[Editorial] Police’s irrational response against civil society

Posted on : 2009-05-14 12:32 KST Modified on : 2009-05-14 12:32 KST

The Democratic Labor Party, the New Progressive Party, the Creative Korea Party, lawmakers Chun Jung-bae and Moon Kook-hyun, former lawmakers Kim Tae-hong and Im Jong-in, MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society, People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, the Catholic Priests’ Association for Justice, the Journalists Association of Korea, the Korean Producers and Directors’ Association, the Pusan International Film Festival, the Jeonju International Film Festival, the Bucheon International Fantasy Film Festival, Institute of Financial Economics, and the Institute for Korean Historical Studies. This is the list of names that appear in data on violent and illegal demonstrations held in 2008 submitted by police to Democratic Party lawmaker Cho Young-taek. One is left dumbstruck and wondering if the police are in their right mind.

It is said that police designated the 1,842 groups of the People’s Conference Against Mad Cow Disease and 50 groups of the Korea Alliance for Progressive Movement as of “illegal and violent protest groups” and informed the Ministry of Strategy and Finance and other government ministries of this for their consideration in distributing subsidies. When this caused a stir, the police responded by saying all they did was include an unsorted list of the groups whose members were arrested at protests. To say that because someone from the People’s Conference Against Mad Cow Disease was arrested, all the groups that participated in the umbrella group are violent groups is to use slapdash logic. If we do things this way, like New Progressive Party Chief Roh Hoe-chan says, “It would be the same as saying because two Cheong Wa Dae (the presidential office in South Korea or Blue House) administrative officials were implicated in prostitution, the entire Cheong Wa Dae is guilty of illegal prostitution.” Moreover, if we were to apply this same logic to the police, because some riot policemen assaulted a Japanese tourist who was not even a participant in the protests, the police should be acknowledged as an illegal and violent group.

The arbitrary designation of illegal protest groups by police and the resulting suspension of government budgetary support and grants does not mesh with the legalism so espoused by the government either. The logic of calling a group illegal just because one of its members was arrested at an illegal demonstration is a stretch of the law and a form of guilt by association. How is this different from when, under the military dictatorships, parents in official positions were fired because their children participated in anti-government demonstrations?

Moreover, government support for civic groups should be determined in accordance with the public interest and propriety of their projects. Subsidies should not depend on the government’s likes or dislikes. We do not know whether it was due to an order from above or an act of blind loyalty, but the fact that groups that refer to the Gwangju Uprising as a “leftist riot” and to Chun Doo-hwan’s coup as a “legal measure” are openly getting government subsidies because the police made available such junk data is a miserable thing. It is also interesting how the police left off their list organizations like the Korean Disabled Veterans Association for Agent Orange Victims and the Association of Former Agencies for HID or counter- intelligence military units, whose members have also been arrested at violent demonstrations. If the current situation continues, one could anticipate that we may have to begin interpreting everything the police do, in the diametrically opposite way.

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