A fellow-member of the Suriname mailing list forwarded an article from a Parbo source about a child molester sentenced to six years (the prosecution had asked for four years).
What's interesting is NOT the short sentence, but the remarks and opinions of the court.
[Suriname: Surinam - Dutch Guiana, independent since 1975. Parbo: Paramaribo - the capitol city of Suriname. Note that Surinam is a linguistic madhouse - not only Dutch and English are spoken there, but several Creoles and Pidgins, as well as Javanese, Malay, Sarnami Hindi, Papiamentu, Keh, and Amerindian languages. The most common Surinamese language is Sranantongo. There are more Sranantongo-speakers in the Netherlands than in Parbo.]
CONSIDERED OPINIONS, GRAVIDLY EXPRESSED
The prosecution (Claudia Bruining, Officier van justitie) stated that it flabbergasted her that Theodorus Martodikromo (74 years old) had committed his crime during Ramadan. She just could not imagine anyone doing what he did during the Muslim holy month.
Judge Anand Charan opined that the locale of the crime was also most unsuitable, it having been perpetrated in a Mosque!
At this point, it is natural to cock your brow - surely the time and place are not really germane? The most important considerata, in fact the only considerata, should be the age of the victim (4 years old) and the nature of the crime.
CONSIDERED OPINIONS, COLOURFULLY EXPRESSED
It is therefore utterly gratifying that the reactions from other readers of the Suriname mailing list are entirely unambiguous. I will not share the exact phrasing of their reactions (translation impossible), but it involved testicles, trees, the possibility and likelihood of prison brutalizing, and several furious comments about dense and blithering official idiots employed in the Justice Department in Parbo.
All boiling down to "who cares WHERE or WHEN he did it, you folks need your heads examined".
Of course, the six year jail sentence also proved objectionable. It's not nearly long enough.
All the right values flourish among Surinamers. Boruch Hashem.
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3 comments:
Gee... the kid wasn't even an alter boy.
Bob
It reminds me of the press reaction to a local cause celeb, in which an obviously unhinged female resident of a trailer-park in Tracy has been accused of raping and killing an 8 year old girl, packing the body in a suitcase, and disposing of the suitcase in a nearby pond. The press' emphasis? It's shocking "because she taught Sunday School"(!); the implication would appear to be that all us Atheists, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Animists, and Muslims engage in such behavior as a matter of course.
It should be pointed out that living in a trailer-park in Tracy would probably be enough to unhinge me, but my loopyness would, I flatter myself, take a different form. I am not a Sunday School teacher.
Both the impossibly named Theodore above, and the Sunday school teacher aforementioned, need broken bottles up their whangle gash. With great force.
---Grievous Painbillings
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