Justice Robert W. Doyle is in the midst of selecting a jury for the case of Marcelo Lucero, a 37-year-old Ecuadorian immigrant who was attacked by seven teenagers and stabbed to death in Patchogue, New York in November of 2008. The New York Times reports that “Lucero’s death prompted widespread outrage and exposed racial tensions in Patchogue, where a number of Latinos came forward after the attack to describe muggings and assaults that had them living in fear.” The teenagers who attacked Lucero had, according to the police, “made sport out of assaulting Hispanic men, calling it ‘beaner hopping.’ ” Now, as the first defendant is about to go on trial, the process of jury selection is underway. Jury selection has “proven difficult, in part because of the views on Latino immigration held by some prospective jurors in Suffolk County.” One prospective juror said that “her father, a mechanic, has a ‘huge opinion about illegal immigration,’ and that his views on the subject have ‘become my opinions as well.’ ” Another prospective juror took a different view, saying that “most of the clients in her job are illegal Latino immigrants. ‘I don’t think that because of that they should be killed,’ she told Justice Doyle.” Prospective juror Carla Panetta, who was also excused, “criticized those prospective jurors who said they could not be fair because of their views on illegal immigration.” Panetta said, “ ‘I don’t care whether the man was legal, illegal, white, black, purple or green. . . . There was a murder. It almost seemed like the poor victim was the one going on trial.’ ”
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March 12, 2010
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March 10, 2010
The New York Times reports that “a weekend of vicious ethnic violence” left as many as 500 members of a Christian ethnic group murdered and thousands injured in Nigeria “near the city of Jos, long a center of tensions between Christians and Muslims.” On Sunday, March 7, as early as three o’clock in the morning, Hausa-Fulani Muslim attackers “planted nets and animal traps outside the huts of the villagers, mainly peasant farmers, fired weapons in the air, then attacked with machetes,” the Los Angeles Times writes. According to the BBC, “the latest violence is thought to be revenge for similar clashes in January when days of deadly violence in the central Plateau State left more than 300 dead, most of them Muslims.” President of Civil Rights Congress Shehu Sani noted that “the latest violence strongly resembled the killings in January” when Kuru Karama, a predominantly Muslim village, “was virtually wiped out, and bodies were thrown into pits and latrines,” the New York Times reports. Sani visited the villages where the attacks occurred and interviewed dozens of survivors, The Los Angeles Times writes. Sani noted that the attacks this year are more sinister: “they are carefully planned and brutal, with hundreds of villagers killed—including babies, the elderly and anyone else unable to flee.” Times Online reports that frightened Christians are leaving their villages in central Nigeria after receiving threats of further attacks from those responsible for the massacre on the 7th of March.
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March 8, 2010
In the aftermath of the earthquake in Chile, the Chilean military is back on the streets for the first time since Pinochet’s military dictatorship in the 1970s and 80s. Chileans recognize that the soldiers are there to protect them, and “Chileans are welcoming the military’s role in earthquake relief efforts,” NPR writes. In contrast, many citizens were afraid of the military during “the Pinochet years, when soldiers were a constant presence and were responsible for widespread human rights abuses.” Despite their fear, Chileans used many different approaches to resist the dictatorship (1973-1990), Roberta Bacic writes in an article for Open Democracy. Bacic’s approach was greatly influenced by Gandhi’s belief in the power of nonviolence. “Non-violence,” Bacic explains, “refers to a philosophy and strategy of conflict resolution, a means of fighting injustice and—in a broader sense—a way of life, developed and employed by Gandhi and his followers all around the world.” By this definition, Bacic concludes, non-violence is an “action that does not commit or allow injustice.” Bacic and a group of others were determined to “tell the truth and act on it.” She became part of the anti-torture movement that helped pressure Pinochet to sign the international Convention Against Torture in 1984, “which in turn would lead to his detention in England in 1999 while awaiting the result of the request for his extradition to Spain.” Bacic is a Chilean researcher in human rights as well as a curator for exhibitions of Arpilleras—Latin American, three-dimensional textiles originating in Chile that depict how political violence impacted everyday life.
