Tag: justice

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VIENNA: FIRE IN THE PALACE OF JUSTICE

90 years ago, in 1927, the Palace Of Justice, seat of the Supreme Court, was set on fire. Rightwing supporters of the Front Fighters’ Union, which counted later war criminal Adolf Eichmann among its members, clashed with members of the Schutzbund, the paramilitary organization of the social democratic party. The day before, a district court had unjustly acquitted members of the Front Fighters’ Union from shooting and killing two innocent bystanders, a 40 year old and a 8 year old, in another confrontation with the Schutzbund.

These were the days of the Civil War, which led the young Republic of Austria into its demise: Austria was swallowed by fascism, integrated into Hitler’s Third Reich and buried under ashes in the WWII.

84 people vanished in the fire. 60 millions in WWII and the holocaust.

In 2017 the Palace of Justice sparkles with gold again. Trust in law and justice seems undisturbed.
The eyes of Justitia are blind as she sits enthroned, holding on to her sword, and clutching a book.
What book is she reading, blindly?

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ROOMS WITHOUT A VIEW

 

On this side of Johannesburg, the streets are lined with giant trees, chestnuts, oaks and jacarandas, that shelter from the late summer showers. Instead, their leaves and petals rain down on to the asphalt.

In the silence of Houghton and Saxon Wold, the streets are lined with walls that hide the villas and palaces behind, crowned with electric wire. Their sliding gates, made from steal or iron, open like mouths to swallow the shiny BMWs and Jaguars, and close right behind, affording but a glimpse of the meticulous lawns inside, the pools, the children’s swings and bicycles.

Tall and insurmountable, they barricade the view on those who wander outside, in silence: The domestics in white shirts and blue aprons, and the men from security who sit and wait outside, 24/7.

 

Tendani Mukololi lives on the other side of Johannesburg, in the crowded, squatted Vodacom-tower, without electricity or garbage collection. But every day for the past twelve years he has been sitting in his little hut in Houghton, guarding, surveilling, protecting what he cannot see.

“Aren’t you afraid of me? I am a black man!” He asks, as I stop to for a chat.

“No,” I answer. “You are from security.”