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Defending the actions of a rice farmer

Nov 06, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
I respond to the unproven statements made by Parbattie Jawahir’s which were told to her by the boys who were caught partaking in illegal activities.
For someone like Jawahir to have so many questions about the law, she should spend her spare time trying to obtain a law degree, or at least attempt to understand the law.
Instead, she uses her time and energy trying to cover up or defend her own actions as well as the actions of other caregivers. Her resources better used, may have prevented the students from getting into such a position.
Had the students been given exact instructions by the teachers, who are entrusted with their safety when attending school, would not have wandered off as far as another village and trespassed onto someone’s property. What would Jawahir’s questions be if the boys had been struck by a vehicle while roaming from village to village in search of coconuts, or should I ask what her answers would be?
The public may not have heard this version of the story. It may have just been as simple as the boys acted on their own menace. There seems to be many questions about this story and even more holes, so here’s another question for Jawahir: What if the young boys had raped someone’s young daughter while unsupervised and was caught by her father, whose natural parental instinct would have been to protect the fruit of his seeds, just like this farmer?
I wonder if it would have just been in Jawahir words, “boys being boys”. In this case, most would find a monetary fine in any amount requested by the victim, a slap on the wrist and the parents of the defendant would have been happy to oblige and not have their children suffer the more severe consequences.
In my opinion, the farmer had ever right to obtain a fee that was set at his discretion. I would like to thank Jawahir for this bit of information that she provided. If her students were sent out for coconuts, of course not to be bought, but taken or stolen because no money was provided by the staff of the school for payment, then what were they doing with stolen guavas?
As a parent I can only hope that they were taught the difference between a coconut and a guava and that taking what belongs to others without consent is stealing. Jawahir speaks of imprisonment and the students being “arrested”, however, imprisonment would mean no contact with the general public and no freedom to perform the everyday acts of life on your own.
To arrest someone would mean that the individual or individuals would have to have their Miranda rights read to them by a law enforcement officer, so therefore the farmer’s son and his workers only detained and transported the students to the home of the farmer where the decision would be made as to what actions would be taken.
Jawahir states that she answered the call from the farmer’s home notifying the school of the boy’s illegal acts. Jawahir’s definition of a threat that she was concerned about was actually a request for the presence of the appropriate parties. The request was then followed by a statement that if the parties were unable to participate in the resolution of the matter then further action would be taken.
To sum it all up, if you twist a few words around, make up your own definitions and add a few verbs, you’ll surely end up with drama! Is this a case of the staff, including Parbattie Jawahir using the farmer as a scapegoat to cover up their own negligence, or is this a personal vendetta or simply defamation of character?
A. Alli

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