dehn ple futbol (they play soccer)

Yesterday, we put on a football game at the juvenile prison. If you remember, I posted a while back about interviewing boys from the prison. Their requests were so simple and really stuck with me, especially their desire to play football. CVT often puts on community activities. Football is a great way to build community and provide a positive outlet for one's emotions. So, I got permission from my supervisor and the prison to organize a match.

The boys are not allowed to leave the prison so they cleared the field in the back. Everyone was out working, some hacking away with machetes, others removing large rocks and debris, and a few fashioning goals out of sticks. The results were passable, although a little worrisome as most of the boys do not own shoes and thus had to play barefoot. I refereed the game. The boys were great, really great. No fights, very little fouls and not a single person questioned any of my decisions!!

We even got a few drops of rain. As most of you know, playing soccer in the rain is one of my all time favorite things. All in all a good time and a perfect afternoon.

Here is some of what I see: an expensive house in the bush (possibly where the chief resides), a more typical grass and mud hut, a young girl dressed in tribal clothing followed by one impressive woman, a family walking and lots of beach (filled with people and harmattan haze the day before Easter, locals playing soccer at sunset and today with claire and looming thunder clouds).

"Justice"

Last week, I saw a person being stoned. Hardly recognizable as a human, covered in dirt and blood, he moaned. People threw stones and a large crowd watched.

The UN Convention Against Torture defines torture as ” ...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person.”

Could this fit the definition any more precisely?

The irony and horror of our position, 2 counselors (who specialize and work with torture victims) driving in a car plastered with the logo “Center for Victims of Torture”, was so clear me. Our mission is to “heal the wound of torture on individuals, their families and their communities and to STOP torture worldwide” and yet we merely drove past.

I was stunned. I felt sick to my stomach and appalled.

My bottom line is that I do not think that stoning a person is ever ok no matter the alleged crime. Yet, it is a form of tribal or vigilante justice, and even I, on reflection, have to admit that ‘justice’ has some merit. There is no formal, functioning justice system here. If you want to file a police report you have to pay them and still nothing happens. So in this void, vigilante justice prevails. A society where there is no punishment or consequence for crime is a dangerous society, especially in a place where poverty and suffering are so ripe. These very public displays of punishment do act as an effective deterrent and crime rates here, I would wager, are lower than in NY City. I feel perfectly comfortable walking down the street alone at 2am.

This topic led me to the inevitable comparison with our justice system. Our’s certainly is not without flaws: the death penalty (where we have killed innocent people), our skewed death row populous, skewed overall populous of 'criminals', disproportionate sentences for similar crimes (i.e. crack vs cocaine)… Even sadder is the fact that we spend more money to incarcerate people in the US than to educate them. “It costs approximately $52 a day to house, feed and secure a prisoner. Surprisingly, we spend approximately $25 a day to educate a student in a public school.” Despite extensive input of financial resources, we still have some of the highest crime rates. How can warehousing individuals do any good for our society? A black man is more likely to go to jail than go to college in the US. Is this the kind of justice we want to export abroad?

Clearly our model is not one to be held up on a pedestal and neither is their’s. The removed nature of our system makes it more palpable for sure but arguably no more humane or fair and perhaps even less effective. It is a depressing subject with no easy solutions on any side of the oceans.