IT’S that time of year again when we pause and reflect. We think of what could have been and what might be yet to come. It’s a time too when the talk is of goodwill and hopes for a peaceful New Year. And what reasonable and sane person would not wish for such things?
As a foreign correspondent I’ve often been asked the rather sweeping question of what it would take to make the world a better place. There is of course no-one definitive answer to this, but up there among the best responses would be the alleviation of global poverty and an end to the cultures of impunity that thrive like corrosive cancers in so many countries and societies near and far.
What do I mean by cultures of impunity? Well look no further than the recent verdict in the Saudi courts that saw five people sentenced to death for last year’s murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. This was in effect a verdict that is both the antithesis of justice and the epitome of a culture of impunity.
After 14 months of global investigations into Khashoggi’s killing, all paths seemed to lead to Saud al-Qahtani, the most influential aide of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
Somehow though – surprise, surprise – the Saudi prosecutors didn’t see it that way, clearing both al-Qahtani and the crown prince, who it is inconceivable was unaware of the killing. Quite rightly, Agnes Callamard, the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings described both the trial and sentences as a “mockery”.
It was in effect a whitewash allowing a few underlings to pay the price while the “big men” walk away unscathed. In fact the findings of both intelligence services the CIA and MI6 totally contradict the conclusion of the Saudi authorities, suggesting instead that Prince Mohammed in fact directly ordered Khashoggi’s murder.
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The Khashoggi affair is but one glaring example of how a culture of impunity allowed the killing of a journalist. The murder in Malta in 2017 of investigative reporter and anti-corruption activist Daphne Caruana Galizia, and subsequent cover-up was another of the more high-profile cases in recent years.
Here again was a lesson about the importance of insisting on the rule of law that ought to resonate far beyond the local setting in which it took place.
Both the Khashoggi and Caruana Galizia cases starkly illustrate the extent to which impunity for crimes against journalists is on the rise. One recent study found that in the past 12 years almost 90% of those found responsible for the deaths of journalists were not convicted.
But let’s not for a moment think that journalists are the only ones suffering at the malign hands of such cover-up cultures.
Any cursory Google search across world news stories will throw up countless instances of where the protection of the powerful lies at the heart of so much misery and killing. Right now from India to Iraq, Brazil to Afghanistan and beyond such cultures are shamefully thriving.
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Impunity thrives best of course where those leaders and powerful organisations turn a blind eye to crimes and wrongdoing or conceal it. Almost always too there is a seemingly higher rationale presented by such influential cadres for failing to prosecute crimes by the powerful or by subordinates who enjoy their protection. The collateral damage to the community, the nation or the world would be too great goes their spurious argument.
International human rights and anti-corruption reformers regularly flag up countries in the developing world where murder, the looting of economic resources and other crimes by the powerful regularly go unpunished.
But this is a societal cancer we cannot and should not derisorily and conveniently confine in interpretation to developing nations or derisory definitions of “banana republics” and “rogue states”.
For without doubt, cultures of impunity lurk in all countries at some level or another, be it at the grand political level, corporate crime, police corruption or sexual assault. Sceptics need look no further than how US President Donald Trump’s enthusiastic promotion of impunity reached its peak last month after he granted pardons to two Army officers, one convicted of war crimes, the other accused of them and reversed the demotion of a Navy SEAL who was convicted of posing with the corpse of an enemy combatant.
What does it tell us about such impunity when Trump went on to host the disgraced former Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher at his luxury Florida residence in Mar-a-Lago?
It was Gallagher after all who, based on the testimony of members of his own unit, was charged with stabbing an unarmed teenage prisoner, posing for a photo with his corpse and shooting random Iraqi civilians including an old man and a young girl.
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You don’t have to go the US either for such examples of impunity over actions deemed unlawful. It was only last September that judges at the UK Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament for five weeks was just that, unlawful, though this didn’t hinder him from being elected Prime Minister.
This idea that people can do whatever they want without having to face any consequences for their actions is on the rise globally at the highest levels of office. And always the core issue remains the same: does the law apply to everyone?
When individuals violate criminal laws, we expect them to be held accountable irrespective of the circumstances or their influence and standing.
As Paul Starr, professor of public affairs at Princeton University, observed writing in the magazine The American Prospect, “the public has a right to both individual and institutional accountability”.
Individual punishment has a singular value as a deterrent. It also serves as a public statement that the lives and liberties of the victims count in the eyes of the government and that they enjoy the same dignity and respect accorded their fellow citizens.
As a new year beckons, doubtless it will bring with it yet more abuses perpetrated by those operating within these cultures of impunity. But the time is long overdue in redoubling our efforts to challenge this pernicious practice of protecting the powerful. If not, we all stand to lose. On that sobering thought I wish you our readers a happy and peaceful New Year, wherever you may be.
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