Rule of Law

By JAMES LISKA

Something came to mind the other day when the North Korean government sentenced two American journalists to twelve years of “reform through labor” for an illegal border crossing. This use of a trumped-up charge to silence dissent is not unfamiliar to today’s world, case in point the jailing of an Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi in Iran. These instances demonstrated to me how disrespected the legal process is in many parts of the world. Saberi was jailed and sentenced to eight years in prison for espionage.  She was tried and convicted in a one-day, closed-door trial with no access to evidence. Initially she was charged with trying to buy a bottle of wine, a crime in Iran, but those charges were dropped in favor of holding her on “reporting without proper accreditation,” after that “espionage.”

What really frustrates me about cases like these is how lackadaisical the justice system is in these countries. These countries have no concept of an “open” trial, and like Saberi’s trial, many of them are closed to the public when desired. In Saberi’s case, she is a journalist operating without a license in a country that has an authoritarian and paranoid regime in power. Like the Communist countries of the past, Iran does not allow any dissenting points of view to be expressed. Ditto with North Korea. Thus, Saberi posed a serious problem for the Iranian government. Since she was not regulated, and thus did not meet their stamp of approval, she would be free to speak out. So this sort of thing only happens in backwater barren desert countries, right? Wrong. It can happen right here in America.

A few months ago, I attended a lecture at my college by James Yee. Yee was the US Army’s Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo before he was arrested and jailed for almost 3 months with no charges levied. Eventually, after the government could not provide any evidence of his wrongdoing, he was released. Yee alleges that he was targeted by his former commanders – who called him,  behind his back, a “Chinese Taliban” – invented a charge of mishandling classified materials to send him to prison. According to Yee, this was to get back at him for advising his superiors against torture at Guantanamo. Yee was held as a pursuant to the USA Patriot Act, which is the United States’ version of a gray-area legal doctrine. My thoughts on the Patriot Act aside, Yee was held as an “enemy combatant.”

So, then, what is the grand meaning? Countries like Iran, just like many other countries in history, have clearly found ways of suppressing dissent by misuse of the legal system. In effect, there may as well be no legal system at all. Sham trials, forced convictions and trumped up charges all speak to a clear lack of respect for the legal system. This is setting a dangerous precedent, and we all need to speak out about it. Every country needs safeguards to prevent those innocent from being  imprisoned or charged without any evidence, trial, or reason. Yee sat in a Navy brig for over 70 days without being charged – and for what?  Because he was Chinese? Both these cases really represent a  serious miscarriage of justice. I suppose those in power will do anything to stay that way, and deal with any threat to that power – by legal means or otherwise.