Witches executed 300 years ago to be posthumously pardoned
FILE PHOTO. © Getty Images / ZU_09
RT | December 19, 2021
Thousands of people, mostly women and girls, who were accused of witchcraft in Scotland hundreds of years ago are set to be pardoned following a two-year long campaign by the Witches of Scotland activist group.
The women’s alleged crimes were reportedly as varied as causing hangovers to meeting with the Devil — and more than half of those accused under the Witchcraft Act between 1563 and 1736 were executed. According to estimates cited by the Sunday Times, some 85% of the victims were female.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s administration has reportedly backed a bill proposed in parliament which calls on the government to posthumously clear the victims’ names. The likely pardon comes after a two-year long campaign led by a group named ‘Witches of Scotland’.
Activists Claire Mitchell QC and Zoe Venditozzi launched a petition on International Women’s Day 2020, demanding that the authorities pardon, apologize, and memorialize those killed as witches in Scotland. On September 1, a parliamentary committee agreed to pass the issue on to the Scottish government.
The bill granting the pardon could be passed as early as summer 2022, according to media reports. Natalie Don, a Scottish National Party lawmaker, told the Sunday Times that it was right that “this wrong should be righted, that these people who were criminalised, mostly women, should be pardoned.”
Religion and superstition-fueled witch-hunts were not unique to Scotland, with similar practices seen in west Germany, France, northern Italy, and Switzerland, and what would later become the US. Tens of thousands of women accused of witchcraft were burned at the stake or hanged over a span of several centuries.
And while in the West, the prosecution of witches ceased by the late 18th century, elsewhere in the world witchcraft is still considered a crime. Saudi Arabia, for example, established an anti-witchcraft unit in 2009 and accused women have even been put to death. Similarly, the Central African Republic doles out extremely harsh punishments to those accused of being witches.
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By DIANA JOHNSTONE | CounterPunch | September 23, 2013
Some friendly criticism of our article “The People Against the 800 Pound Gorilla” provides a welcome opportunity to clarify the discussion. Shamus Cooke, while largely agreeing with the points made by Jean Bricmont and myself, reproaches us for focusing on the pro-Israel lobby as the major factor promoting U.S. war against Syria to the detriment of much bigger factors: the U.S. capitalist class, the big banks, “empire”, oil, the military-industrial complex – in a word, capitalism.
The problem with our article, writes Shamus Cooke, “is that the authors elevate the Israeli gorilla to a weight class it doesn’t belong in; and in so doing the authors are forced to minimize the size of several other giant gorillas, whose combined weight overshadows the Israeli chimp.”
Of course, “capitalism”, however you want to define it, vastly dwarfs the Israel lobby. So do the military-industrial complex, the oil business, or U.S. imperialism, all of which have existed prior to and independently of the Israel lobby.
But is weighing the Israel lobby against “capitalism” a valid comparison? … continue
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