Too much to lose

Page 5

Dear Editor:

As one of your white middle-class settler subscribers, I would like to tell you how much I appreciate your coverage of Saskatchewan news. I don't know how you handle letters to the editor, but I am so incensed about the recent release of Steven Kummerfield and the mainstream news coverage, I must put pen to paper.

Regarding Pamela George and the release of her murderer:

I object to the media's recurrent statements that "this case outrages Aboriginal people," as though it did not outrage other sectors of the society. This is an Aboriginal issue. It is also about racism. It is about sexism. It is about social justice. And it enrages other sectors of society!

The release on full parole of a young man who has participated in the beating death of a young woman and who shows no remorse is offensive to me. There are so many violations to my sense of social justice that I can barely begin to list them.

I do not believe that drunkenness excuses the attacker from murder. The fact that he lured the woman under false pretensions indicates planning.

There is no doubt in my mind that the facts the attacker was white, was male and was a university basketball player, conveyed value to his life, while the facts the victim was an Aboriginal, was female, and was a prostitute, devalued her before the courts of this land. This was not an illustration of justice!

Generally, I would like to see a system of restorative justice that involves victim-offender restitution and reconciliation and I don't support our current system of criminal jails and justice. On the other hand, restorative justice requires remorse on the part of the perpetrator and emotional restitution to the victim. The dead woman's children and her mother are the living victims.

Letting a middle-class white male out on full parole who shows no remorse and is given no responsibilities to the victims is insulting to them and embarrassing to those of us white middle-class citizens who believe in a fair and just society with equal rights for everyone.

If our current justice system requires no restoration, restitution or remorse, I am in favor of putting the middle class white basketball jerk who beat up a defenseless mother of two back in jail.

How would the court rule if two Aboriginal males drove a white college student out of Regina, and, while drunk, beat her to death?

In Saskatchewan, we have a special and urgent need to apply justice that is blind to racial origin. In a few short years, we white middle-class people will be a minority. We should ask ourselves, how would we wish to be judged? There are traditions that indicate that we should be careful about our judgments because we may, eventually, be subjected to the same criteria.

We cannot let this and other racial injustices rest. Saskatchewan has too much to gain by seeking a real application of justice, and too much to lose if we do not jointly work to destroy racism.

Dale Dewar,

Wynyard, Sask.