would likely be killed, but they persisted anyway. Almost like martyrdom. It's really the same as my example, but on a much larger scale. And given the locale, one can easily imagine that the government had ulterior motives. De Vos may consider me emotionally unstable, but I can see the government's argument in enforcing an arcane law to make an example of violent protestors. Excessive, perhaps. Punitive, definitely. But strictly speaking, not against their laws.
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