A strange thing all over the world is that unless you are proved innocent, you are guilty. This goes
against all humanitarian ideals, democracy, freedom, respect for individuality; it goes against all.
The rule should be: unless you are proved guilty you are innocent. Yes, it is said in words, but in
reality the case is just the opposite.
For example, this city, Rajneeshpuram, is, in the opinion of the attorney general of Oregon, illegal. It
is just an opinion. He is not a judge; he has to go before the court to prove it. Unless he proves that
the city is guilty of being illegal, the city is legal, we are innocent. Until guilt is proved, innocence
needs no proof. But this is not the case.
Although America goes on claiming to be the greatest democracy in the world, it is sheer bullshit.
The Supreme Court of America goes on declaring that unless a person is proved guilty, he is
innocent. Innocence needs no proof; otherwise it would be impossible for anybody to live. If
everybody has to prove his innocence; otherwise he is a guilty man and he should be thrown into
jail because he cannot prove his innocence ....
How do you prove your innocence? Innocence is not an act, it leaves no traces behind, no evidence.
So the Supreme Court says, ”This is our standpoint: Unless a man is proved guilty, he is innocent.”
But this is only said, because our city is already being regarded by the state government, by the
federal government, as illegal – without it having been proved before a court.
The case is still in the court. The court is theirs, but they cannot wait even for the court to decide.
The federal government has stopped giving the money that was due to the city; not only that, the
federal government has asked that the money that they have given for the past two years should be
returned. For two years the city was legal. And what support have they given? – two hundred and
sixty-five dollars!
I would like the mayor of your city to return the money with interest. Such a poor government, giving
such a great support to the city, certainly needs at least bank-rate interest on the great sum of two
hundred and sixty-five dollars.
These nuts think they are democratic.
The state government has stopped giving their share. The attorney general has been forcing the
police authorities to declare our city’s police also illegal. This is strange. You have not proved us
guilty, you cannot prove us guilty; in fact your own court has incorporated the city with all legalities
fulfilled. For two years your governments – state and federal both – have been accepting the city,
training the police, having its police department in the city. You arrange the elections for the mayor,
for the council.
Everything proves that the city is legal. Just one man who wants to rise in political power, who wants
to become the next governor, is in need of us. Without our support in Oregon nobody can become
the governor. But our support is a strange kind of support: anybody who wants to win an election
has to be against us. Just being against us is enough to gain the support of all the bigots, of all
the Christians, of all the orthodox, conventional people, of all those who think that Oregon is their
property. Just to be against us ....
Without proving in a court – and even if you prove in one court that does not mean that you have
proved it. We can appeal. The case will not be decided for at least twenty to thirty years – not before
that. It will have to go up to the Supreme Court of the United States.
We are not going to be humiliated in any way. And when the law is in our favor, the whole democratic
concept is behind us, all the values that democracy cherishes are in our support, there is no reason
at all .... But they have started accepting us as illegal.
This is how man goes on saying one thing and goes on doing just its opposite. He talks about being
civilized, cultured – he is not civilized, not cultured. The death penalty is a proof enough.
This is the rule of a barbarous society: An eye for an eye, and a head for a head. If somebody cuts
off one of your hands, then in a barbarous society, this is a simple law: one of his hands should be
cut off.
The same has been carried down the ages. The death penalty is exactly the same law: An eye for
an eye. If a man is thought to have murdered somebody, then he should be murdered. But it is
strange: if killing somebody is a crime, then how can you remove crime from society by committing
the same crime again? There was one man murdered; now there are two men murdered. And it is
not certain that this man murdered that man, because to prove a murder is not an easy thing.
If murder is wrong, then whether it is committed by the man or by the society and its court, makes
no difference.
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