Saudi gang rape victim to be flogged

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Yes, Nakia, don't think I don't care. I'm a lawyer, I've read of all kinds of punishment, including corporal penalty, and perhaps if I consider a legal problem, I turn off emotions for this reason, as well as to maintain some objectivity. However, I don't know how I'd react if I had to witness that. It is abhorrent indeed and the international community should all intervene peacefully to make Saudi Arabia not execute that sentence.

 

I understand what you are saying, Chev. We all need to be objective when dealing with our professional lives and even our personal lives (if possible). This is why I held off posting and made it a short post. Just no way I can be objective.

 

As is more often than not, I find myself agreeing with T2.

It's their law, and she surely knew that she was breaking the rules. While I disagree with the law, I also don't live there, and am not part of their culture. It would have been easy for her to avoid punishment (by not getting into the car), and so she she only has herself to blame.

On the other hand, history is full of people who broke the law and, in doing so, made their part of the world a better place (Rosa Parks is an example). Maybe some good will come of this (although I'm not holding my breath).

 

Hokay, I'll make an effort to be a bit objective. I tried to get more information on the situation but failed. Why was the woman in the car? Did she just walk out on the street and get picked up by a stranger? Was he a long time friend? I assume (but don't know) that a 19yr old girl in Saudi Arabia would be subject to her family. Why did her family let her go with this man?

And I still think the penalty is outrageous.

 

Drow have more mercy.

 

So merely because she is a 'victim' of an unrelated crime, this woman shouldn't be punished for breaking the law?

Interesting. Let's assume that a burglar breaks into someone's house, and then while walking down the street with the stolen goods, has the stuffing beaten out of them by a bunch of emo goth punks because... well, because punks like to beat up losers.

As they are a victim of a violent bashing, should they be exempt from prosecution for the theft?

I agree that the law isn't exactly fair, but it's not as if the woman was ignorant. If she hadn't disobeyed the law, she would not only have not be punished, her lawyer also wouldn't have been suspended, and she probably wouldn't have been raped.

 

I like how you put victim in quotation marks.

 

You aren't honestly suggesting that traveling with a man who is not a relative is a gateway to rape, are you? Way to blame the victim for the crime.

In the US, when a jaywalker gets hit by a drunk driver, they don't ticket the jaywalker.

 

Drew:

Apparently in Saudi Arabia it is! Much like not wearing the veil in many hardline Islamic countries is regarded as an invitation to rape.

I'm not going to argue that rape is justified if a woman travels with an unknown male. But the law is the law, and victim or not, you are bound by the law. If you don't want to get punished, obey the law.

Well, she is to blame for the crime of being escorted by an unrelated male. Do you deny that?

So they don't enforce the law in the United States?

 

OK. But that isn't what you said. You said this:

You clearly stated that, if she hadn't been traveling with a man who wasn't part of her family (and we have no idea whether there was a good reason for this), she probably wouldn't have been raped. Do you still stand by your statement, now that I've made plain what your statement implied?

The real likelihood, here, is that she was given her lashes not because she broke the oft-broken segregation laws in Saudi Arabia, but because she was a minority Shia in the primarily Sunni holy land. Such (mis)treatment is not uncommon for the Shia and (even worse) Christians living in Saudi Arabia.

Not when the law is stupid or there would be no point.

 

Drew:

Yes, I do stand by my statement.

I implied nothing. You're simply squinting to hard to see between the non-existent lines. No doubt you'd claim that I was blaming the victim if I simply pointed out that if they hadn't left their doors and windows unlocked, they probably wouldn't have been burgled.

So they give lashes to minorities in Saudi Arabia who have not broken the law? You may be correct in the sense that they are more lenient in punishment of majority factions (although you have yet to post any data to support your claim), but that would be a non-issue if this woman hadn't broken the law in the first place.

Merely because you feel a law is stupid does not mean you should not obey it, nor should it not be enforced.

 

You're quite right, of course. You didn't imply that she probably wouldn't have been raped were she not in the company of a man who was not related to her. You flat out stated it.

If anyone actually wants to argue in good faith that Saudi Arabia doesn't have a double standard in the ways in which its laws are enforced which spans across racial, class, and religious lines, I'll gladly post some data, but since I strongly doubt I'll be seeing any good faith arguments with my assertion, I'm not going to bother. When stating the obvious, one need not cite one's sources*.

Not only should stupid laws not be enforced, but they should also be changed.

*And as a trained Arabic linguist, I think I've studied enough middle eastern culture to speak off the cuff about it once in a while.

 

A law which is unjust need not be obeyed. Of course if you choose to disobey an unjust law you have to be ready to suffer the consequences. I still don't have very much information on this whole situation but when the woman appealed her punishment was more than doubled and her lawyer was severely punished.

History has examples of people who chose to break the law because it was unjust and thereby started radical changes in their country. Two examples spring to my mind: Ghandi and Rosa Parks.

We do not change the world by accepting injustice where ever it may be. We do not change the world by being silient when we see something wrong.

 

Merlanni,
Drow don't exist.

If they would, it would be the woman dealing out the beating, and Drow men aren't required to wear veils, and from what I know from my past visits to the Underdark Drow are sort of promiscuous, too, all of which make your analogy ... haha ... err

 

Not really. First of all, you should note that I said that stupid laws shouldn't be enforced. I made no statement whatsoever about whether or not I felt they should be obeyed. If it makes you feel better, though, substitute "unreasonable" for "stupid". The reality about most stupid (or, if you prefer, unreasonable) laws, of course, is that due to salutory neglect, the vast majority of such laws are never enforced.

 

Her lawyer's job is to defend her no matter what she's done, using all the ethical means he has in his disposal. Suspending him because they didn't like the fact he defended someone they particularly wanted to make an example of, is very, very bad. Also, no matter everyone knows the law and knows the gamble, 200 lashes for approaching a member of the opposite sex is insane. Five would be (except maybe in case of a man violating a restraining order), much more 200.

 

Drew,
Yup. Example: Germany is a federal republic. Bavaria had the death penalty on the book, that is, in their state constitution. It was never enforced after the Grundgesetz went into power because the Grundgesetz prohibited the death penalty. Consequently the Bavarian provision was unconstitutional. The death penalty remained 'on the books' in Bavaria well into the 1990 until the well known unconstitutionality was eventually made explicit when the provision was removed. Because it was a stupid law it wasn't ever enforced in nearly 50 years.

Another similar example of laws that are not enforced are for instance some US state laws that regulate proper conduct in the bedroom (iirc banning oral, anal sex under threat of punishment etc.). They can only be explained historically and would fall into the same category - stupid laws, that are with the greatest likelihood unconstitutional and thus are never enforced because everybody knows about it.

Chev,
good point of making up that thread. It's indeed about the conflict between legal positivism and natural law. Legal positivism can be a very dangerous point of view. The school was highly popular in Germany during the 1930s. The law is the law, and thus it must be obeyed (the theory goes deeper). The application of that view didn't serve my country particularly well, thus I'm weary of positivists. But that extends well into your new thread and ought to be discussed there.

 

Allow me to come to Drew's aid on this one, please. While the amount of punishment isn't precisely regulated by laws prescribing from X to Y, a line of sentencing which awards more years to one group than to another, except factors like juvenile age, low intelligence, mental impairment, particular circumstances, is not a good one. It's not a legal excercise of the law, it's abuse of the system and not in line with the duties of a judge.

According to the positive law (statutes and similar, put in place by the authorities), yes, you are right. However, it can be argued that laws going against the right reason are not binding. Laws exist for a reason and a purpose, and within a certain system. If they cross those lines, they're statutory injustice, not proper laws.

 

Chev,
one counterargument is that if the law crosses the line then it is up to the constitutionally designated bodies to change the law. Following that line of argument can lead you to some atrocious results.

Against that can be held that, when threatened by administrative action, a citizen's rights can't wait for the laws to be changed at some later point. Corporal punishment here offers a perfect example for why: If the lady were to wait for the laws to be changed by the designated authority at some later point, that wouldn't help her right now. She'd be beaten anyway.

It is a little much to ask from a subject of an administrative act like a beating to wait, get hurt, and then patiently sue the government for compensation - to probably then be denied compensation because at the time of the beating the beating was legal. Chev put it quite well.