This letter is being sent to Strathclyde Police, stay tuned for the reply, if we get one.
Dear Sir or Madam:
I am writing to you to make a formal complaint regarding sectarian behaviour.
Today, whilst buying the newspapers, I was shocked to read a story on Artur Boruc, who is apparently being investigated for some offence or other for making the Sign of the Cross during the final Old Firm match at Ibrox last season.
In the present social and political climate, with war in the Middle East over issues of nationalism and religion, with sectarian war raging in Iraq and with low-level but all too apparent sectarian violence still prevalent in Northern Ireland, many of us in this country welcome new initiatives by the police, the Courts and the Executive to curb the menace of sectarian behaviour, and would be grateful. to know that the police take this matter seriously. This is why I am certain you will give this complaint the attention that it merits, and reply to it forthwith.
I should state that my complaint is not against one individual but against an unknown number of individuals, who's identities are also unknown. I am sure this will not be an obstacle to your investigating; after all, if my house was broken into I would not, in all probability, know who had done that either - it is your job to investigate this. In this case, however, I feel certain that your investigations will proceed with speed and efficiency in this direction, as the names of the individuals will all be logged and filed, on record with your own department.
There are two groups against whom I wish to lodge this complaint.
1st; The person or persons who formally submitted complaints against Artur Boruc for making the Sign of the Cross. I believe their making the complaint to have been an act of sectarian bigotry and a form of anti-religious discrimination, akin to an employer refusing to hire someone on the grounds of their religious persuasion. In Scotland, this country where the talk is all of Many Cultures, for individuals to insist that the legal authorities investigate someone for a show of religious faith is not simply small-minded, but I believe the new anti-discrimination and anti-bigotry laws make it an actionable offence. Furthermore, as the "crime" in question is not, itself, against the law, I believe that it could constitute both wasting police time and the making of a false complaint.
2nd: I further wish to make a complaint against are the officers who investigated the above accusations.
I return again to the subject of discrimination. If an employer was to use its employment practices in a fashion which discriminated against a religious group, they would rightly be prosecuted to the fullest limit of the law. Further, state sanctioned discrimination, in places like South Africa and in the American Deep South, has been outlawed and new laws have been inserted into national constitutions and legal frameworks to assure they never rear their head again. Anti-Catholic discrimination in the 1960's and 1970's in Northern Ireland brought down the Stormont Government and saw the government in London introduce Direct Rule in an effort to restore to the Province some small measure of justice for all.
What the officers in this case have done, and what their supervising officers have seemingly allowed them to do, is to once more sanction a form of sectarianism endorsed by the state itself. European Union Human Rights legislation, as well as the Donald Gorrie sponsored anti-sectarian bill itself, lays down in crystal clear terms that the first principle is that every individual should have the right to exercise his or her own religious freedom, and that actions which aim to limit that freedom or persecute someone on the basis of it are an actionable offence under the law.
Scotland is a country which has taken a long time to wake up to the truth about its ugly, darker side. The fact that we have now done so means that we can take great credit as a nation, and the willingness of the vast majority of its people to leave behind age old prejudices and move on is something that should be commended and praised from the lowliest tenement scheme to the highest social and political centres in the land. Organisations like Nil by Mouth, initiatives by both Celtic and Rangers, the Churches, the Executive itself, seek to move on, past all of the baggage of our collective history. Some people call such baggage outdated. They are quite mistaken. This implies that there was once a time and a place for such hatred, and their never was, not in any land which seeks to call itself "civilised."
That some small-minded individuals chose to report this matter as though it were a crime surely indicates how far we have to come. The very nature of the complaint itself, that the gesture could have "incited" some to violence suggests to me that the persons making the complaint are, themselves, a danger to our community if they believe they or others around them might react in such a way, and it would have, perhaps, been better to concentrate on this idea - that a demonstration of religious belief so offends some people that they believe themselves capable of aggressive behaviour. Surely these people warrant the scrutiny, rather than Artur Boruc? It seems clear to me that those people represent the real threat here, and I am moved to ask why the officers investigating the complaint did not consider this?
If I were to walk into a police station and suggest that seeing my former girlfriend with another man made me want to harm one or both of them, surely I would myself be arrested, rather than the police warn them about their behaviour?
It also might be well for the police to consider the potential long and short term social consequences. When Scotland, already reeling from the judgement handed down by UEFA to one of our most senior clubs, along with their original statement that this is a problem largely peculiar to this country, becomes once again the focus of attention for its inability to fully come to terms with the rest of the 21st Century. Frankly, I cannot imagine such a report being taken seriously by any other police force in the so-called civilised world, and it brings shame and discredit upon everyone connected with this case. It also makes our country look like the worst kind of sectarian cesspit.
But all of this is by-the-by. The issue at stake here is the crime that has been commited, not by Artur Boruc, the Celtic keeper, but against him.
What has happened in this case is that the complainants and the police have infringed upon Artur Boruc's right to religious expression, and they did so out of ignorance and out of prejudice against that man's religious choices. Both of these groups have, thereby, committed an offence under the law.
Thank you for your time. I await your reply.
James Forrest
Hail Hail Jim, great stuff.
Discuss this and more on our messageboard.