Israel Matzav: 1986: Goldstone sends 13-year old boy to jail for protesting apartheid

1986: Goldstone sends 13-year old boy to jail for protesting apartheid

And you thought Richard Goldstone was a champion in the fight against apartheid. Well, not always.

In the most poignant case, Goldstone ruled against the 1986 appeal of a 13-year-old boy who had been sentenced to jail for disrupting school as a protest against apartheid and increasingly draconian "emergency laws" used to preserve order and squelch opposition to the government. Goldstone, according to The New York Times, provided no comment to his decision to uphold the sentence of the lower court.

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The case of the 13-year-old boy Goldstone ruled against came in the context of a wave of national protests and school disruptions by South Africa's black youth against apartheid and the brutal emergency laws. Authorities responded with mass detention of children who participated in the protests, or were suspected of doing so. By the fall of 1985, at least 800 students had been detained. By December of 1986, South African security officials admitted to having detained more than 1,800 teenagers, while reports surfaced that policemen routinely whipped children at their school desks if they were suspected of supporting the anti-apartheid protests.

Goldstone was slammed by South African human rights organizations for his 1986 ruling against the boy. In a later interview with The New York Times' Bill Keller (who called Goldstone a "cross between King Solomon and Ghostbusters"), the South African judge said about his ruling against the boy that the emergency laws left him "no way out."

Read the whole thing. Long before he investigated Operation Cast Lead, Richard Goldstone was not as pure as he pretends to be.

Israel Matzav: 1986: Goldstone sends 13-year old boy to jail for protesting apartheid