The police need to be seen to back the core western value of free speech – both to maintain public support and to allow them to get on with tackling real crime, argues JOE MORGAN
The conviction in June of Hamit Coskun for a religiously aggravated public order offence is a troubling development which should greatly worry anyone concerned with freedom of speech in the UK.
Unhappy with the growing influence of Islamism in Turkey – his country of birth, originally founded upon secularist principles – Coskun’s protest involved setting fire to his own copy of the Koran outside the Turkish embassy. He might have assumed that a free western country in the 21st century, steeped in the traditions of John Milton and JS Mill, and which officially repealed its blasphemy laws in 2008, would have been more supportive of his right to protest. He was mistaken.
Not only has Coskun now been convicted, he was very nearly murdered by a random passer by who upon learning of his protest tried to stab him. It seems our cities are now populated with more people willing to use knives on members of the public that they disagree with than most would care to admit.
The case not only demonstrates the disturbing direction we are taking as a country by appeasing those who want to curtail free expression, but also how much time and resources of the police and courts are being used to prosecute cases which wouldn’t be given the time of day in a country which governed using common sense and according to its traditions of liberty and free speech.
Coskun’s case mirrors a similar incident that took place in Manchester where a protestor set fire to the Koran in solidarity with Salwan Monika, an Iraqi dissident living in Sweden who was murdered for a similar offence. At the time of his arrest Greater Manchester Police decided to publish on social media the protestor’s full name and photograph along with the town he resides in with apparent disregard for the inevitable danger this would put him in. When in the immediate aftermath of knife attacks the identities of the alleged perpetrators have been kept confidential, it is astounding that this protestor wasn’t extended the same courtesy given the obvious risk to his life posed by extremists.
Examples of police indifference to shoplifting, bicycle/vehicle theft and anti-social behaviour are becoming all too common. Our crime-ridden cities are a sad testament to this. But these small acts of protest were enough to provoke an instant response from the authorities which shows if nothing else a huge misdirection of priorities and resources.
We are already living in a country where a teacher from Batley continues to live in hiding. His offence: showing images considered by some to be offensive during a religious studies lesson. After a campaign of intimidation and death threats he was hounded out of his teaching position, abandoned by his employer and the local authorities because protecting the sensitivities of a hardline religious minority over the right of a teacher to do their job was more important to them.
And where a mother was forced into a groveling public apology after it was alleged her autistic child had “scuffed” a copy of the Koran and was suspended from school as a result. The inevitable intimidation, harm and distress caused by the death threats she received seemed of little concern to the police in this instance. She was forced to beg in an online video for her family to come to no harm.
The destruction of books, religious or otherwise, might always be frowned upon. But to do so should not be considered a criminal offence, especially when carried out as part of a lawful right to protest. It is impossible to imagine the police reacting the same way to the destruction of any other book. Why should exceptions be made to the text of one belief system over any other?
And what does this say about our criminal justice system which can react so quickly and forcefully to the actions of these protestors, but have been demonstrably slow to react when asked to follow up cases of assaults and shoplifting? This isn’t the fault of police officers, who are overstretched and underpaid, carrying out dangerous work in difficult circumstances, but of their superiors and politicians determined to reduce the police to arbiters of trendy political causes, catering to the whims of the perpetually offended whilst real criminality goes unchecked.
The sole purpose of the police and our courts should be to serve the law-abiding by deterring and catching real criminals, not participating in the imposition of blasphemy law or punishing thoughtcrime. This tendency is frightening, wholly unacceptable and must be swiftly reversed. Either we are a country that cherishes the rights of its citizens to express themselves in a way that some might find offensive, or we risk becoming something else altogether.
