British hypocrisy

Old News ;-)

The west's hypocrisy over Pussy Riot is breathtaking Simon Jenkins Comment is free by Simon Jenkins

See also Pussi Riot Provocation

The Guardian

Our courts now jail at the drop of a headline – for stealing water or abuse sent on Twitter. So who are we to condemn Russia?

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Illustration by Belle Mellor

Anyone in England and Wales with a dog out of control can now be jailed for six months. If the dog causes injury, the maximum term is to be two years. I have no sympathy for such people. Keeping these beasts is weird, and those who do it probably need treatment. But the Defra minister, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, complained in May that fewer than 20 people were in jail for dangerous dog offences. The sentencing council has duly told courts to raise the threshold to two years, "to send a message".

The same sentiment a year ago motivated magistrates to play to the gallery by jailing 1,292 people for stealing bottles of water or trainers or sending idiot incitements during the dispersed rampage dubbed "urban riots". Hysterical ministers raced home from holiday to tell judges to send messages. Judges duly ruined the lives of hundreds of young people, at great public expense and to no advantage to their victims. I have no sympathy for these people either, but again the politicised response to crime was disproportionate.

A month before, a London court jailed a stoned Charlie Gilmour after he swung on a union flag from the Cenotaph and tossed a bin at a police car, thus causing widespread outrage in the offices of the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail. The judge sent him down for 18 months to send a message carefully designed to wreck his university career. Yet again we need have no sympathy for Gilmour. But there is no such thing as a rap over the knuckles in jail. Judges know that any term in prison is a sentence for life.

How can British politicians, whose statements clearly seek to influence pliable judges, criticise other sovereign states for doing likewise? Last week the Foreign Office professed itself "deeply concerned" at the fate of Russia's Pussy Riot three, jailed for two years for "hooliganism" in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral. They had staged what, by all accounts, was an obscene publicity stunt, videoing an anti-Putin song defamatory of the Virgin Mary in front of pious worshippers.

Good for free speech, we might all say. That the act outraged public decency is an understatement. In a Levada poll of Russian public opinion, just 5% thought the girls should go unpunished and 65% wanted them in prison, 29% with hard labour. Artists round the globe may plead free speech, but to treat the Pussy Riot gesture as a glorious stand for artistic liberty is like praising Johnny Rotten, who did similar things, as the Voltaire of our day. There can be disproportionate apologias as well as disproportionate sentences.

Artists can look after their own. For the British and US governments to get on high horses about Russian sentencing is hypocrisy. America and Britain damned the "disproportionate" Pussy Riot terms. In America's case this was from a nation that jails drug offenders for 20, 30 or 40 years, holds terrorism "suspects" incommunicado indefinitely and imprisons for life even trivial "three strikes" offenders. Last week alone a US military court declared that reporting the Guantánamo Bay trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be censored. Any mention of his torture in prison was banned as "reasonably expected to damage national security". This has no apparent connection to proportionate punishment or freedom of speech.

The British security establishment during the Tony Blair-Gordon Brown regime tried to censor history books for possible "terrorist" incitement. It introduced control orders, restricted courts and long-period detention without trial. It made unlicensed demonstrating an offence and has since sought prosecution of Twitter and Facebook abuse. British ministers and courts are craven to what passes for public opinion. The idea that, whenever a crime or antisocial action hits the headlines, "the courts must send a message" is politicised justice. At times, especially in tragic cases involving children, it gets near to a lynch mob. Again the only message sent is to the media. If Britain's draconian sentencing were effective, British jails would not be bursting at the seams.

There is of course a difference between the liberties enjoyed in most western democracies and the cruder jurisprudence of modern Russia, China and much of the Muslim world. It would be silly to pretend otherwise. But the difference is not so great as to merit the barrage of megaphone comment from west to east. Pussy Riot may have attacked no one physically, but no society, certainly not Britain, legislates on the basis that "words can never hurt". If a rock group invaded Westminster Abbey and gravely insulted a religious or ethnic minority before the high altar, we all know that ministers would howl for "exemplary punishment" and judges would oblige.

Commenting on the social mores of other countries may offer an offshore outlet for the righteous indignation of politicians and editorialists. It has no noticeable effect. Western comments on the treatment of women in Muslim states, dissidents in China or drug offenders in south-east Asia are dismissed as imperial interference. But then how would we feel if Moscow or Singapore or Tehran condemned the treatment of Cenotaph protesters?

British courts jail at the drop of a headline. One of the few cabinet ministers in recent years to show a sincere desire to relate punishment to crime and imprisonment to consequence is the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke. He is now being bad-mouthed out of his job by Downing Street's dark arts, frightened not of Clarke but of the rightwing press. Clarke is, with Iain Duncan Smith, a rare minister intellectually engaged with his job and eager courageously to see it through. Why are the Lib Dems not defending him? For David Cameron to sack Clarke would indeed send a message. Of the worst sort.

Selected Comments

PaulfromYorkshire

Mr Jenkins I completely agree with you. Cracking article.

You are right to make the distinction between what we think as individuals about Pussy Riot and what our hypocritical government says.

 

conanthebarbarian

8:40PM

Pointing fingers at other countries keeps the chatterers below the line here and elsewhere usefully engaged pointing out other people's supposed faults. Didn't someone once reportedly say something about looking at the beam in one's own eye first?

Not many do.

Recommend (595) Responses (2)  

Simon Dosovitz

What am I supposed to say to this article? Yes, we really are the worst, and if the Russian people think feminists should do two years for a trite protest, so be it. Totally ridiculous. End bad practices here in the west AND free Pussy Riot.

Recommend (587) Responses (2)  

Epanastis25Martiou

The west's hypocrisy over Pussy Riot is breathtaking

You can swap "pussy riot" with any other incident and the phrase will still hold true.

Go on try it!!!

Recommend (460) Responses (2)  

whimsicaleye

For the British and US governments to get on high horses about Russian sentencing is hypocrisy.

The UK and US governments care not for freedom of expression, they are just pissed off that Russia is no longer led by a drunken fool a la Yeltsin ready and willing to hand over the country to the IMF asset strippers.

A Saudi journalist gets illegally extradited from Malaysia and imprisoned in Saudi Arabia without trial or due process for tweeting honest thoughts about the prophet - silence from the West.

Thai citizens legitimately criticizing their monarchy end up in prison - silence from the West.

The hypocrisy is sickening and highlights how the UK and US care not for 'human rights' or 'freedom of expression' but use these memes as a tool to further their geopolitical interests and ferment unrest whilst remaining silent on the human rights abuses carried out in states that tow the line.

Recommend (1423) Responses (4)  

kingcreosote

Response to conanthebarbarian,

It seems the only way we can live with our own shortcomings is to be in complete denial.

Recommend (183) Responses (1)  

hoverboards

Last week the Foreign Office professed itself  "deeply concerned" at the fate of Russia's Pussy Riot

What a lovely sentence.

Recommend (236) Responses (1)  

tomper2

by jailing 1,292 people for stealing bottles of water or trainers ...

Oh for heaven's sake, people died during that "dispersed rampage".

Recommend (538) Responses (4)  

shaun

Exemplary punishment ; if a rioter is jailed for two years for stealing £10's worth of water. then a Banker should get two years added to his sentence for each ten pounds stolen or frauded from the public. So; £10 = 2 years, £100 = twenty years, £1'000 = two hundred years ......1 billion£ (1'000'000'000) is one hundred thousand years in prison. That at least is proportionally correct.

Recommend (963) Responses (2)  

brijl92

You are you saying that we are hypocritical to condemn Russia when we are harsher over here? That's just not true. You can trivialise the riots as "stealing bottles of water" but it was total contempt for society and the rioters were (generally) lucky not to kill. As for why the prisons are full, hasn't that got a lot to do with the fact that they are perceived as a soft touch-did you hear the Salford yob who murdered Anuj Bidve mocking his sentence?

In the case of Pussy Riot, seems to me that the Russian people are fairly clear that gross disrespect is something that they will not tolerate and it's got little to do with Putin. The comparison to the West is indeed chastening - they are prepared to stand up against publicity-seeking punks who disrespect everything around them. We would give them a community order and wait for the next escalation.

Your point about full prisons has more to do with a lack of deterrence than a harshness in sentencing. As for the excellent Mr Clarke, can any Justice Secretary explain why drugs and fags are still tolerated in our jails - to outlaw them tomorrow would be the biggest single deterrent possible -it should be fixed by any competent minister, day 1. As for considering IDS a minister "intellectually engaged with his job" that's about as accurate as the portrayal of Pussy Riot as political martyrs. Free Stephanie Flanders!

Recommend (194) Responses (1)  

Adommc

Good article. Though..

If the dog causes injury, the maximum term is to be two years. I have no sympathy for such people. Keeping these beasts is weird, and those who do it probably need treatment.

'Keeping these beasts' is compassionate and humane and if you've been to the Caribbean or Africa, you'd have seen how lucky domesticated dogs in the UK are. But overall, i'm grateful for this article, it at least made me grateful knowing that i'm not a sociopath for not finding treatment of the girls as hysterical as most of the world media portrayed.

Recommend (113) Responses (3)  

bootboys

Response to hermionegingold,

Not sure about that. the pussy riot girls have made a laughing stock of the thug putin. i don't think that's such a bad thing. what they did was distasteful to me but how they have been treated is far more distressing.

What a tender soul! What do you find so distressing? That these girls - two of them mothers, let's not forget - can't continue their practices of museum orgies or masturbating with frozen chickens in the supermarket? They're obviously not as delicate as you.

Recommend (311) Responses (8)  

Silverwhistle

Our courts now jail at the drop of a headline – for stealing water or abuse sent on Twitter. So who are we to condemn Russia?

Well, quite a lot of "us" don't support gross overreactions by British courts either, and didn't vote for the current government, so yes, I feel perfectly free to condemn Putin's government, too.

Recommend (346) Responses (0)  

teaandchocolate

Iain Duncan Smith, a rare minister intellectually engaged with his job and eager courageously to see it through.

I agree with most of the article, except for this one. IDS, along with Fox, Osborne and Gove, is ruining everythng that is good about Britian.

Recommend (543) Responses (1)  

Neville Walker

Good article Simon, though you might have added that the CPS recently tried to frame an innocent (but troublesome) man for possessing photographs of legal sexual practices that were neither especially extreme nor particularly uncommon.

Recommend (177) Responses (0)  

hermionegingold

Response to bootboys,

9:11PM get off your perch dear.

i intrinsically find anyone entering a house of worship to derail those of genuine faith a no no. just bad manners

that's all i meant. nothing more .

Recommend (129) Responses (2)  

Silverwhistle

Response to bootboys,

9:11PM What a tender soul! What do you find so distressing? That these girls - two of them mothers, let's not forget - can't continue their practices of museum orgies or masturbating with frozen chickens in the supermarket?

They're not harming anyone. And what relevance is it that 2 of them have children, other than it highlights the cruelty of the criminal justice system's overreaction in sending them to prison?

lundiel

9:17PM

Well said Simon. I couldn't believe it when Pussy Riot was the main news story on the day the South African miners were shot dead.

kingcreosote

Response to lundiel,

9:17PM Then they threatened to sack the rest, a British company acting like ancient colonialists who regarded the lives of black people inferior.

How far have we actually moved on when there is so little outcry over atrocities done in our name?

hermionegingold

Response to kingcreosote,

9:17PM kidnap is a criminal offence, quite rightly, offending religious beliefs shouldn't be.

not sure what your point is?

Recommend (102) Responses (2)  

rkshvch

That's ridiculous. I've never thought an article like this may appear on The Guardian. Thanks Simon Jenkins!

Recommend (144) Responses (0)  

Neville Walker

Response to hermionegingold,

 think you miss his point, which is that disproportionate and unjust as the treatment of Pussy Riot has been, the legal systems in the UK and US are often guilty of very similar misdemeanours. Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, 42 days (kicked out, thankfully), trial by tabloid, and so on. Not to mention the US' continued addiction to the death penalty or its vindictive (and probably illegal) treatment of Bradley Manning.

gwp3

"the courts must send a message" is politicised justice

Absolutely. The duty of the court is to impose just sentences on the guilty, not to send messages to the population at large.

rkshvch

Response to whimsicaleye,

The UK and US governments care not for freedom of expression, they are just pissed off that Russia is no longer led by a drunken fool a la Yeltsin ready and willing to hand over the country to the IMF asset strippers.

Absolutely true. Same about every other concerns about "democracy" and "freedom" in other countries usually spoken by Hillary etc.

 

Arapas

Our courts now jail at the drop of a headline – for stealing water or abuse sent on Twitter. So who are we to condemn Russia?

That just about sums it all up ! No need to read the rest of the article! I was brought up to believe what a terrible place the USSR was. In fact it was the only place on the planet I never wanted to visit, having been everywhere else. Times do change though. The collapse of the Soviet Union, brought about a change of mind. I decided to travel East, life is too short, and I did not want to miss out!

What I felt during my two visits there, was that I was deceived by others but also my self. Life in Russia is unique. You could not wish for a friendlier people. The streets were ABSOLUTELY spotless, and every female young and old dressed immaculately. On the Moscow Metro youngsters were literally flying off their seats to offer them to the elders! That is how it used to be on London's underground when I was a student, many decades ago, but not any more. The Russians are proud and peaceful people. They love their churches. Old ladies turn up in the middle of the day to light their candles. It was outside one of these churches that I met for the first time "Nicholas the Tsar, Lenin and Pushkin" having a conversation ! I did not part with my 200 Roubles though!

Now bring into play Pussy Riot into this kind of environment, and you create an explosive cocktail. For that what it was. And the church with the legal system will not stand for it. Then blame it all on Putin, and everybody is happy. Petty windedness. That is what it is. And it does not make us any better one iota.

mikedow

The finger pointing our govts. do is solely for domestic use. The other countries don't raise an eyebrow over what is said anymore.

Banner

Comparing sentences between e.g. Britain and Russia is a pointless exercise. The point is rather that Pussy Riot are held by many to be victims of arbitrary law-making by a supine and corrupt judiciary. What does Simon jenkins say, for example, about the case of the Czech rockers Plastic People of the Universe in the 1970s with which this case has been very plausibly compared. Would he have stood up for the authorities then, merely on the basis that "western justice" is not perfect?

hermionegingold

Response to Neville Walker,

actually i think your assessment has more clarity than the article.

that justice is yet another failed venture we have embarked upon my view is that russia on this one is about 20 years out of date. the next generation over there are making a political stand. i think we should support them even if we don't always agree with their methods (and by that i mean sensibilities never violence)

fishenchips

But then how would we feel if Moscow or Singapore or Tehran condemned the treatment of Cenotaph protesters?

I wouldn't feel anything, beyond acknowledging they'd be fuckin' morons if they did.

Anyone who defaces the cenotaph is a tool. Anyone who offends the misogynistic, homophobic and racist bigots that wield power in the Russian Orthodox Church - to say nothing of mocking the thug Putin - is making a stand.

Why are you incapable of making this obvious distinction, Jenkins?

gwp3

Response to Neville Walker,

I think you miss his point, which is that disproportionate and unjust as the treatment of Pussy Riot has been, the legal systems in the UK and US are often guilty of very similar misdemeanours. Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, 42 days (kicked out, thankfully), trial by tabloid, and so on. Not to mention the US' continued addiction to the death penalty or its vindictive (and probably illegal) treatment of Bradley Manning.

I agree. It seems that many readers have missed the essence of the article.

SoaringSkys

Response to bootboys,

 "can't continue their practices of museum orgies or masturbating with frozen chickens in the supermarket?"

You didn't mention what they were convicted of so I guess the church thing wasn't so serious after all.

And now the likelihood of seeing frozen chickens thawed out in the market place has increased exponentially as pussy riot avengers will hit the streets with protest.

LinearBandKeramik

Response to brijl92,

You are you saying that we are hypocritical to condemn Russia when we are harsher over here? That's just not true. You can trivialise the riots as "stealing bottles of water" but it was total contempt for society and the rioters were (generally) lucky not to kill.

Contempt for society is not a crime. If it were, there'd hardly be a Thatcherite outside of prison.

As for the rioters being lucky not to kill, that's not how justice works. If you commit a crime, and there is evidence you committed it, you get charged. Then there is a trial, and if the evidence is deemed strong enough by a jury, you get punished.

You don't randomly hand out draconian sentences to some rioters for trivial offences, because the rioters "in general" could, maybe, possibly have killed someone if things had turned out differently. That's contrary to any notion of justice.

You can only be legitimately punished for actions you personally carried out and which actually happened. How you (or anyone) can disagree with this notion is beyond me.

clarkbgwent

Look up Jamie Bevan. Welsh Language activist imprisoned initially for action against the unelected Tory government's Cardiff offices, in protest against their cavalier attitude to S4C. Further punishment was meted out to him for- get this- insisting on filling in forms in Welsh. Welsh being a language that, in law, carries equal standing with English in the Merthyr area where he is detained. While a man is in prison for wanting to interact with the legal system of his own country in his own language, we have a Pussy Riot of our own.

kingcreosote

Response to hermionegingold,

Exactly the point of the article the west is just as guilty as Russia in its hypocrisy and so are many of its leaders.

Foster6the6imposter6

This article is about as true as it can get....

The West has its blasphemy, the Russians theirs.....just change the name of who you call the powerful, and the name of who is going to do time. When you do that, the hypocrisy becomes obvious.

SD1000

@blueballoo2000, it's not that we don't have a right to criticise Russia, it's that we should be criticising our own political and media establishment equally loudly.

Putin's government is abhorrent and dictatorial, and worse than ours. Nevertheless, our government is pretty bloody awful too, willing to trample on human rights to satisfy the right wing press.

It's easy to attack Russia. Attacking Britain would be cleverer and braver.

robbo100

Response to osekar,

excellent article anyway the pussy girls ill be out in two month.

If that happens do you think it will have nothing to do with the amount of international attention and condemnation these women's treatment has received?

Some people seem to think we have to choose between condemning things which happen here and condemning the treatment of Pussy Riot. I don't see that at all.

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