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Question: when is a hate crime not a
hate crime? Answer: when Whites are
attacked by minorities.
A blatant example of this has been
shown by the Joel Libin case. Libin, a
19-year-old, was walking home one night
last August and minding his own business
when he was set upon by three members of
Vancouver's Musqueam tribe who were
looking for some fun. "Let's go
find somebody to jump," being the
words one of them used.
Young Libin nearly lost his life and
narrowly escaped being turned into a
human vegetable. He spent months in a
coma, suffered "severe neurological
injury," and had to learn again how
to walk, talk and eat. He also lost 61
pounds. He had wanted to be an architect
but that now looks like nothing more
than a hope.
Two of his attackers were 16 and 18,
and cannot be identified. The third is
22 and is now facing trial in adult
court.The public has been outraged,
though, by the sentences — if that is
what they can be called — imposed on
the two younger ones, each of whom got
two years' probation and eighteen
months' house arrest. Joel Libin,
meanwhile, has made a good recovery but
cannot go out alone. He must always have
someone with him.
The reason the court gave the two
young thugs a pat on the wrist is that
there is one law for Indians and another
for the rest of us. In 1996 the Liberals
passed what Alliance MP Ted White of
Vancouver's North Shore calls a piece of
social engineering designed to keep as
many Indians out of jail as possible.
In his regular advertorial in the
North Shore News, Mr. White has pointed
out, in dealing with the law as such and
not specifically with the Libin case,
that Section 718.2 (e) of the Criminal
Code stipulates that judges should take
into consideration "all available
sanctions other than imprisonment that
are reasonable ...with particular
attention to the circumstances of
aboriginal offenders.".
The MP went on to quote a
Saskatchewan Law Review article that was
critical of those who supported the
legislation. They had "failed to
recognize that singling out a particular
race to receive special attention and
consideration from judges is
unacceptable discrimination, even though
well intentioned". It would have
been more accurate, however, to state
that the Liberals didn't want to
recognize what they were doing.
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Which leads your scribe to ask: what
else is new? Don't our Indian brothers
also get special treatment with regard
to hunting and fishing rights? And isn't
"oral history" good enough to
grant them lands in British Columbia to
which they otherwise would have no legal
right? And aren't our elitist,
guilt-ridden, soft-soap rulers nothing
more than a bunch of damned fools?
Section 718.2 (e) came into being
because there is supposed to be a
disproportionate number of Indians in
our prisons. But Mr. White suggested
that that is not necessarily the result
of unfair sentencing. Furthermore,
"there is substantial evidence that
the over-representation of aboriginal
offenders varies from one area of the
country to another, and in some areas
Aboriginals are not in fact
over-represented in prison".
One of the principles behind the
Liberals' move, he states, was a
reduction in the likelihood of
imprisonment — even for very serious
crimes. Which, of course, is what has
happened in the Libin case.
A web-site was set up in which people
could express their disgust at the
sentences imposed so far, and at last
count seven thousand signatures had been
obtained. But it has made no difference.
Last week Crown counsel decided after
"a comprehensive review" that
no error was committed by the judge that
would permit appeals.
Libin's parents have said they were
devastated by that decision.
There is something in the case that
has been missed by the mainstream media,
although it was noticed by columnist
Kevin Michael Grace in The Report
magazine. "Curiously," he
stated, the judge made no reference to
Canada's hate crime legislation. If
three white boys had got drunk [as had
these Indians] and had driven out to the
Musqueam reserve looking for prey and
had left an Indian teenager crippled,
one hardly needs to hypothesize the
consequences."
Exactly. From coast to coast,
headlines and editorials would have
called for blood. And it would have been
given. |
