What are the aims of punishment and do they really work?

After last week’s attack in Streatham, London where a man who’d previously been imprisoned for terrorist activity was released and then just a few weeks later attacked innocent members of the public with a knife, the government is talking about changing how they deal with criminals involved with terrorism. The government wants to end the automatic early release from prison of terror offenders, following two attacks by men convicted of terror offences in recent months. And it is the dad of Jack Merritt, a 25-year old prison rehabilitation worker who was killed in the London Bridge terror attack in November 2019, who has criticised the government’s plans. He has warned that “the government is failing to do its job to keep the public safe” and that the prime minister’s plans to force through emergency terrorist sentencing is “a hasty measure” that “could be counter-productive.”

The government’s plans have other problems with possible legal challenges ahead. In the UK every judge who sentences a convicted defendant is under a statutory duty to explain the sentence that is being passed. So, offenders are told by the judge in open court that they are being sentenced for a fixed period, known as a “determinate” sentence.They are told that they will be automatically released at the half-way point and serve the remainder of their sentence on licence in the community. That means that they have a “legitimate expectation” of being released at the half-way point. If you think about it, some offenders might have even pleaded guilty on the basis that they will be given a “determinate” sentence with automatic early release at the half-way point. If the government’s plans go ahead and there is a changing of the release date retrospectively to the two-thirds point it would surely lead to legal challenges that the offender’s “legitimate expectation” of automatic “half-way” release had been unlawfully tampered with.

The other problem is human rights. Under Article 7 of the Human Rights Act, “No Punishment Without Law”, it can be argued that an offender cannot be given a heavier punishment than was available to the court at the time they were sentenced.

And finally, we also have the issue of what the aim of punishment is in the first place. It isn’t simply to protect the rest of society by keeping them locked away for longer. It will just push the problem to a later date.

David Merritt has called for immediate and proper funding into prison services to prevent further attacks. This is something which his son, so tragically killed, also devoted his energy to: “the purpose of prisoner rehabilitation.” When we think about rehabilitation we are focusing on the aim of punishment of reform. David explained, “Keeping people in prison for longer in itself doesn’t keep anybody safe. It just means [the government] is kicking the can further down the road: spewing people out further down the line when they’ve been associating with other people of like minds, convincing each other of their radicalisation, that’s obviously not a good thing unless they have received real help to change their ways and there are effective deradicalisation programmes. As it is, from the reports of most prisons, we already know prisoners are locked up for 23 hours a day and there is very little in the way of education and rehabilitation. The resources are not there.”

It is an interesting discussion with no easy answers.

 

Terrorist attacks against hotels and Christian churches in Sri Lanka

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres said, “I condemn the heinous terrorist attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, a sacred day for Christians. The UN stands in solidarity with Sri Lanka as the global community fights hatred and violent extremism together. Holy sites must be respected.”

On Easter Sunday more than 200 people were killed and 500 injured in Sri Lanka when there were terrorist attacks on churches and hotels. Below is a photograph of the aftermath at St Sebastian’s Church:

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but Sri Lanka has experienced rising sectarian tension in recent years. Sectarianism is when people have very strong support for the religious or political group that you are a member of, in a way that can cause problems with other groups.

About 1.2 million of Sri Lanka’s 21 million inhabitants are Catholics, and these include members of both major ethnicities, the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority. In recent years, there have been clashes between the majority Buddhist community and minority Muslims (10% of Sri Lanka’s population), and in March last year the government imposed a 12-day state of emergency to quell anti-Muslim riots. Christian groups have also reported increased harassment from hardline Buddhist groups.

In response to the terrorist attacks today the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka said it mourns the loss of innocent people in the blasts by extremists who seek to divide religious and ethnic groups. The All Ceylon Jammiyyathul Ulama, a body of Muslim clerics, said the targeting Christian places of worship cannot be accepted.

The organisation Open Doors ranks Sri Lanka as No. 46 on its World Watch List of the 50 countries where it’s hardest to be a Christian. It explains:

Sri Lanka is a majority Buddhist nation, and so while Christians from more historical churches enjoy a little more freedom in expressing their faith, believers from Buddhist backgrounds are treated as second-class citizens and can face slander and attacks.
Believers from Buddhist or Hindu backgrounds face harassment and discrimination from their families and communities. They are pressured to recant their new faith, as conversion is regarded as a betrayal of their ethnicity. The majority of state schools do not teach Christianity as a subject, so Christian schoolchildren are forced to study Buddhism or Hinduism. Churches in rural areas have been attacked or closed, and Christians have been assaulted.

The media outlet Christianity Today reports that worldwide churches tighten their security over the Easter festival after 2017 attacks against Coptic Christians in Egypt on Palm Sunday.

Bombing in Northern Ireland

On Saturday 19th January 2019 a bomb exploded in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The Real IRA has claimed responsibility. The bomb exploded outside the city’s courthouse on Bishop Street just after a pizza delivery vehicle was hijacked at gun point. The video footage is really shocking to watch as a group of young people actually walk past the vehicle minutes before it explodes with debris being flown from the burning wreckage.

The map below shows the location of Londonderry in Northern Ireland with the Scottish and English mainland shown to the east (on the right).

Understanding the Northern Ireland problem is difficult and in Year 9 we have one or two lessons where we try to get the gist of what’s been going on for over a hundred years. We focus on the Omagh bombing of 1998 whilst we debate whether religion is dangerous. Putting it simply for many years, Northern Ireland has been split over the question of whether it should remain part of the United Kingdom or become part of Ireland. Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland and the nation is part of the United Kingdom, along with England, Scotland and Wales. CNN have a reasonably quick summary of the problem.

What is the New IRA who people say are behind Saturday’s bomb?

• The New IRA was formed in 2012 after a number of dissident republican organisations said they were unifying under one leadership. Dissident means someone who opposes the official policy. Republican means someone who likes government to be elected by the people and there not to be a monarchy where people are born into the job of ruling.
• It is believed to be the largest dissident republican organisation
• The group is believed to have been responsible for a number of attacks since its formation, including the murders of prison officers David Black and Adrian Ismay.

It’s not really about religion, it’s about the power of nations

So far it has felt like a Cold War between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but people are fearful it might soon turn into an open conflict. The Independent reports how the greatest threat to world peace coming from the Middle East is not terrorism but the wider Sunni-Shia religious conflict.

‘This is not really about religion, any more than the wars of religion of the 17^th century, or the conflict in Northern Ireland, or the bloodshed in Bosnia. In almost all great so-called religious conflicts, what lies behind the shouting of the clerics is a contest between the power of nations. This one is, in reality, a contest for dominance in the Middle East between Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) and Tehran (Iran).’

The Guardian also reports on the mounting tension in Lebanon, due to the power struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

‘Now, more than at any point in modern history, Iran and Saudi Arabia are squared off against each other as a race to consolidate influence nears a climax from Sana’a (in the Yemen) to Beirut (in Lebanon).’

Massacre in Burma or is it Myanmar?

A group of people, the Rohingya (Muslim), have been fleeing their homes in their thousands this week and sharing stories with refugee, government and new agencies about their mistreatment in Burma/ Myanmar (majority Buddhist).  More than 160,000 of Burma/ Myanmar’s 1.1 million ethnic Rohingya minority have fled to Bangladesh, bringing with them stories that they say describe ethnic cleansing.

Ethnic cleansing – the mass expulsion or killing of members of one ethnic or religious group in an area by those of another.

The leader in Burma/ Myanmar is Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who said in 1991: “Wherever suffering is ignored, there will be the seeds of conflict, for suffering degrades and embitters and enrages.” There is a petition that she is stripped of her Nobel Prize for not stopping and condemning the attacks on the Rohingya.

News agencies are being cautious with their language when reporting the story as there have also been reports of Rohingya terrorists attacking and killing Buddhists and Hindus. So when they report on a massacre against the Rohingya they use language like the Guardian cannot independently corroborate the villagers’ accounts to protect themselves if the stories do turn out not to be true.

Why we need to know the difference between Shia and Sunni Muslims for a GCSE

A few weeks back you heard the President of the USA criticise Iran for supporting terrorism, whilst he was standing in Saudi Arabia.

Then this week after a terrorist attack carried out by Islamic State killed 17 innocent civilians in Iran, President Trump’s sent both his condolences: “We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times,” and these additional comments: “We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote.” You can imagine how Iran felt about this latter comment.

The Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, tweeted: “Repugnant WH (White House) statement … as Iranians counter terror backed by US clients.”

This is where what we learn in GCSE Religious Studies comes in handy in making sense of all this. It is so important that when you read about world politics you are aware of the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam.  The Sunni jihadis of Isis (Islamic State) consider Shia Iran to be apostates (a defection or revolt against the true Islam), and Iran is deeply involved in fighting the group in both Syria and Iraq. To make things trickier for Iran they have a sizeable Sunni population along their restive borders with Iraq and Pakistan, and it is from here that Isis is hoping to recruit. Understanding the Syrian Civil War also needs you to know about Sunni and Shia Muslims, as Newsround tried to explain.

Cairo Coptic Cathedral bombed

This weekend a Coptic Cathedral in the Egyptian city of Cairo suffered a bombing which killed at least 25 and injured scores more. Copts, who make up about 10% of Egypt’s population of 90 million, faced persecution (hostility, ill-treatment and harassment, especially because of race or political or religious beliefs) and discrimination during the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled by a popular uprising in 2011. In fact on New Year’s Day in 2011, shortly before the beginning of the uprising against Mubarak, a suicide bomber killed 21 worshippers outside a church in the coastal city of Alexandria. Meanwhile they have faced further attacks at the hands of Islamist extremists since 2013.

Egypt’s Copts make up the largest Christian community in the Middle East. The church is said to have been established by St Mark in approximately AD42 and survived the rise of Islam in the region from the seventh century.

Denominations in Islam

The news that an explosion at a Sufi shrine in Pakistan has killed 52 people and injured a 100 more is another sad story of ISIS terrorism. It is an attack by extreme fundamentalist Muslims against other Muslims which is something that people worrying about ISIS violence often forget. It isn’t just against the West but against people who don’t agree with their specific brand of Islam.

The worshippers were performing dhamal – a trance-like dance – when the bomb hit. Sufism, a tolerant, mystical practice of Islam, has millions of followers in Pakistan but is opposed by extremists. In Year 8 students learn the basics about the denominations of Islam in their Flipped Classroom half-term of learning about What is means to be a Muslim. This means that for one half-term students get homework every week to prepare for the forthcoming lesson. They are supposed to have the facts and knowledge about the lesson’s topic before they walk into the classroom, and once they are in there they will have the chance to debate, discuss and use their knowledge to make and produce things.

TrueTube have a good video explaining the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and the BBC has a page explaining Sufism.

Charlie Hebdo in the news again

You may have heard of Charlie Hebdo which is a satirical magazine with cartoons which mock politics, news and religion. In January 2015 it suffered a terrorist attack on its Paris offices in response to its publication of cartoons showing the prophet Muhammad.

It is in the news again today for a cartoon it published after the recent Italian earthquake. Charlie Hebdo’s controversial cartoon, titled “earthquake Italian style”, showed a bloody man described as penne tomato sauce, an injured woman as penne gratinee, and bodies stacked between layers of rubble as lasagne. Do you think the cartoon is acceptable or a step too far and offensive?

Well Amatrice, an Italian village which was flattened by the August earthquake has decided to sue the magazine with a local government officially saying the cartoons are “a macabre, senseless and absurd insult to the victims”.

 

 

9/11 Anniversary Brings New Stories

With the 9/11 Anniversary just a day away there will be numerous stories and memories in the media over the upcoming days.

Today we read about the F-16 pilot who was told to intercept Flight 93 as it was heading seemingly straight to Washington. With no missiles on board the only way she would be able to bring down that flight, on its suicide mission, was to fly straight into it. The only reason she is here alive today is that the passengers of Flight 93 brought down the plane in Pennslyvania to stop more severe carnage.

“The real heroes are the passengers on Flight 93 who were willing to sacrifice themselves,” Penney the F-16 pilot says. “I was just an accidental witness to history.”

There is a film about Flight 93 which even though you’ll know the storyline still has enough depth to make it an interesting watch. Another interesting perspective of 9/11 comes from a retired New York policeman who writes about what he saw on that day and how he fears another attack.

Why do people commit mass murder?

When you read about terrorists killing people on mass and their names being linked to extremism you still question how anyone could do it – take innocent people’s lives.

On the BBC Frank Gardner looks into why people go about committing mass killings and attempts to find out whether they have anything in common.

A forensic psychoanalyst believes the clues are all in their dysfunctional backgrounds.

“It is a psychiatric problem,” he says, “and such planning [as the Nice or Munich attacks] indicates a disordered personality. With such premeditation there is a desire to enact a form of revenge, and with such intent on causing major terror.” Yet there are a large number of people with these psychiatric disorders but only a few of them go on to do mass killings. Peter Aylward goes on to explain that there are many small particulars that have to be present and when all in place – the lock opens and people find no problem in killing large numbers of innocent people.

Perhaps this will help us all get our heads round these atrocious acts of terrorism.