WHAT IS A ‘MESSAGE CRIME’?
EuropeNews
06 October 2009
Report from OSCE 2009 Human Dimension Implemention Meeting.
I didn’t expect that I’d start out my report from this conference by
picking up a lead from COJEP, but so be it. They introduced the concept
of a ‘Message crime’, in order to convey the real significance of the
much-debated hate crimes. This term cuts through a ton of confusion
and is worth adopting. For details, read on.
There are many kinds of crime, and many kinds of motivation for
crime. Most crimes are committed for personal reasons, like undue
material gain, jealousy, sexual reasons, to exact revenge to eliminate
critics, opponents and enemies. Some crimes, however, have a target
much more important than their immediate victim(s). These are message
crimes. There are, of course, intermediate forms. A ruthless political
leader or a mafia boss will eliminate his opponents for both reasons,
both to get rid of a troublesome person and to deter others from
causing him similar problems in the future. What is interesting here
is the message aspect of crime, not the personal.
Message crimes are reported frequently in the media, with varying
degrees of clarity. The so-called ‘honour killings’ (which really
should be called ‘family executions’) are message crimes. The families
of these unfortunate women make a conscious decision to eliminate
one of their kin in order to "protect the honour of the family",
which is really an euphemism for "keeping our women under control".
The motivations for these deeply tragic murders state this openly:
"She dated an infidel", "We didn’t want her to see that man", "She
had become too ‘Western’". Those are the messages these murders are
intended to convey: The women have to, under the threat of capital
punishment, obey the choices made by their families.
Honour killings are routinely thought of as being part of Islamic
tradition. However, other examples do exist, like this Kurdish girl
of the Yezidi religion w 007, here from KurdNet.
These message crimes have as their main purpose to protect the honour
of the killing families, preserving their prestige in society. The
killing of one of their women is a means to that end, killings that
an entire family can decide, plan and execute in mutual agreement and
understanding. One particular well exposed case of this took place in
2005 Slagelse, Denmark, where the 18-year old Ghazala Khan was shot
dead for the offence of marrying an Afghan man, covered in detail by
Brussels Journal.
In this particular case, the entire plot was uncovered through
police investigation, and all members collaborating in the crime
were convicted, for a total of 120 years of prison time for the
family. Significantly, the head of family, who ordered the murder,
was given a heavier sentence than the brother who eventually pulled
the trigger. This is the kind of legal action we need in order to
protect and extend the freedom of women in immigrant circles.
Back to the OSCE conference. Frequent references were made to the
stabbing in Dresden of an Egypt woman, a case which is said to be
typical of growing Islamophobia in the West, as reported in The
Guardian.
However, not much in this dramatic murder distinguishes it from
an ordinary criminal incident. The killer, Alex W., is of Russian,
not German, origin. His message to her at the moment of killing was
"You don’t deserve to live". In spite of the problem not being
obvious – the acts of a mentally troubled Russian acting alone
does not say anything major about racist sentiment in Germany –
the case was extensively publicized in Egypt and pressure applied
on the German government to condemn the killing as a hate crime,
eventually extracting a conditional condemnation, here in Der Spiegel.
One might wonder why a non-obvious case like this is used as a poster
example. First and foremost, it indicates that no clear-cut obvious
cases could be found, or they would have been used instead. Further,
there is internal Egyptian politics to the case. The im Brotherhood
has been pressing the case in the parliament, and the government of
Egypt was under pressure to act on the case, showing itself as the
protector of Egyptians and Muslims abroad.
The conference in general, however, concentrated on using the better
known yet vaguely defined concept of ‘hate crime’, with a wide variety
of issues being debated under this heading. Criticism of Islam took
some blame for radicalising Muslim youth. That would have to do
with the frequent mention in the press of being a distinct group,
unintegrated and even potentially a fifth column undermining Western
democracy and freedom. Unsurprisingly, the speakers mentioning these
subjects showed no interest in addressing the criticism against
Islamic immigrants, preferring to blame the criticism itself for
causing problems.
A recurring theme was the problem of registering hate crimes. One of
the introductory speakers noted that practically no hate crimes are on
record in the southern states of the USA, claiming that this, in view
of the history of the US South, was so completely not credible that
the registration process for hate crimes must be flawed. The obvious
remedy for this is re-education of the police force, in order to
significantly increase the number of registered hate crimes. Educating
the police and other law enforcement institutions to report a greater
number of hate crimes was touched upon on quite a few occasions.
Many speakers mentioned the problems of anti-Semitism and
‘Christianophobia’, which are also on the rise. Calls for boycott
of Jewish businesses in the wake of the Gaza conflict conjures up
sinister memories. And here the ‘message crime’ comes up again:
Desecration of Jewish/Christian symbols constitute message crimes.
The physical damage may be limited, no persons are hurt, but the
message from those desecrating the religious symbols is clear: "We
do not respect your religion". The 2004 pogroms in Kosovo, where
a great number of churches, monasteries and even graveyards were
severely damaged, const mple of this. However, there is a tendency
to downplay the threats and actions against Christians.
The representative from Canada said that they would participate
actively in identifying hate crimes, and urged that hate speech on
the Internet be monitored and punished.
A representative from the Turkish organisation Embargoed! launched
a particular vicious attack on Cyprus, accusing it of all kinds of
unjust treatment, apartheid and racism against the Turkish-occupied
north. Embargoed!, however, did not mention that the separation of the
island is self-imposed by the Turkish-oriented minority and the ongoing
military occupation, nor did they – for obvious reasons – mention the
extensive damage to the Cypriot cultural heritage in the north. Due to
time constraints, Cyprus could be permitted only a 60-second rebuttal.
The message from Embargoed! seems clear: If the government of Cyprus
does not give in to Turkish demands, they will be subject to the
stigmatizing charge of ‘racism’, leading to the international community
siding with the Turkish side against Cyprus.
The representative of the Holy See noted with regret that some regimes
enforce a single religion on their citizens.
An US-based group, Redeemed Lives () explained
how anti-discrimination laws are causing them severe trouble in
one of their focus areas, that of self-emancipation from undesired
same-sex attraction. In particular, the rights awarded to lesbian,
gay, bisexual and transsexual groups (LBGT in short) had been used
to push their books – titles like "Coming out of Homosexuality"
off the market, as they were deemed ‘offensive’ to these groups.
At this point, I got the opportunity to take the floor. Time was
limited to 2 minutes, and I used them to say the following:
Distinguished Delegates,
The International Civil Liberties Alliance notes with concern that
hate crime and anti-discrimination laws are worded much too broadly
and often enforced with excessive zeal, becoming in effect tools
for repression r e problems and exploiting singular cases to create
draconian legislation would be counterproductive to the OSCE goals
and intentions.
In order to properly further the OSCE goals, we need to ensure
that legislation is well-defined. Ideally, the problems addressed
here should be handled through ordinary criminal laws, as hate
crimes usually constitute libel and implied threats against certain
groups. The classical target is the Jewish community, the recent
‘organ harvesting’ article in the Swedish daily Aftonbladet being a
case in point.
Additionally, blasphemy laws and the like, that still are on the
books in Denmark and elsewhere, only serve to cover up the problems,
not to solve them. These laws need to be repealed, also in order that
political extremism disguised as religion can be freely criticized.
Thank you.
Redeemed Lives had a further elaboration on their problems.
Then came the Swiss-Turkish Union of Lawyers (I’m not certain of
the exact name), who lamented the fact that it had been permitted to
hold referendums concerning the construction of minarets along with
mosques. This could severely annoy other Islamic countries. They
recommended that the Swiss government take measures to prevent any
similar referendums to take place in the future.
Armenia noted that ‘hate crime’ has been a priority for the OSCE
since 2003, but noted that there is no firm legal definition of
‘hate’. And that in spite of this being a priority, anti-Armenian
propaganda in Azerbaijan continues unabated, not least on the Internet.
Austria, who had been criticized for raising obstacles against
construction of mosques in Corinthia and Voralburg, noted that any
religion is permitted to erect houses of worship. However, construction
regulations exist and must be adhered to. These rules are democratic
and apply equally well to Islamic organisations.
Cyprus got the last word, noting that the so-called isolation of
the northern part of the island is due to the Turkish occupation
there. And that the closing of ports, Famag is due to the inability
of the government of Cyprus to exercise its authority in that part
of the country.
Speakers unable to present their views in full due to time constraints
were encouraged to submit a more extensive statement to the OSCE
Document Distribution desk, who would post them online.
_________________ End of Working Session 10___________
Side event: Preventing and Responding to anti-Muslim Hate Crimes
COJEP hosted a side event entitled "Preventing and Responding to
anti-Muslim Hate Crimes". The event was chaired by Bashy Quraishy (who,
as he phrased it, "lives in Denmark") and featured: Mr. Veysel Filiz,
Vice President of COJEP, Mr. Tankut Taskin Soykan, Adviser on Combating
Intolerance an Discrimination Against Muslims (OSCE), Mrs. Liz Fekete
(Institute of Race Relations, UK), Mr. Paul Legendre (Human Rights
First) and Mr. Omur Orhun (Adviser and Special Envoy of the OIC).
The session focused on getting more reports on hate crimes filed,
that NGO’s would be better able to combat them. COJEP introduced
the interesting interpretation that hate crimes are really ‘message
crimes’, sending out messages to all immigrants and/or all Muslims. It
was the desire of the panel that the States should take measures to
prevent these from happening, making it clear to society at large
that this kind of messages cannot be tolerated.
The low number of reported hate crimes might, according to the panel,
be due to Muslims not having faith in the police in the European
states. More information needs to be collected regarding hate crimes
against Muslims.
When the floor was opened for debate, I inquired why only hate crimes
against Muslims would be recorded? Following the news gives a vivid
impression that hate crimes committed by Muslims against non-Muslims
are numerous, and that the ‘message crime’ aspect of these crimes
are frequently surprisingly clear.
A case in point was the demonstration January 10th in Copenhagen,
Denmark, where a counter-demonstration to a pro-Israel rally indulged
in praise of reference to Muhammad conquering and plundering the
Jewish settlement of Khaybar in 628 A.D.
The chant used in that demonstration was (in Arabic): "Khaybar Khaybar
ya Yahud, jaysh Muhammad saufa ya’ud", which translates into English:
"Khaybar, Khaybar o Jews, the army of Muhammad will return." The
message here, as had also been made explicit, is a threat to Jews,
merely due to their ethnic origin. The racist and ‘message crime’
nature of this demonstration should be obvious.
Should one dive into the life story of Muhammad, various ‘message
crimes’ can be identified, including the assassination of poets Uqba
bin Abu Muayt, Asma bint Marwan, Abu Afak and others. These old tales
still seem to have clear messages to Salman Rushdie, Kurt Westergaard
and other artistic critics of Islam.
History aside, the panel had some trouble giving a clear response to
my question, deliberating the idea in various ways. After the session,
Bashy Quraishy gave a clear answer: It would not be acceptable, for
doing so would constitute racism. No further comments seem neccesary.
The OSCE conference is a large and sometimes confusing place, with
many people to meet and some strict rules to follow in order to
ensure a smooth conference. Documents by the hundreds are submitted
for online distribution, making it easy for a contribution to get
lost in the flow. But all things considered, things run smoothly.
Also in the city of Warsaw outside, one thing is clear: Poland has
come a long way since Communism. This is to a great extent due to the
work of OSCE (and the precursor CSCE), which contributed significantly
to delegitimizing the totalitarian communist regimes in East Europe.
A similar delegitimization of totalitarian Islam can take place, if we
have the courage and make the effort to uphold our civil liberties,
and in turn use them to criticize religious fanatics with too great
a lust for power.