Human rights key in Simpson trial

The refusal of a key police witness in America's celebrated O.J. Simpson trial to answer critical questions has reopened old wounds and is dangerously close to making new ones.

This trial of a famous black American football player has racial overtones and proved to be so during the 10 months the case has been before court.

Allegations that the investigations leading to the arrest of O.J. Simpson might have been racially motivated could cause more than just racial tensions in a city that has known race riots before.

The principal detective involved in the investigations, Mark Fuhrman, now stands accused not only of racist behavior but even of planting evidence that points to O.J. Simpson as the assailant in the double murder.

Whether he planted the evidence against Simpson in a deliberate effort to implicate the football star has to be established, if it is indeed possible to prove it.

But Detective Fuhrman has certainly not helped himself or the prosecution's case by invoking the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution which does not require a person to answer any questions if it could incriminate that person.

This surely is not the first time that the Los Angeles Police have been involved in controversial cases with racial overtones. The notorious Rodney King case, in which a black driver was physically assaulted by several white policemen and which was captured on tape, is a case in point.

It is not only the black community in Los Angeles which will ask whether justice was really done in that case. The same police seem to be connected with the O.J. Simpson case and the same questions must surely be churning in the minds of many people in the United States and elsewhere.

While we hope that Los Angeles will be spared new race riots, it is well to remind those who are most vociferous about human rights that such rights must equally apply to the people of the country whose leaders preach them.

-- Hongkong Standard