As always, Friday means another installment of the Yak of the Week: our tribute to the individual, entity or group whose conduct bestexemplifies thestubbornness andequidistance from reality and common sensecommon to the two-legged Yak.
This week we are proud to bestow the Yak of the Week Award on former Liberian president Charles Taylor for hisreaction to his new “home” at The Hague prison.
Explication, as always, below the fold:
After Taylor became president of Liberia, the country entered into a 14-year civil war. Taylor currently stands accused of war crimes against fellow Liberians, including multiple counts of rape and mutilation carried out by rebels in Sierra Leone (with the alleged support of Taylor’s administration).
Originally jailed in Freetown, Sierra Leone,this model citizen was moved to The Hague last month to awaithis trial at the International Criminal Court (officials feared public reaction to a trial in Sierra Leone). Taylor’s attorneys appeared in court this week to protest both the move and his subsequent treatment, claiming that “draconian” lockdown hours, restrictions on telephone calls and unpleasant food at The Hague facility added up to unfair treatment. According to counsel, Taylor deserves better treatment, particularly the ability to make telephone calls on a less-restricted basis, as the current rules have hampered defense fundraising efforts (maybe he needs to get in touch with the Internet…).
Let’s considerhis claimsfor a moment (and you can just disregard the allegations of rape, murder and torture behind the curtain).
Jail is bad because:
1.The food is nasty.
2. They won’t let me make telephone calls when I want to.
3. They make me stay in a cell at hours I find inconvenient.
Hmm. Sounds like jail isn’t working out for him. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Maybe he should have considered that before he became a criminal.
And so:
- For complaining about the food, the lack of privileges and the general restrictions on freedom,
- For seeking to turn The Hague’s criminal detention center into a more comfortable place to stay,
- For failing to recognize the irony inherent in thecomplaint that incarceration is interfering with his fundraising efforts,
and
- For equidistance from recognition of the reality that “it’s jail – it’s not meant to be comfortable” and the Truth that not everyone deserves to be able to order out for a pizza….
Congratulations, Yak of the Week.
Linked to the Soxtastic Weekend OTP at TMH’s Bacon Bits, the 2008 Presidential Straw Poll at Stuck on Stupidand the open trackback post at Echo9er.
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Prisons were renamed penitentiaries (by the Quakers, I believe) to implement the wise idea that people who have committed crimes should take the opportunity of their involuntary inactivity to reconsider the course of their lives, and their eternities to follow. Charles Taylor and other highly visible violators give us the opportunity to do by proxy what they refuse to do themselves. To paraphrase a line from Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons,” applying a rhetorical question posed by Jesus Christ: “It profits a man nothing to give up his soul for the whole world, but for LIBERIA?”
Comment by Maniyak — July 21, 2006 @ 2:57 pm
[...] Case in point: Friday’s Yak of the Week. The former President of Liberia (currently in prison awaiting trialon war crimes charges)is complaining aboutthe fact that prison rules about telephone calls have interfered with his fundraising activities.As though it never occurred to him (orCNN for that matter) that this might just bea logical (not to mention obvious) consequence of being in prison. [...]
Pingback by The Random Yak » This looks like a job for…OBVIOUSMAN — July 24, 2006 @ 9:56 am