Have we forgotten the meaning of the word child soldier?
What were you doing when you were 15? Think about that.
Omar Khadr was fifteen years old when he supposedly killed an american soldier. Where you were and what you are doing at age 15 has a lot more to do with how you are brought up and how you are socialized than your own actions or convictions. You are old enough to take some responsibility for you actions, but society also has some responsibility for getting you to where you were, whether good or bad.
In Canada, we insist on youth in the criminal justice system being treated differently than adults. This is why we have the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which protects them from their youth crimes coming back to haunt them. Until today, I really thought we took this for granted here. I thought we all knew that 15-year-olds are still children. But the lack of reaction to this decision says otherwise.
As Amnesty International has repeatedly said, there is “No Security Without Human Rights”. The rights of children are basic. We can’t pick and choose which basic human rights we do or don’t follow, and who they apply to.
The Obama administration promised to give fair trials to all those at Guantanamo, but this was not a fair trial. Apart from the fact that it wasn’t the least bit speedy, for it to be fair, they would have to consider that he was 15.
As Romeo Dallaire rightly pointed out last week, this is not just about Omar Khadr, it’s about child soldiers, or anyone involved in violence really, everywhere around the world. The U.S. has sent a message to them. The message is: we don’t care about your circumstances. Hit us and we’ll hit you back, harder.
We will never, ever end the cycle of violence until we learn that punishment doesn’t solve anything. This is the same reason that has led to the U.S. having the highest incarceration rates of any democracy, and yet still have an astronomical rate of violence. Punishment doesn’t work. Rehabilitation and examining the root causes of violence and poverty is the only thing that is going to end this conflict.
Omar Khadr was created by a violent world. It is the world’s responsibility to end the violence. We have to stop responding to violence with more violence.
Posted by Craig on October 31, 2010 at 8:20 pm
Firstly, how many times did Khadr’s lawyers postpone or reschedule hearings? Plenty, so as far as a speed trial goes it’s a moot point when your own council is purposefully delaying it.
Secondly, as you said “where you were and what you are doing at age 15 has a lot more to do with how you are brought up and how you are socialized than your own actions or convictions.” Quite simply, just like millions of others around the world, people like Khadr are bred to have great disdain for the west and western values. This is ingrained into them from day and through their formative years.
He was not a “child soldier” ripped from his village and forced to fight for a cause he doesn’t understand or believe in. He is, and always will be, a terrorist from a terrorist family that took great joy in inflicting pain and suffering to westerners and non-believers alike.
Have we not yet learned that hugging thugs doesn’t do a damn thing except make the hugger’s feel like their doing something important?