Citing Tom Fleming, the post “In A Perverse Way, Afghan Justice Is Less Perverse” raised the perverse topic of restorative justice (which is, for the most, no justice at all) that has come to dominate Western criminal justice systems. Citing Imanuel Kant, Fleming wrote:
Judicial punishment can never be used solely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for society, but instead must in all cases be imposed on a person solely on the ground that he has committed a crime….woe to him who rummages around in the winding paths of a theory of happiness looking for some advantage to be gained by releasing the criminal from punishment or by reducing the amount of it….
Not a day goes by when examples of this crookedness don’t present themselves. While French SWAT teams were taking days to bring to an end a stake-out at a Toulouse apartment building in southern France—they were waiting on the killer of three French paratroopers, a rabbi and three children to “surrender” or kill more innocent bystanders—a cabinet minister told RT that the purpose of democracy was to capture criminals alive, not kill them.
Given the ever-expanding remit of democracy, the French official is probably correct. All I know is that the purpose of a just government is to protect the lives and property of non-aggressors.
Next, on the grounds that “capital punishment is wrong in principle and should be abolished,” and that a worldly, wise authority should enforce this universal understanding—the perverse EU is threatening Belarus’ Lukashenka regime “with sanctions … listing 21 judges and top police officers who face travel bans and asset freezes in the EU.”
“Lukashenka had last week refused to pardon the two men, Dzmitry Kanavalau and Uladzislau Kavalyou, both aged 26, who were convicted last year for a number of offences, including a deadly attack on the Minsk metro,” in which 15 people were killed and over 200 injured.
It’s one thing to question the quality of justice and due process in Belarus, and advocate for judicial review of proceedings in the trial. But it is quite another to have demanded that the two men be pardoned (as Human Rights Watch has done)—they have since been executed for the massacre in the metro station of the Belarusian capital—no less, and the death penalty repealed, which is what these arrogant internationalists are demanding.
