When justice opens her eyes

There’s a reason why justice is supposed to blind. Lady justice is always portrayed with the scales of balance in one hand, the sword in another and a bandage covering her eyes – the latter a strong symbol of her “blindness”. The reason for this blindness is the fact that before justice everyone is equal – there should be no distinction and no discrimination. There are not two sets of laws that apply to different categories of people.

Today’s judgement by Magistrate Peralta as reported in the papers might mistakenly lead people to begin to believe that justice has opened its eyes. It would be a wrong kind of opening of the eyes because it is the kind that seems to imply that there is a law for one kind of persons (the locals) and another for another kind (foreigners). The phrase “foreigners engaging in crimes will be dealt with seriously” is dangerously equivocal and has hopefully been misinterpreted by the reporting press.

One would hope that whoever engages in crimes is dealt with seriously… no matter what the nationality on their passport. There is a second danger that is inherent in this statement and this is the fact that it encourages the kind of “us and them” talk that until now had been exclusively the domain of our government as it pandered to the populist ideas about the dangers of having too many foreigners among us.

So let’s hope this unhappy statement is clarified and rectified. And remember – on paper at least, “la legge è uguale per tutti”.