[list_indonesia] [ppiindia] Editorial NYT: Guilty 'till Proven Innocent

  • From: "Khairur Razi" <rozie@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: ppiindia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:40:33 +0500

** Mailing-List Indonesia Nasional Milis PPI-India www.ppi-india.da.ru **

prelude:

Editorial new york times hari ini (12/4/05) mengecam sistem 'guilty till proven 
innocent' yg dikenakan pada siapapun yg diduga teroris, ini terutama krn. bias 
agama (baca, muslim) sangat kuat. dan jelas against the spirit of liberty para 
founding fathers Amerika.

anehnya, ada sedikit orang kita (untungnya bukan mainstream) yg justru sangat 
sepakat dg sistem ini. ini patut disayangkan, bukan hanya krn. kita sedang 
menuju arah civil-society, tapi juga krn. kita sendiri sudah mengalami betapa 
pahitnya hidup di era suharto yg juga menganut sistem ini (ciduk dulu, urusan 
lain belakangan).

Rozi

EDITORIAL 
Guilty Until Proven Innocent

Published: April 12, 2005

  
  
  
he post-9/11 world involves two competing nightmares. One imagines another 
terrorist attack that occurs because authorities fail to respond to signs of 
danger. The other is about innocent people who are arrested by mistake and held 
indefinitely because authorities are too frightened, or embarrassed, to admit 
their errors. We have to be equally vigilant against both.

Right now, two New York City girls, both 16, have been detained and accused of 
plotting to become suicide bombers. If there is a real reason to believe that 
charge, officials are obviously right to have acted. But so far, they have said 
little about the evidence against the girls, and the girls' friends and 
families have offered accounts that suggest the charges could be completely 
false. 

At this point, it's impossible not to worry about a potential miscarriage of 
justice, given the number of previous incidents in which the government has 
rushed to make a terrorism arrest that turned out to be baseless. 

Details of the cases against the two girls - one from Bangladesh and the other 
from Guinea, and both in the country illegally - are sketchy. According to 
reporting by Nina Bernstein in The Times, the parents of the Bangladeshi girl 
went to the police several weeks ago to file a complaint about their daughter's 
defying their authority. When the dispute was resolved, they tried to withdraw 
the complaint, but the police proceeded with an investigation.

The police and federal immigration officials searched her belongings and are 
reported to have found an essay on suicide. According to the family, the essay 
says suicide is against Islamic law. But detectives went on to question the 
girl about her political beliefs before arresting her. Even less is known about 
the investigation of the girl from Guinea. Teachers and students at the high 
school she attended expressed outrage at the arrest and at the idea that she 
could be plotting terrorism.

The government calls the girls an "imminent threat," and says it has "evidence 
that they plan to be suicide bombers." But it has not described the evidence, 
insisting that national security requires that much of it remain secret. 
Because the girls are here illegally, they have been put into a deportation 
system that affords them far fewer rights than ordinary criminal suspects have. 
There is no definite limit on how long they can be held.

No one wants to leap to conclusions about a government case in such an 
important area. But the record is not reassuring. Last year, the government 
wrongly jailed Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer who is a Muslim, for two weeks after 
the F.B.I. mistakenly matched his fingerprint to one found at the scene of the 
Madrid train bombing. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department 
rounded up hundreds of Muslim men who were here illegally and detained them for 
months, often in deplorable conditions. The department's inspector general 
later found that the F.B.I. had made "little attempt to distinguish" those with 
terrorism ties from those without. Shortly after 9/11, federal authorities 
detained a Nepalese tourist for three months in a tiny cell after he 
inadvertently included an F.B.I. building in a videotape of the sights of New 
York for folks at home.

More information about the two girls will no doubt surface over time. If the 
evidence isn't there, the arrests are very disturbing. The government will have 
taken 16-year-olds from their families, branded them as would-be terrorists and 
put them into a frightening legal limbo for no good reason.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/opinion/12tue1.html?ex=1270958400&en=da5a8f34d49d688a&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo


Khairurrazi
Aligarh Muslim University
Uttar Pradesh, India

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