Humanizing the Law

Humanizing the Law

1989 12 December 4-6 Humanizing the Law (979) After generations of tragic experience under Czars and Commissars, the Soviet Union has decided to bar the police and other official bodies from conducting investigations on the basis of anonymous complaints.

The Communist Party daily Pravda reported Wednesday that the Presidium of Supreme Soviet has decreed a halt to the practice, effective immediately. In the future, according to the decree, a citizen’s complaint must be signed and must include the signer’s full name and address – home address and working address. Any complaint “lacking this data shall be deemed anonymous and not be subject for consideration,” the decree says.

If this policy is adhered to strictly, Western observers said, it would be a major step forward in an area of human rights that effects millions’of Soviet citizens. Countless innocent victims have been sent to prison or marched before a firing squad in the Soviet Union on the word of some faceless accuser. Yet the law has continued to require the police to investigate anonymous charges, and this has given unscrupulous and ambitious individuals a powerful weapon to use against their enemies or rivals.

The police, acting on the theory that where there is smoke there must be fire, often required the targets of such charges to prove their innocence rather than require the accusers to furnish proof of guilt.

It was this kind of thinking, more than likely, that gave rise to the cynical saying “Never drink with two other people. You won’t know who the informer was.”

In recent years it could affect a person’s chances of travelling abroad and influence decisions concerning his work or his personal life.

According to a Muscovite who asked not to be identified by name, a policeman questioning a person who has been accused anonymously will customarily say he has received a “Signal” about him. “Now,” he said, “I have a right to ask who sent that signal before I have to answer.”

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbacheve’s advocacy of greater “democratisation” was no doubt responsible, at least in part, for Wednesday’s decree.

Krokodil, the satirical magazine, said that there was a time when anonymous accusations were regarded as useful tools for preserving ideological purity. But the attitude toward anonymous informers has changed, the magazine said, and added, “one simply cannot be an ideological stalwart and a foul caricature of a man at the same time.”

Krokodi said that its staff would no longer read unsigned letters. The latest issue of the magazine reported that 138 anonymous complaints has been ceremoniously burned to underscore its new policy.

Another sign of the new attitude was a satirical movie cartoon that is being shown this week in Moscow movie houses. It depicts a jealous worker making his boss’s life miserable by writing false accusations in an anonymous letter. As police inspectors appear menacingly to check out the charges, the boss becomes increasingly upset, then suffers a heart attack and dies. At his funeral he is hailed as a good man. A wreath bears a poignant reminder of his torment: Charges not proven.”*

This right that Soviet citizens have managed to secure as late as 1988, 70 years after the socialist revolution, was granted to the people by Islam on the very first day that it established its system of law, 1400 years ago.

The Teaching of Islam

In the 49th chapter of the Quran entitled ‘Alhujurat’ in which ethical teachings and social manners are described, verse No. 6 says: ‘Believers, if an evil-doer brings you a piece of news, inquire first into its truth, lest you should wrong other unwittingly and repent of what you have done.”

Allama Abul Barkat Abdullah ibn Mahmood An Nasafi has placed the following interpretation upon this verse:

That is to say, that if an evil-doer brings a piece of news, then you must pause for a time before taking any action in order to investigate the true state of affairs. Do not just trust the words of the evil-doer.

This means that before taking any action against the accused person, the reliability of the complainant should be thoroughly investigated. Where the complainant does not even disclose his name, there could be grounds for treating his allegation as being based, not on facts, but on mere suspicion. And Islam forbids the investigation of mere suspicion. There is a hadith which specifically says: “Do not investigate suspicion.”

According to Abdullah ibn Umar, the Prophet asked the people not to spy. That is why, when the job of collecting traditions was undertaken after the Prophet’s demise, the traditionalists laid down a principle in the science of Hadith (known as Jarah wa tadil) by which every narrator had to have his credibility established, – even if it meant going into his whole life-history – before his statements would be given credence.

On this basis, a permanent principle was established in jurisprudence which ‘laid the burden of proof on the plaintiff.’ That is, it was his responsibility to provide proof of his claim rather than the accused person being required to establish his innocence.

*(Los Angeles Times, Washington Post News Service)

If the statutory enforcement of this law for 70 years in the Soviet Union is seen as a form of deliberate cruelty, then the society of socialism has proved itself a red hell rather than a red paradise. And if we place the construction upon it that there was no intentional cruelty, we shall have to admit that religious law is 1400 years ahead of man-made law. This being so, we can hardly hold religion to be a matter of ancient history which is only fit to be rejected in the light of modern developments; such an attitude would not now be supported by the established facts of recent history. Clearly it is man-made law and not divine law which needs to be examined and rejected in every instance that does not conform to humanitarian standards.