6 arrested in Gateshead for burning Koran

[JPreston]

I've said it before and I'll likely have to say it again, freedom of speech does not give you the freedom to say whatever you want without consequence. It's far more accurate to say that we have freedom of belief, to hold to whatever ideals which we feel are right but we must be rational and govern our behaviour towards others.

So what you're saying is; you don't believe in free speech?

It's no different to pissing on a war memorial and then taking out a full page advert proclaiming how great it was to do so.

You can add war memorials into the list of things that will ultimately take over the universe if we don't keep some perspective. Personally, I believe that the primary purpose of a war memorial is for the government to assert over the people that the political system is worth their killing and dying for as though this were self-evidently true.

Quite frankly whatever else you feel about the religion, or how much "control" it has in our country, you cannot piss all over other people's ideals and then demand your own are respected.

What ideals were the Gateshead 6 demanding be respected (were they devout christians)? Or are you talking about people who are ambivalent about the 'desecration' of copies of bronze-age texts that have no archaeological value in general, like me? Please spell it out - a vague accusation of hypocrisy really does not add anything.

[mcmiller]

rubber dinghy rapids

[peterb]

There is a distinction between the act and the motive behind an act. In law, there are two requirements for a crime to be committed, one is the act, the other is the mind - in latin it is the mens rea and the actus reus (roughly the guilty mind and the guilty act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_reus - although wikipaedia is regarded as being academically authoritative, it will do for the purposes of this thread.)

So while a flag, or a copy of the Bible or the Koran may have little intrinsic value, they are symbols of importance to various groups of people, and so setting out to desecrate those as a deliberate act is (to me) morally repugnant. The same goes for urinating on a war memorial.

As for believing in free speech - that may be a 'right', but what is overlooked with claiming rights is the responsibility that goes with it. I may have the right to free speech, but that doesn't give me the right to make libellous or slanderous comments about someone with impunity. (Unless I am an MP and I make those comments within the precincts of Parliament) or I am making a witness statement in a court of law. (But there if I make an untrue statement, I am liable to a charge of perjury)

I would also suggest there is a distinction between absolute rights and conditional rights. Freedom of speech is probably conditional, for the reasons I gave in the previous paragraph.

Too often there are reports of people exercising their "rights" without thinking about there responsibilities. There is a right to protest - but it is a right to peaceful protest. It then becomes a subjective matter as to what is regarded as peaceful.

As to what causes offence is also a cultural thing. Gripping the clenched forearm in Mediterranean counties is offensive in those culture, the V sign is mildly offensive in this country, the 'finger' is the equivalent in the US. In Iraq, throwing a pair of shoes at someone is a sign of contempt (and a journalist was arrested for it in a high publicity case)

The people in Gateshead were probably setting out to be provocative. If they wanted a bonfire, they could have chosen any old book - but they chose one that the knew, or suspected, would cause offence to a certain minority group, which in turn may have lead to an escalation or confrontational situation.

[peterb]

OK, what happens if someone reads the book online?

Even just on their PC the words are been loaded into RAM (apologies to all fellow engineers for what follows), now for those who don't know how modern PC memory works, its kinda like a big bucket, which regrettably leaks a bit, so a few million times a second, a controller looks at all the buckets, and sees which ones have some water in them, and re-fills them all.

When the memory is no longer needed, it is allowed to drain out. Is that evil and wrong?
<--snip

The difference is that the burning was a publicly visible act. If I bought 20 copies of "a book" and burned them in the privacy of my own back garden, no-one would care (apart from infringing pollution laws) However if I invited reporters from the Daily Mail, Sun, BBC etc to have it publicised, then it would probably stir up a reaction.

But I think you have the insight to appreciate that!

[JPreston]

There is a distinction between the act and the motive behind an act. In law, there are two requirements for a crime to be committed, one is the act, the other is the mind - in latin it is the mens rea and the actus reus (roughly the guilty mind and the guilty act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_reus - although wikipaedia is regarded as being academically authoritative, it will do for the purposes of this thread.)

So while a flag, or a copy of the Bible or the Koran may have little intrinsic value, they are symbols of importance to various groups of people, and so setting out to desecrate those as a deliberate act is (to me) morally repugnant...

Well, if you want to talk law then allow me to assist. The men were charged with "inciting racial hatred", not inciting religious hatred, under the 1986 Public Order Act which has a much lower burden of proof than the outrageous laws on religious hatred that Labour introduced.

Even so the public order offence will have to be proved in court as having been committed in public space (or in a private place to which the public have access) in a way likely to stir up racial hatred.

The video of the act (the aspect to this that seems to have so many terminally offended) is irrelevant in law, because the act itself and the account of the act are held in law to be different and separate things unless the account itself constitutes an offence, which in this case it does not. And just as well, otherwise we should see the BBC and other media outlets charged in relation to reporting the act which is exactly equivalent to placing the video on youtube. This is why 'hate' speech' laws that are based on the (stupid and wrong) concept of dangerous speech needing to be censored for our own good fail on their own terms, and are said to be stupid and wrong as well as illiberal.

So, as far as the law can go you would have to prove that at the time of the act, at the back of a pub with only like-'minded' people present and nobody around to take even mild offence let alone be the target of racial hatred, the koran burning was nonetheless 'likely' to 'stir up' 'racial hatred'.

Oh, and by the way courts have previously ruled that 'islam' is not a race in the context of the 1986 act - so good luck with that. The Islamicans, in Islamica were allegedly outraged by this and proceeded to burn the union flag outside the UK embassy (an entirely valid form of protest, by the way)...no wait, they don't exist, so that didn't happen.

ETA: the upshot of all this that no prosecution could result from these arrests, they are wrongful arrests (I am not discounting the possibility that the burning was accompanied by genuinely illegal acts, however the police confirmed that the arrests resulted from burning the korans alone so let's continue with the assumption that they were otherwise law-abiding members of a racist organisation). So since the act of burning a koran is not currently illegal, given all the stuff you've been coming out with about not offending people and so on are you saying that the laws should be changed so that is?

The people in Gateshead were probably setting out to be provocative. If they wanted a bonfire, they could have chosen any old book - but they chose one that the knew, or suspected, would cause offence to a certain minority group, which in turn may have lead to an escalation or confrontational situation.

Has anyone suggested that they just wanted a bonfire, or is that a strawman?

[peterb]

The point I was making is to ask why they were were burning a book - and in particular the Koran. A bonfire was only a suggestion as to why they wanted a fire . As far as I am aware, no charges have resulted from the arrests yet, so the men may be released without charge, however reasonable suspicion of having committed an offence is grounds for a lawful arrest.

However I agree that some of the more draconian laws introduced in the last three Parliaments (in particular the counter-terrorism law) is open to abuse by law enforcing agencies.

[TooNice]

I saw this thread yesterday, but decided to get into it (B-Day so at the very least I wanted I wanted to put behind the serious stuff for a day). But I also had a bit more time to think about it.

My initial impression is that it is indeed crazy to arrest people for burning some books. I thought that snootyjim's analogy (post 5) was rushed. However, I thought up an example which might just about justify the police actions subject to conditions (*).

Let's say [A] and [B] get married. They then decide to put up their wedding pictures on their homepage (some of us may be weary of doing something like this, but I am sure many do). What they didn't realise is that [C], being either [A] or [B]'s ex, took the news rather badly. [C] then proceeds to prints those pictures out and shoots videos of him/her setting the pictures on fire while shouting verbal abuse and throwing obscene gestures.

Now there are a couple things into play:

1. [A] may not be very happy to see a picture of [B] getting burnt or desecrated. The issue here, is protecting a loved one's 'honour'. Similar concept as being upset if someone insult your parents/sons etc. I think most of us have learned to keep that under control, and perhaps some/most of us is so stoic as to be completely immune to such provocations. It (an insult) -is- provocations though, not one I would consider worthy of getting the police involved, and not one that warrants physical retaliations but don't be too surprised someone who do not share our sense of control decides otherwise, and don't expect me to have a whole lot of sympathy if that were to happen.

However, while a directed insult is provocation by it's nature, a *protest* isn't, even though it is potentially upsetting to the opposing party involved, and I believe should be allowed without any risk of retaliation (in the real world it's sadly different). If [C] were to hold a board with [A] and [B]'s name written on a drawn broken heart just outside the wedding establishment, I don't think the authorities should be involved either unless it is publicly disruptive (beyond what a non-violent protest is).

So if the burning of the book was simply a protest, I don't think there should be any risk of retaliations. And even if it was meant to be an insult, and has indeed offended many, I don't think the police should be involved (other than prevent any lynching / retaliation). It is worth noting that those guys shot the video in private, but shared with the public.

2. I haven't seen the video, and I am probably only getting an incomplete picture of the video from the description in the article. But I think that the act of 'burning' can have a strong symbolic message. One that goes beyond "We are opposed to [...]" (**). One which can be quite violent. The meaning may be perceived differently depending on how the act is carried out. If done quite violently, threateningly and with credibility, I'd say that [A] and [B] would have the right to be quite concerned and may want a restraining order on [C]. Similarly, depending on the content of the video, some Muslims in the area may be concerned, and the police should at least look into it (to establish whether it is just a bunch of people protesting, provoking, or threatening Muslims with their actions).

I should also note that the opposite should stand too. If a few Muslims in this country decides to shoot videos burning the Union Flag / Bible, I would expect the police to look into it if there is anything in the video that suggests it's not a protest, but a credible threat to carry out violence.

Credible being a key word here, though it is perhaps hard to ascertain in many cases.

(**) I don't think that deleting a file has ever, in history, been associated threat of violence. Not to say that someone can't use it as such, only that it's not really known as such. Burning on the other hand goes beyond that of tearing in that there is little left to put together afterwards. Burning could be associated with scorched earth policy, execution by burning, etc. It's probably why it's used as the strongest form of protest/indirect threat by the general public against another nation via the burning of flags. They could choose to tear the flags, take a dump on them, digitally delete them, but nonetheless, those actions wouldn't carry the perceived symbolic weight as burning them. Yes, the weight as a symbolic gesture is subjective, and one could reject it and claim that deleting a file is equally to it, but is that really how most people view?

[peterb]

Firstly - belated Happy Birthday - hope it was a good one.

Good points above. There is another aspect though in that the police may arrest to prevent further crimes taking place. They are (as is too often the case) caught between a rock and a hard place. Take4 no action and they may be criticised for allowing "hate crime" - and worse, those offended may take matters into their own hands. Act and they still get pilloried, although they may have prevented another crime - but we won't know.

Whether "Racial Hatred was the right mechanism to use is a matter for debate. As someone said earlier, "conducts likely to cause a breach of the peace" might have been more appropriate.

[Phage]

I've said it before and I'll likely have to say it again, freedom of speech does not give you the freedom to say whatever you want without consequence.

Provided you don't break the law - Yes. It does.
This is the whole issue behind the criminalisation of protest.

[nibbler]

Provided you don't break the law - Yes. It does.
This is the whole issue behind the criminalisation of protest.

You can't expect there not to be consequences. Consequences of offending people and annoying people etc. Perhaps not consequences as in being arrested, fair enough.

[peterb]

"Freedom of Speech" is an interesting concept, and there is no absolute public freedom of speech (or expression).

To take two extreme examples, I can write and/or publish criticism of the Government pretty much without fear of prosecution, although if I published incitement to (for example) riot or engage in violent protest I would probably at the very least come under some form of scrutiny. On the other hand were I to publish child pornography, I would (quite rightly) expect to have my collar felt and end up with a lengthy prison sentence. (In fact I don't even need to publish it - ownership is an offence). Hitler used freedom of speech to incite racial hatred at the end of WW1 (and struck a chord with the German people who felt betrayed by the Weimar republic) to great and subsequently devastating effect. Should he have been allowed that freedom?

Laws tend to follow the will of the people they apply to - Government (unless in a police state) is generally consensual. But law is a pretty blunt tool in enforcing, defending or limiting rights, and if more tolerance and restraint were shown by members of society, then there might be less recourse to law.

Libel and slander are two more examples, although they are civil matters rather than criminal. But those laws act as a restraint on free speech - and probably correctly as it helps prevent unjust defamation of character.

I don't know what the motives of the men in Gateshead was. It might have been a stupid prank, or it might have been a provocative action designed to stir up some form of reaction. In either case, once it became public knowledge the police really had no option but to act. And although they were arrested on the serious charge of inciting racial hatred, that doesn't automatically mean that that is what they will be charged with. It could be breach of the peace, or they could get a police caution - it will depend on the circumstances as they occurred, rather than as they were reported.

As for Lucio's post about action without consequence, he is right. There will usually be some consequence to an action, even if it is a counter protest. At the moment my village is protesting about the establishment of a supermarket branch. In response the supermarket chain has started a counter campaign to persuade the planning authorities that it is needed. Both are exercising a freedom of speech, and there are (and will be) consequences as a result - but not legal ones.

[Phage]

You can't expect there not to be consequences. Consequences of offending people and annoying people etc. Perhaps not consequences as in being arrested, fair enough.

Right. That's settled then.
Pub ?

[nibbler]

Right. That's settled then.
Pub ?

You still owe me a drink

[Phage]

You still owe me a drink

[Galant]

6 arrested in Gateshead - technicalities of the law aside, my question is, what's the point? What's the rationale here?

[G4Z]

Think for the police it goes like this..

"something must be done > this is something > therefore do this"