I sometimes regret not having been born in a time or place in which I could have witnessed a properly executed Soviet or Nazi show trial.
The “show trial” of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, to which she and Ukraine are being subjected at the moment, is not just an outrageous travesty of justice. It’s also being conducted in an astoundingly incompetent way.
So, for all the would-be Lavrentiy Berias of the Ukrainian judicial branch, I thought I’d jot down a few handy hints for beginners.
Point 1: First arrest victim, extract false confession and then have trial
This is, of course, absolutely fundamental to holding a successful show trial.
You have to have your victim safely locked up in prison in order to extract a coerced confession.
You can’t just go around to their house one afternoon and expect them to fess up, sign a detailed, fabricated incriminatory document, and then happily trot off to court with you for sentencing.
Besides, a lengthy spell in jail under harsh conditions will produce a proper demeanor of broken, abject contrition in your victim, which is essential if they are to play their role properly when they are hauled before the bench.
It takes a lot less time and makes the whole business a lot simpler when all you have to do is wheel in your victim, read out the charges and get them to mutter “guilty” at the appropriate moment. Which brings us to…
Point 2: Don’t let the victim make a mockery of the whole process
Ideally, you don’t let the victim say anything.
You should definitely not allow them to mock the court and the judge, and then tweet about it to the whole of the free world over the Internet. It detracts from the gravitas of the proceedings.
It introduces incongruous levity. We’re supposed to be doing savage political repression via a debased and subservient judicial system here, not stand-up comedy! Moreover, if you’ve messed up on point one, and not actually arrested your victim until well into the trial process, you’re going to have a devil of a time reestablishing court discipline.
You might even end up wasting hours having to pretend to carefully mull dozens of reasonable appeals for bail from the victim, which you are obliged to reject outright. That sort of thing could make a judge look less than even-handed.
It might even tear away the last shreds of the hollow pretence that the court proceedings have the slightest relation to a fair judicial process.
Point 3: Get your charges sorted out before the trial starts
The court will, of course, find your victim guilty, but it could significantly undermine the public’s perception of the fairness of the trial if no one actually knows what the victim is guilty of.
It’s always a difficult thing, when the trial of your victim is politically motivated, to trump up some impressive and convincing criminal charges against them, but it’s something you’ve really got to get right from the start.
Otherwise, you could find your victim’s defense team actually coming up with a credible rebuttal of the prosecution’s case.
Then you’d have to change your charge from something like, for instance, “causing material damage to the state” to “fabricating official government documents” halfway through the trial.
That, in turn, would make you look indecisive and would give the defense team another chance to make you look silly. Incidentally, it’s always best to dispense with defense lawyers, but you might need to have some if you want your trial to appear to have even a modicum of integrity.
That said; for goodness sake don’t let your victim pick their own defense team – that will just lead to all sorts of problems.
And judges – don’t mumble: It makes people think you’re lacking in self-confidence.
Point 4: Don’t allow the trial to be covered by a free press
This may seem obvious, but having a free press cover your show trial can cause all kinds of problems, especially if your victim is not behaving as required in court. If possible, establish your dictatorship/totalitarian regime before you start your show trials.
That way you’ll have dispensed with all those pesky journalists with their awkward questions and snide commentary before you even get going with the political persecution.
It also makes trumping up the charges and conducting a quick and efficient trial a great deal easier.
If you haven’t managed to smash your free press yet, try to hold the trial behind closed doors and just issue a short statement once it’s done – although arguably this defeats the very purpose of having a show trial in the first place.
But I’m being facetious. Obviously, the incompetent, farcical, absurd court proceedings against Tymoshenko do not warrant being described as a show trial.
But anyone who cares about Ukraine, here or abroad, and who believes in the aspirations of this country to adopt common European values, should nonetheless be up in arms at this mockery of justice, and demand an end to it. Democracies do not put former leaders on trial for their political activities in office.
The obvious persecution of members of the former government is a first step taken on a dark path for Ukraine, and the current authorities should not be allowed to take any more.
Nobody, least of all me, actually wants to see a real show trial, in Ukraine or anywhere else. It would not be funny.
Euan MacDonald, a former Kyiv Post editor, is a news editor with Interfax-Ukraine.
