Comment by dcow
6 days ago
It’s still suicide. The wrongfully imprisoned can be acquitted. That’s part of the argument against the death penalty: if justice is imperfect then don’t take actions that are permanent. You can’t classify every instance of miscarriage of justice as state murder. I really don’t see the issue you’re trying to raise. It’s more problematic to invent new language because it feels yucky than to be precise and accurate in our reporting.
I don't think they're arguing that the headline should be "13 UK postmasters murdered by the state", just that the extremely passive "died by suicide" lacks context and largely leaves out the UK Post Office's role in their death. I think they would prefer some thing along the lines of "At Least 13 People Killed Themselves After False Accusations From U.K. Post Office, Report Says".
I’m fine with that. And I agree with the sentiment, just not the conclusion that we should be reporting these as not-suicide. If the original comment was indeed that tempered then I have no issue.
It's the lack of clarity in what happened. I think the rephrasing mike suggested is much clearer:
> The postmasters killed themselves because the British state was imprisoning them for crimes they didn't commit, based on evidence from a buggy financial accounting system.
That's just better writing!
It is the passive voice, not the word suicide that is the issue.
> You can’t classify every instance of miscarriage of justice as state murder.
It's literally what we call it in Norway. In English it's compared to miscarriage (i.e. spontaneous abortion), "miscarriage of justice". Here we call it murder of justice (justismord), whether anyone actually died or not.
I do think it gets the seriousness across, and the focus on it as a deliberate act, rather than an accident as in English. Some people actually made a deliberate act to let innocent people take the blame.
Interesting.
> Some people actually made a deliberate act to let innocent people take the blame.
And those people are at fault and should be criminally prosecuted for the harm they caused.
We are incapable of returning life-time taken. False imprisonment is still racking up centimorts instead of delivering 1 mort.