Rechter Richard Goldstone in Apartheid Zuid-Afrika

 

De meningen zijn verdeeld over de rol die Richard Goldstone als rechter speelde in Apartheid Zuid-Afrika. Hieronder 3 artikelen.

 

Mijn (toegegeven oppervlakkige) indruk is, dat Goldstone waarschijnlijk zowel een oprechte democraat als een oprechte zionist is, en zijn redenering zou best te vergelijken kunnen zijn met die van een burgemeester in oorlogstijd: 'als ik die positie niet vervul, doet een ander het, en dan is het resultaat nog veel beroerder'. Vergelijk ik daarmee de VN met Apartheid Zuid-Afrika of zelfs met de nazi-bezetting van Nederland?

 

Zeker de VN 'Mensenrechtenraad' is een moreel failliete boel die grotendeels door (machts)politiek geleid wordt, en dat is de club die de commissie Goldstone haar opdracht gaf om mensenrechtenschendingen tijdens de Gaza Oorlog te onderzoeken, officieel zelfs UITSLUITEND Israelische mensenrechtenschendingen.

 

Goldstone lijkt gemeend te hebben dat hij een positieve invloed kon hebben door ook de schendingen door Hamas in het onderzoek te betrekken. Hij heeft daarmee, en door zijn medewerking überhaupt, echter vooral de geloofwaardigheid opgekrikt van een politiek proces waarvan de uitkomst al bij voorbaat vast lag: Israel moet hangen! Veel commissieleden hadden hun oordeel vooraf al klaar, en de 'Mensenrechtenraad' en de Algemene Vergadering van de VN ook. In zoverre als hij dat serieus heeft nagestreeft, heeft hij zelf ook behoorlijk gefaald om een degelijk en uitgewogen rapport af te leveren.

 

Wouter

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Goldstone sentences dozens of Blacks to be hung
http://reshet.ynet.co.il/חדשות/News/Abroad/Worldnews/Article,42924.aspx

 

1. The dark past of Judge Richard Goldstone from the days of Apartheid in South Africa has been revealed. It turns out that the author of the report that accused Israel of war crimes and human rights violations in "Cast Lead" enforced racist laws while serving as a judge in the 80s and 90s, imposed lashes and sentenced 28 blacks in the country to death. The judge responded: "I was part of the system"

2. The man who wrote the critical report accusing Israel of war crimes during operation "Cast Lead" is the same man who was a judge in the Court of Appeal in South Africa during apartheid, enforced racist laws, decreed punishment by lashes and sentenced dozens of Blacks to be hanged  - so reported the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth this morning..

3. Justice Richard Goldstone, who was appointed to investigate the alleged "war crimes" of the IDF and the alleged human rights violations committed by Israel, previously sentenced to death no less than 28 black defendants that appealed their murder conviction. Goldstone criticized countries that allow execution of the defendants, but while serving as a judge in South Africa in the 80's and 90 he actually expressed support for this policy. In one of his judgments the judge wrote that "the gallows is the only punishment that can deter murderers."

4. Furthermore, Goldstone also sentenced four black convicted on violent crimes to lashes, a punishment that has disappeared in civilized countries. Goldstone argues in response that he had always been against giving the death penalty but that during the apartheid era had to respect the laws of the state, and stated that he never discriminated against accused Blacks, even though at times he was forced to enforce laws  that he was morally opposed to. "I was always committed to maintaining equality and non - discrimination as well as the law," Goldstone said, "Sometimes those two principles collided very complex ways."

5. Compared with the many serious penalties that Goldstone imposed on South African Blacks, he actually decided to acquit four police officers who broke into the home of a white woman on the suspicion she was having sex with a Black man - an act that was then considered a serious crime in South Africa. Does this also sound like discrimination to you?

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SA ex-chief justice defends Goldstone
http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=174820
By HAVIV RETTIG GUR
06/05/2010 05:01


Man who headed Cast Lead c'tee reportedly served as apartheid judge. 
 
Former South African chief justice Arthur Chaskalson defended former judge Richard Goldstone on Wednesday from criticism in Israel's largest newspaper that as a judge in the 1980s, he willingly enforced the racial laws of the apartheid regime.

In a report published on Wednesday in Yediot Aharonot, which announced a larger feature that would be published in the paper's Friday edition, journalists Techiya Barak and Tzadok Yehezkeli presented judicial rulings made by Goldstone that, they said, showed a willing and uncritical support for the race-based legislation of apartheid.

Furthermore, they wrote, Goldstone either ordered or sanctioned as an appellate judge at least 28 death penalty executions, and wrote in support of the practice in his judicial rulings.

"That is absolute nonsense," Chaskalson told The Jerusalem Post by phone from Johannesburg. Goldstone "was never part of the apartheid regime."

During the 1980s, at the height of apartheid's most violent and brutal period, "there was a whole discourse about judges staying on the bench," Chaskalson explained. Some anti-apartheid voices supported the move, some opposed.

Specifically, the reporters cited a ruling from 1981 in which Goldstone, then a judge on the Transvaal Supreme Court, acquitted four policemen who had conducted an illegal night raid on the home of a white woman because she was suspected of having had sexual relations with a non-white person – a crime under the apartheid statutes of the time.

"He acquitted the four officers for technical reasons, despite ruling that they had illegally entered the home. Yet in doing so, he did not refer to the law itself as racist or problematic. In fact, he simply enforced a racial law," said Yehezkeli.

Goldstone could not be reached for comment for this article because he was traveling. However, he had given a response to Barak and Yehezkeli in which he said that the officers' appeal had been upheld not because he supported the racist laws, but because there had been legal mistakes made in the case.

"It is clear, however, from the portion of the judgment [cited by the reporters], that [the other presiding judge] and I found that the entry of the police officers had been unjustified and unlawful. Their appeal was upheld on the technical grounds that the legal provision under which they were charged did not create a criminal offense," Goldstone wrote.

Still, said Yehezkeli, "we're saying that it was Goldstone's choice to be a judge under apartheid, and because of this decision, he ended up doing things that served the apartheid laws."

Others disagree.

Jules Browde, a founding member of Lawyers for Human Rights and a campaigner against apartheid during the period in question, insisted that "you can't draw any clear adverse inference from the fact that [Goldstone] became a judge [under apartheid]. In fact, while he sat as a judge, he gave judgments that were very progressive."

Browde himself refused to become a judge, "but there were others of real caliber who accepted it because they felt they could do good as judges, rather than having judges of extreme right-wing views."

Goldstone was such a judge, he said.

Chaskalson, too, insisted that Goldstone "was regarded by everyone who knew him as a liberal judge. Many people felt it was better to have an honest judge on the bench than another kind."

The article also challenges Goldstone's record on death penalty convictions, stating that "the man now campaigning for adherence to human rights [law] ordered the executions of at least 28 black defendants while serving as a judge in South Africa during the apartheid era. He speaks often about the death penalty, but has not yet publicly admitted his own deeds."

Yehezkeli points to his March 1993 ruling in the case of Purpose Bongani Khumalo, in which Goldstone seemingly justified the death penalty as a deterrent.

Khumalo had killed and robbed a restaurant owner in Johannesburg who had fired him. Despite saying that Khumalo was only 23 years old and could be rehabilitated, Goldstone wrote that the outrage of the surrounding community "is a relevant factor in the imposition of a proper sentence... A proper sentence should act as a deterrent to others who may be tempted to murder or rob defenseless and innocent people... The murder calls for the maximum sentence allowed by the law. It follows in my opinion that on that account the only proper sentence is the death sentence."

"Here he expressed outright support for the death sentence, and even brought public opinion as a factor in imposing it," Yehezkeli said.

Goldstone is quoted in the Yediot article as saying that he "always opposed the death penalty, but I was part of a system that had such a punishment."

Chaskalson concurred: "The death sentence was compulsory for murder. There were no extenuating circumstances. If you got [a ruling of murder], you were compelled by law to impose it."

Chaskalson added that he disagreed vehemently with the image created by the reporters, insisting that Goldstone had used his judicial powers to mitigate the abuses of the apartheid regime.

As an example, he cited the 1986 Govendor case, which challenged the Group Areas Act, a piece of legislation that attempted to enforce separate living areas for whites and non-whites.

The case came before Goldstone in the midst of the period of emergency laws imposed to enforce apartheid against growing protests.

While he could not overturn the legislation, Goldstone ruled that ejecting non-whites deemed to be living in the areas proscribed to them by law was not compulsory, but at the discretion of the court. He added that exercising this discretion should take place only after the court had considered the personal harm that would come to the evicted party and the existence of alternative living arrangements. He placed the burden of proof for these considerations on the state.

In effect, "the state's campaign to enforce the Group Areas Act in Johannesburg ground to a halt," Chaskalson said. "Many of those of the 'wrong color' remained in the premises they were occupying."

Chaskalson rejected the Yediot report as "scandalous" for its failure to capture the context of the times.

"It's one thing to disagree with [Goldstone's Gaza] report, but quite another to go after him personally like this," he said.

Yehezkeli believes the record speaks for itself.

"It may be true that judge Goldstone was more willing to listen [to defendants in race-based cases] than some other judges. But as a judge he had to work for the apartheid laws. You can't get away from it. Even if he was opposed to the laws of South Africa, he agreed to serve them."

Among the responses Goldstone submitted to the two reporters, Goldstone wrote, "I was always committed to safeguarding equality and nondiscrimination, as well as the law. Sometimes these principles clashed in very complex ways."

 

 

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The Jerusalem Post
Ayalon slams Goldstone over apartheid
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
06/05/2010 22:11
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=174940

 

Deputy foreign minister rejects jurist's response to report he sent 28 black South Africans to death.


Reports that international jurist Richard Goldstone sent 28 black South Africans to death during the apartheid regime prove he wasn't impartial when compiling the UN report on Operation Cast Lead, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said Thursday.

Speaking to Israel Radio, Ayalon said that, "after [Goldstone's] dubious background was revealed, there is no reason not to think" that the judge had ulterior motives in composing the UN report accusing the IDF of perpetrating war crimes in Gaza.

Goldstone presided in South Africa during the 1980s and 1990s, and reportedly wrote in one of his rulings that the gallows are the only deterrent for killers.

"This so-called respected judge is using this [Gaza] report in order to atone for his sins and gain international legitimacy," Ayalon opined, referring to rumors that had Goldstone sought work as a judge in the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

The deputy foreign minister said that he did not accept Goldstone's response to the [South Africa] report that he was a part of the system and had to respect the laws of the state, occasionally having to enforce laws he was opposed to.

"I don't want to exaggerate, but these are the same explanations we heard in Nazi Germany after World War II," Ayalon said. "That is not an explanation that justifies his actions."

Reacting to criticism that Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot unearthed the information on Goldstone, and not the Foreign Ministry, Ayalon blamed his predecessors, especially former foreign minister Tzipi Livni.

"Without instruction from the political level, sensitive operations are not carried out on the administrative level," Ayalon explained. "The instruction had to come from the leadership of the Foreign Ministry at that time.

"If we could have used this in 'real time,' it would have been more effective," the deputy foreign minister said. "Even if Israel has no political gain," from releasing the information now, "it's important for people to know, for it to be on record."