Human, All Too Human
Saturday, March 13th, 2010People often complain that the Law is impersonal, an uncaring instrument whose application too often punishes the innocent and allows the guilty to walk free. In practice, it is capricious and too often selectively applied. All of this is true, from time to time.
But the alternative is summary judgment and mob justice. Far too often, they’re driven by hysteria and a deep-seated desire to find a scapegoat in order to externalise the worst aspects of human nature that exists within all of us. A recent Daily Post story on the recent murders Lolowei village reports that villagers had long made use of the two accused poisoners to settle their own petty differences.
The very people who had commissioned these despicable acts were the brothers’ accusers and ultimately their executioners.
Common Ground
Saturday, June 27th, 2009Even in the decades before Jimmy Steven’s Nagriamel movement, land has been at the core of ni-Vanuatu politics and society. Many battles have been fought – and far too many lost – over land rights.
Justin Haccius, a legal researcher for the World Bank’s Jastis Blong Evriwan project, has been looking at this issue for some time now. The conflict between kastom and law, he says, is one of the central issues affecting Vanuatu society today. The problem, as he sees it, is simple: “The system of the majority is not the system of the State.”
In a briefing note titled “Coercion to Conversion: Push and Pull Pressures on Custom Land in Vanuatu” Haccius highlights some of the pressures brought to bear on kastom land owners in their efforts to derive value from their land without becoming completely disenfranchised in the process.
A Nation of Laws - Ctd.
Saturday, April 4th, 2009Time and column inches conspired against me with this week’s Opinion. Writing these pieces is a labour of love for me, a needful service that - I hope - contributes to the public dialogue here in Vanuatu.
This week, I feel I didn’t have nearly enough time to do a completely satisfactory job of mapping a morally, legally and ethically complicated landscape. While I feel I covered most of the main themes in the thousand or so words allowed me, much more needs to be said.
What follows is a somewhat lengthy consideration of what I chose to say - and chose not to say - in this column, and why I did so….
A Nation of Laws
Saturday, April 4th, 2009Shortly before noon on Sunday, March 29, two Toyota pickup trucks arrived at a Malapoa residence occupied by 21 year old escaped convict John Bule, his girlfriend and their daughter, aged less than 2. Several men in plain clothes dismounted and entered the house in search of Bule.
Loud voices were heard from within the house, and 3 shots were fired, apparently as a warning. Nobody was hurt. Shortly afterward, John and his girlfriend were escorted from the house, their hands bound behind their back. They were placed together in the back of one truck and driven to the VMF barracks.
The girlfriend later recalled that she pleaded with those holding her to be allowed to return to her home and her daughter. She told them she’d done nothing wrong.
As she pled with them, she says, she heard her boyfriend John crying out in pain in an adjacent room.
Shortly before 2:00 p.m. that same day, authorities brought John Bule to Vila Central Hospital for treatment of wounds to both legs, both arms, his ribs, back and head, which had multiple lacerations, including a gash above his left eye about 10 cm. long and 3 cm. wide.
Soon after 4:00 p.m. Sunday, John Bule was pronounced dead.
A Matter of Justice
Saturday, December 20th, 2008It’s easy to say that prisoners deserve what they get, that they’ve made their bed and now they should lie in it. And it’s true, to a degree. But there is a point past which a man ceases to be a man. The measure of our society, of our capacity to care for one another, is made according to where we draw that line. There is nothing in kastom or natural justice that condones crossing that threshold.
The great comfort of kastom is that every person has their place, in life, in the village, in the world. The government needs to commit to building a new prison and to allowing our chiefs to continue to watch over their children. If it does –when it does – it will ensure that conditions will improve, both for our prisoners and for society as a whole.