6.08.2009

(actually, here the sentence would have been "indefinite")

Two American journalists have been arrested and detained by North Korea--possibly not even within its own borders--charged with constituting an unspecified danger to the North Korean state, put through a dubiously opaque legal process, and have now been sentenced to 12 years hard labor.

I'm so glad to live in a country that doesn't do things like that.

2 comments:

Dave said...

A very clever comparison but I cannot imagine that you seriously believe there exists some amount of moral equivalence between the US and North Korea? Any "trial" conducted in nK has to be understoon in the larger context of a criminal regime that is quite comfortable utilizing human misery to maintain its control of the state. To maintain control the nK regime let 5% of the total population starve to death in the 1990s. Military tribunals in the US take part in the context of a judicial system that is relatively fair, open, and independent and are thus the exception to the rule. That's a far cry from what exists in the world's finest stalinist disney land.

Brian said...

Moral equivalence, of course not.

My problem isn't so much with military tribunals (actually I really don't have a problem with those at all, at least in theory) but rather with the practice of holding people indefinitely and without charge or trial of any sort.