Wrongful Persecution

I really like rights, and ones like those they talk about in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution are some of my favorites.

That being said, I can’t help but be irritated by the West’s criticism of a recent crackdown by Russia on public exhibition of such rights.

On Aug. 17, three members of the all-female, Russian punk rock protest group Pussy Riot was sentenced to two years in Russian prison with charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” for staging a protest in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral. They called on the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of President Vladimir Putin.

Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, released a statement in response to the sentence that called it “disproportionate” to the crime and criticized “the band members’ mistreatment” during pre-trial detention, and the United States voiced a booming echo.

The U.S.’ noble “hear, hear!” on the matter came in the same week that the U.S. government decided it was going to edit the statements of defendants in the Guantanamo Bay trials to the degree it sees necessary to preserve “national security.”
In other words, to prevent divulgence of the torture these individuals have been subjected to before landing in the courtroom.

As much as I think any unlawful mistreatment before trial is unacceptable, I can’t help but raise an eyebrow at the U.S.’ criticism of reports of Russian police insulting and roughly transporting the Pussy Riot members.

As far as the U.S. calling the Russian sentence “disproportionate,” a look into the United States’ drug laws and incarceration breakdown practically defines this term as applied to the justice system.

Of the 2.3 million people in prisons in this country, 25 percent are locked up for drugs. The Supreme Court allows for minimum sentencing of up to life without parole for petty drug crimes, granting prosecutors far too much bargaining power.

Under the guise of a “war on drugs,” the U.S. locks up minorities at a staggering rate, despite the fact that, prominent research shows that whites are more likely to use and dangerously abuse drugs than blacks, who are arrested at a rate ten times higher than whites.

Then, the Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of laws that disenfranchise those with a felony on record, resulting in 5.85 million people currently barred from voting, most of whom are minorities.

Perhaps easiest to virtually compare to the Pussy Riot crackdown is simply the United States’ history of responding to protests. Take for example the Seattle protests of 1999 where peaceful protesters were quite literally corralled and arrested.

I imagine this article might be read in such a way that suggests I am trying to minimize the magnitude of injustice in the Pussy Riot sentence, and I am not entirely committed to upholding and promoting rights such as freedom of speech.

But this is false. I am merely examining the reaction of the very vocal western countries and attempting to highlight the hypocrisy. 

Why should the United States get to use Russia as a stirrup to hop on its high horse when it has gaping holes in its own justice system?

So if you find yourself riled up about gaps in the Russian justice system, I say keep it up. But you might also want to take a look at our own.

­— gcherney@indiana.edu