She is dressed in colorful clothes and is running along a dirt road. Several people are running with her. The video quality is not very good. It is difficult to identify what the people are holding in their hands.
The videographer zooms in awkwardly.
The woman comes into focus before me, a simple viewer watching a computer screen, and I see that the people running with her are men, armed with machetes, chasing her.
One of them catches up to her and plants his machete into her skull.
The woman's eyes bulge as she as she falls, screaming. This video has no sound but her cry jumps out at me. The man iterates his gesture shattering her skull.
Pieces of brains scatter on the road, while the remaining pursuers catch up.
They laugh.
And I, despite my ten years of experience as a legal expert, I cry.
I endured this sequence while examining the contents of a hard drive kept under seal. As is customary, I was commissioned by the magistrate to analyze the hard drive in search of images and movies containing child pornography. And as usual, I view a large number of images and films, among which there are a large number of pornographic images and movies, of which some could be child porn... as well as this clip, probably filmed during the massacres in Rwanda.
And I have to carefully view each and every film and image to do my due diligence.
Those who think that violence on TV shows or movies trivializes real violence are making a mistake. A movie like "The Silence of the Lambs," "Hannibal," "Alien", or any other slasher movie, sends shivers up my spine, but everything is false. It is always "just a movie". Even when it is based on a true story, the viewer knows it is staged.
But when you sense it is true, that the images are real, it's very different. You are witnessing the violent death of a person and are not prepared. Can one even be prepared for such a thing? Even the first 20 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan" did not prepare me for that, though they shook me.
I quickly scanned over the rest of the video to make sure that no child pornography had been inserted in the middle of the massacre scenes. There was none and I found none elsewhere on that disk, just pornography. This video of massacres was in a file labelled with the name of a pornographic film.
But this scene will remain etched in my mind.
Prime Minister Michel Rocard said that "France cannot accommodate all the misery of the world, but we must learn to do our part". I certainly had my share for that weekend.
It was just a regular weekend for a small provincial court expert.
The videographer zooms in awkwardly.
The woman comes into focus before me, a simple viewer watching a computer screen, and I see that the people running with her are men, armed with machetes, chasing her.
One of them catches up to her and plants his machete into her skull.
The woman's eyes bulge as she as she falls, screaming. This video has no sound but her cry jumps out at me. The man iterates his gesture shattering her skull.
Pieces of brains scatter on the road, while the remaining pursuers catch up.
They laugh.
And I, despite my ten years of experience as a legal expert, I cry.
I endured this sequence while examining the contents of a hard drive kept under seal. As is customary, I was commissioned by the magistrate to analyze the hard drive in search of images and movies containing child pornography. And as usual, I view a large number of images and films, among which there are a large number of pornographic images and movies, of which some could be child porn... as well as this clip, probably filmed during the massacres in Rwanda.
And I have to carefully view each and every film and image to do my due diligence.
Those who think that violence on TV shows or movies trivializes real violence are making a mistake. A movie like "The Silence of the Lambs," "Hannibal," "Alien", or any other slasher movie, sends shivers up my spine, but everything is false. It is always "just a movie". Even when it is based on a true story, the viewer knows it is staged.
But when you sense it is true, that the images are real, it's very different. You are witnessing the violent death of a person and are not prepared. Can one even be prepared for such a thing? Even the first 20 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan" did not prepare me for that, though they shook me.
I quickly scanned over the rest of the video to make sure that no child pornography had been inserted in the middle of the massacre scenes. There was none and I found none elsewhere on that disk, just pornography. This video of massacres was in a file labelled with the name of a pornographic film.
But this scene will remain etched in my mind.
Prime Minister Michel Rocard said that "France cannot accommodate all the misery of the world, but we must learn to do our part". I certainly had my share for that weekend.
It was just a regular weekend for a small provincial court expert.
---------------------
Translation by P., checked by PrometheeFeu.
Photo credit darkroastedblend.com
The original note is here: http://zythom.blogspot.com/2009/09/un-petit-week-end.html
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