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"id": 439762,
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"content": "individually or collectively have suffered harm, including physical or mental injury, emotional suffering or economic loss or violation of fundamental rights and includes, where appropriate, the immediate family or dependants of the direct victims and persons who have suffered in intervening to assist victims in distress or to prevent victimization. I just want to be very clear that a victim of crime is not always a witness of crime, and a witness is not always a victim. I am saying this because we have had preliminary engagements with the Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs and, at one point, there was confusion that the Victims of Crime Bill is about witness protection. We have a legal domain that deals with witnesses of crime and a witness is not always a victim and a witness is not always a victim. You find instances where the victim is deceased or incapacitated and cannot be a witness and many instances where the witness is not a victim, but merely a person who can attest to allegations by the victim. Currently, we have separate legal regimes. For witnesses, we have a very comprehensive way and for victims, there is none except the constitutional principle that we are seeking to give effect to now. Although, this Bill talks of victims of crime and abuse of power, there is very little mention that we have given of abuse of power. The reason we did no pay too much attention to the issue of abuse of power is that, at the point I was drafting this Bill, it was immediately after the post-election violence and there were so many victims of post-election violence. If we had put the abuse of power within that context, it would have been seen that we were politicking. So, I deliberately omitted too many inclusions on abuse of power. I am, however, hoping that because our contexts are different now, the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee can take that up and beef up this Bill and protect victims of abuse of power. Indeed, about three of the Statements that have just been read have to do with abuse of power, especially police power. So, I am hoping that the Committee of Justice and Legal Affairs would also take that up and look at how they could beef it up. The person I am referring to is any person who has ever been a victim of any crime. If you have ever been carjacked, your house has ever been broken into and anything of yours has ever been stolen or you have been a victim of assault or any crime, this is what this Bill is talking about. This Bill seeks amongst other things, in Part 1, to provide principles for dealing with victims of crime, including the protection of their dignity, non-discrimination, right to be heard, ensuring victims do not suffer secondary victimization when they appear before the police and other justice processes, being sensitive to special circumstances of each victim, for instance, their religion, age, their right to legal---"
}