Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

This muddled terror law limits free speech and wrecks innocent lives

A student downloads an al-Qaida document from a US government website and is held in custody for six days. A shop assistant writes poems about cutting people's heads off and is tried for being a terrorist. An opera composer is accused of promoting terrorism, objects, and is bankrupted by a national newspaper.

What do these cases have in common? First, none of these people was successfully convicted of any crime. Second, none of them faced charges under the glorification clause of the Terrorism Act 2006. Third, they would not have been arrested and/or tried and/or bankrupted had it not been a climate of opinion created by that clause.

During the long battle between the Lords and Commons over its wording, ministers pooh-poohed critics' concerns that works of fact or fiction might be vulnerable to prosecution, assuring them that the good sense of British juries would prevent prosecutions of histories of the Stern gang, biographies of Nelson Mandela or novels, plays or poems about terrorists today.

Those of us who expressed such concerns pointed out that we had been here before. No one was prosecuted under the Conservative government's criminalisation of the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities. But that kneejerk legislation undoubtedly had results: it contributed to growing homophobia, it created a climate in which teachers were nervous about combating it, and it made local authorities jumpy about (for example) allowing theatre shows with gay themes or characters into schools .

More importantly, the clause cemented a dangerous (and wrong) presumption. Under its provisions, local authorities were not allowed to promote homosexuality or (as a second clause described it) "the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship". When applied to dramatic or literary fiction (or even biography), the concept of promotion becomes dangerously slippery. Does Lillian Hellman's drama The Children's Hour promote the victimised protagonists' lesbian relationship? Does - as is often argued - any fiction inevitably promote the point of view of its central character? Does, therefore, any representation of Myra Hindley - from Marcus Harvey's handprint portrait to Diana Dubois's 1998 Edinburgh festival play, Myra and Me - serve to defend her crimes? Certainly, sections of the press thought so and think so.

Like Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1998, the breadth and incoherence of clause 1 (3) of the Terrorism Act 2006 has contributed to a climate of panic about anything that might be seen to contravene it. A Nottingham postgraduate student, Rizwaan Sabir, asked a clerical assistant (Hicham Yezza) to print out a bulky al-Qaida manual, as part of what his tutors have confirmed was legitimate PhD research. Finding the manual on Yezza's computer, Nottingham University decided not to ask after its purpose but to inform the police, on the basis of what the vice-chancellor, Sir Colin Campbell, called "a straightforward risk assessment". The result was that Sabir was arrested and kept in custody for six days, and Yezza detained for 30 days under immigration charges (he is now out on bail).

The Crown Prosecution Service was right to say that the Heathrow shop assistant Samina Malik (the "lyrical terrorist") was not tried for writing poetry, but that her poems fantasising about being a terrorist were evidence of her intent in downloading other documents, in a trial in which - according to the court of appeal - the jury had become confused as to what they were being asked to decide. (Malik's nine-month suspended sentence was quashed.)

In Manifest Destiny, their 2005 Edinburgh opera, the writer Dic Edwards and the composer Keith Burstein presented a complex view of the motivations, ambitions and doubts of those attracted to suicide bombing. In her review, Veronica Lee of the London Evening Standard stated that "the idea that there is anything heroic about suicide bombers is, frankly, a grievous insult". Not unsurprisingly, Burstein (who wrote the opera's scenario as well as the music) took Lee to mean that he was glorifying terrorists, and thus - once the Terrorism Act 2006 came into force - at risk of prosecution should the opera be revived, and so he took the Standard to court. The high court having agreed that there was a case for the Standard to answer (and awarded Burstein his costs thus far), the newspaper took the case to appeal.

The appeal court ruled that the Standard review could mean that Burstein "applauds the action of suicide bombers and raises them to a level of heroism". Unfortunately for Burstein, the court also judged that any reasonable jury would conclude that the review was fair comment, denied Burstein a jury trial, and laid him open to Associated Press suing for its £67,000 costs. Burstein composes modernist operas, so he doesn't have £67,000, and last week he was officially bankrupted.

None of these cases involved clause 1 (3) of the Terrorism Act 2006. But all of them involved people being accused of things they either weren't guilty of or that shouldn't be crimes. In that Hicham Yezza was actually printing out a document for a student friend, Nottingham University grossly exaggerated the risk (at least, to itself). In speculating about how a terrorist killer might feel, Samina Malik was engaging in the same kind of activity that Martin Amis justified as a "thought experiment" when he admitted the urge to mete out collective punishment on the whole Muslim community.

Keith Burstein, in exploring the motivations of suicide bombers, was doing his job as a storyteller. Indeed, although Burstein denies that this was his view, "the idea that there is anything heroic about suicide bombers" is a perfectly defensible thesis. The point of both Macbeth and Richard III is that it is possible to be both brave and wrong.

As was argued during the bill's passage, there is no practical purpose in the glorification clause (incitement to terrorism was a separate offence in the draft of the bill that the Lords tried to amend). As ministers admitted, it was inserted in order to express outrage at statements made by Muslim clerics in support of the bombing of civilians. The Standard defends its actions against Burstein as a defence of its critics' freedom of speech; that freedom embraces Burstein's freedom to dramatise outrageous opinions.

People should be able to read and write outrageous things (even bad reviews of modern operas) without the law being concerned at all. These three cases demonstrate the doubtless unintended but considerable fear, suffering and loss that can be caused to innocent people when the law seeks to meddle in these matters.

Origin
Source: Guardian 

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