Comparing US and Chinese Legal Systems
In closing arguments, at the trial for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery by a retired policeman Gregory McMichael, the defense said the following:
Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in his khaki shorts with no socks to cover his long, dirty toenails.
Substituting tribal justice for the law in such a manner, is standard practice in US courtrooms. The defense attorney did not actually say Arbery committed a felony, which might make it legal for ex-cop McMichael to chase him with a gun. Instead the defense attorney advocated a type of fuzzy situational justice that is preferred to actual law, by most people on Earth. It can be generalized with the following statement:
When police lie and break the law to take a person’s rights, it is a direct and inevitable result of other people’s poor life decisions.
A recent Breitbart.com article tells the story of a former Chinese work-camp inmate, who objects to business with China by NBA players like LeBron James:
Tursun’s testimonies have provided some of the most detailed information the outside world has on the atrocities Chinese agents commit against Uyghurs and other ethnic minority Muslims in the country. She has said Chinese police arrested her after, with infant triplets, she returned home to her parents following studying abroad in Egypt. Among the many atrocities she endured, she has said, is the killing of one of her triplets and extreme personal torture to herself, including electrocution, beatings, drugging, and sleep deprivation. The Chinese government has responded to Tursun’s claims by mocking them, declaring in state media that Chinese people “laughed” at her ordeal and scurrilously accusing her of carrying sexually transmitted diseases.
Applying the preferred legal process in the US, Tursun was where she was because of her own poor life decisions. Now she wants to blame it on other people like LeBron James.
Notice Tursun does not seem to complain about whether this was supported by Chinese law, whether there was any kind of trial or not, or whether there should be. Stories about Chinese labor camps never dig into the administrative process for choosing who gets put in camps. They instead attack the camps at a more general level, where they object to the punishment itself as unjust.
US critics of Chinese work camps do not seem to object to the lack of a trial, or the process that leads to the punishment. They just disagree with the punishment itself. It’s just a disagreement between two cultures, about who should get sent to work camps without a trial, for what reasons, and what should then happen there.
Nobody really wants jury trials. In fact people in the US, like everywhere in history, want to do away with jury trials, so the government can directly and efficiently inflict the aggression preferred by members and supporters of the ruling faction. In the US, this translates to police being encouraged to frame people for crimes, so long as the local 51% majority thinks the outcome is an appropriate and enjoyable torture of undesirables.
Leave a Reply