Lynching

Lynching is violence, usually murder, conceived by its perpetrators as extra-legal execution, or used as a terrorist method of enforcing social domination. Victims of lynching have generally been members of groups marginalized by society.

The term "lynching" is believed to come from Charles Lynch, whose vigilance committee, an irregular court, tried and punished petty criminals and supporters of the British during the U.S. Revolutionary War.

The term has also been referenced as being derived from William Lynch giver of the William Lynch Speech: The Making of a Slave--A speech by the British-born, Caribbean plantation owner that visited Virginia to describe how best to "break" and control slaves. The controversial speech has been cited numerous times by Louis Farrakhan. However, it should be carefully noted that the legitimacy of this so-called document is seriously questionable at best, and should not be used or considered as a historical document.

Postcard depicting the lynching of Lige Daniels, Center, Texas, USA, August 3, 1920. The back reads, "This was made in the court yard in Center, Texas. He is a 16 year old Black boy. He killed Earl's grandma. She was Florence's mother. Give this to Bud. From Aunt Myrtle."

United States

Main article: Lynching in the United States

Lynching, in the United States, has influenced and been influenced by the major social conflicts in the country, revolving around the American frontier, Reconstruction, and the civil rights movement. It was used on the frontier as a rough-and-ready method of punishing criminals, and also, after the Civil War, as a way of enforcing white political, social, and economic dominance.

World War II

In 1944, Wolfgang Rosterg, a German POW known to be unsympathetic to the Nazi regime in Germany, was lynched by Nazi fanatics in a prison camp in Comrie, Scotland. After the end of the war, five of the perpetrators were hanged at Pentonville Prison - the largest mass execution in 20th century Britain.

Mexico

On November 23, 2004, three Mexican undercover federal agents doing a narcotics investigation were lynched in the town of San Juan Ixtayopan (Mexico City) by an angry crowd who saw them taking photographs and mistakenly suspected they were trying to abduct children from a primary school. The policemen identified themselves immediately but were held and beaten for several hours before two of them were killed and set to fire. The whole incident was covered by the media almost from the beginning, including their pleas for help and their murder. By the time police rescue units arrived, two of the policemen were reduced to charred corpses and the third was seriously injured. Authorities suspect the lynching was provoked by the persons being investigated. Both local and federal authorities abandoned them to their fate, saying the town was too far away to even try to arrive in time and some officials stating they would provoke a massacre if they tried to rescue them from the mob.

Israel, West Bank and Gaza Strip

Ramallah lyncher waving blood-covered hands towards the crowd

Palestinian lynch mobs have executed Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel [1]. According to a Human Rights Watch report from 2001:

During the first Intifada, before the PA was established, hundreds of alleged collaborators were lynched, tortured or killed, at times with the implied support of the PLO. Street killings of alleged collaborators continue in the current Intifada (see below) but so far in much fewer numbers. [2]

Israelis have been lynched as well. On October 12, 2000, Israeli reservists Vadim Norzhich and Yosef Avrahami were beaten to death in a Ramallah police station in what was described as a "lynching" by Amnesty International [3] and the BBC [4]. Their bodies were then thrown out of the window into the hands of a mob of Palestinians, who mutilated them. Some news reports said that they were suspected of being undercover agents or assassins [5]. Since then, nineteen Israelis and dozens of Palestinians have been lynched by Palestinian gangs and militias [6], [7].

There have also been incidents of Israelis lynching or attempting to lynch Arabs suspected of terrorism, including the beating and killing of an Arab-American tourist after he skidded his car into a Jerusalem bus stop, killing two Israelis [8], and an attempt on an innocent Arab bystander after a Palestinian suicide bombing [9].

South Africa

The practice of whipping and necklacing offenders and political opponents evolved in the 1980s and 1990s under the apartheid regime in South Africa. Residents of black townships lost confidence in the apartheid judicial system and formed "people's courts" that authorized whip lashings and deaths by necklacing. Necklacing is a term used to describe the torture execution of victims by igniting a rubber, kerosene-filled, tire that has been forced around the victim's chest and arms. Necklacing was used to punish numerous victims, including children, who were alleged to be traitors to the black liberation movement as well as relatives and associates of the offenders. [10]

External links

• Before the Needles, Executions (and Lynchings) in America Before Lethal Injection, Details of thousands of lynchings
• Houghton Mifflin: The Reader's Companion to American History - Lynching
• Origin of the word Lynch
• Lynchings in the State of Iowa
• Lynchings in America
• Without Sanctuary, front cover
• Lyrics to the Billy Holiday song about lynching:Strange Fruit

Further reading

• Patricia Bernstein, The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP, Texas A&M University Press (March, 2005), hardcover, ISBN 1585444162
• Stewart E. Tolnay and E.M. Beck, A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, (1995), ISBN 0252064135
• Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 1900 Mob Rule in New Orleans Robert Charles and His Fight to Death, the Story of His Life, Burning Human Beings Alive, Other Lynching Statistics Gutenberg eBook
• Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 1895 The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States Gutenberg eBook
• Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 1894 Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases Gutenberg eBook