The obstructions to justice for our Beirut: Negligence, incompetence, intentionality, complicity, and war

By Lynn Zovighian

In contribution with Marwan Khoury and Joseph El-Khoury

The black smoke is bellowing above the streets of our Beirut. The sky is darkening with resentment, anger, and disbelief. Try to stay calm when the streets cannot help but conjoin in panicked, traumatized response. Our collective re-living of August 4 is inadmissible. A third Beirut Port fire since that August afternoon is, no matter how accidental, impermissible. Even our wildest Lebanese imaginations could not have gone this far.

What constitutes a crime? Laws of nations and international courts have always been the authorities that define and delineate what is and is not a criminal offence. As such, when there is a crime, we are bound by the pre-requisite of competent and independent courts that are pre-confirmed as effectively designed to enable and empower justice. In the penal code of any modern state, a crime, by definition, should include actions that represent a danger to the interests of community; a detrimental act to which the state reacts consciously. A state is bound to uphold executive and independent judicial powers that are in measure to identify, arrest, and punish or rehabilitate criminals, as well as legislative power that can draft, ratify, and vote in coherent and enforceable codified law. So, what happens when the rule of law and institutional jurisprudence of a country discredits itself by consequence of its own modus operandi of de-criminalizing serious crime and criminalizing what is considered a threat against the establishment? Does perverse law and lack of rule of law not constitute a crime in of itself? For would it not be criminal if law and order fails to guide, investigate, and bring to fruition what we know and do not know, and guarantee accountability in a timely and enforced manner?

Beirut is teaching us once again that our law and selectively applied legal system alone are today insufficient systems to claim, administer, and set the stage for justice. The very raison d’être of establishing and organizing a state to protect its citizens from harm and enable their quality of life has lost all purpose and presence. What is left of our rule of law is being engulfed in what is becoming not one, two, or three, but rather, a series of Beirut Port fires. This is what consistent and repeated cascading of de-legitimized state institutions looks like. The deficit of competent law and capacity, as well as its damage, is dark and engulfing. Our Beirut Ground Zero is a witness testimony that there is criminality in both inaction and the intentional choice to not subscribe to the requirements and responsibilities of what it means to serve for the public good.

We need a new language when speaking about criminal justice, inhumanity, acts of war, and acts of inaction. Criminology and the epistemological tenets of justice and humanity need to be recalled, reformulated, and capacity-built into new public institutions to serve and safeguard our country.

So, let us re-define the many dimensions that obstruct our fight against criminality that are embedded and rooted in our Lebanon today:

Negligence (verb): a decision to not do what needs to be done.

Incompetence (verb): a behavior demonstrated by lack of expertise, mindfulness, and attention to consequence.

Intentionality (verb): an act of knowingly opting to (i) do what should not be done, or (ii) not do what should be done.

Complicity (verb): a choice to ignore, turn a blind eye, and let things be.

War (verb): a strategy to take up arms militarily, politically, economically, financially, and psychologically against community and country.

Note, that every single one of these nouns and adjectives, as we know them in the English language and in rule of law, are today clearly defined verbs in the context of our Beirut. They are actions and inactions that converge into criminal behavior, and possibly even, dare we say, crimes against humanity. They are generational opportunity costs; a debt we carry from years ago and a burden that is overloading and overpowering the little future we can still imagine for ourselves. And there is no sarcasm in this epistemological exercise on criminology and the law. State breakdown and de-legitimization of the system need to be called out and brought to court for criminalization and justice.

Let us re-establish context: Today was supposed to be yet another day in a very heavy, challenged, and under-resourced personal and collective healing journey for us all. You cannot heal and create a new sense of self, purpose, and normality when, yet another fire engulfs your skies and triggers the worst in every single one of us. Our trauma just capitulated into a form of chronic and deeply toxic stress. We are in a purgatory of psychological abuse.

So, let us call it – what we are experiencing and re-living on the ground – what it really is: a new form of warfare. Our Ground Zero of immeasurable human suffering and value destruction is becoming a perpetual battlefield. We must be careful, for we are at war with little collective human readiness.

Let us break it down further: Why do we treat the Lebanese state apparatus and its various agencies as a system that is an unavoidable, yet burdensome, necessity? Why do we assume that we have no choice and instead, try to work with and around them? Why is it that only our homes and streets are vulnerable to explosion, demolition, and unworthiness? Should the criminals governing our state institutions not also fall down to their knees? There can be no state system without the governance to be held liable.

What courts of law do we now need to create the space to bring down our once official and formal state institutions? What rule of law will have the courage and design to breakdown once carefully woven legal definitions that today are assumptions that are abused with no due process to make way for truth and justice? What jurisprudence do we need to bring accountability to our trauma and tragedies? It goes without saying: if what constitutes a crime is being re-defined by our Beirut Ground Zero, then our Lebanese law and order must also be re-invented and empowered with ensured enforceability.

To close: We too must hold ourselves highly accountable to the ethics that come with our proposed re-definition of what constitutes a crime in this country. We cannot be complicit and excuse the inexcusable. There can be no legitimization of making do with what we have. Today, this September 10 Beirut Port fire is institutionalizing what can no longer be denied: there is a toxic enmity between state and people. Our social contract between system and citizen is handcuffed with no termination clause. We are living in an abusive home with no recourse for justice or even the possibility of foster care. And while this is at the source of our communal anxiety and fading belief in a safe future for ourselves and our children, it is also the starting point for what and how crime must be investigated, measured, and ruled. Our Ground Zero is a repository for evidence that we must use. Not even a third fire that might have burned (intentionally?) some of our data can destroy the human evidence we need to bring to trial clear grounds for termination of this state apparatus.

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Lynn Zovighian is a peacebuilder, Managing Director of The Zovighian Partnership, and a columnist at An-Nahar.

Dr. Joseph El-Khoury is a psychiatrist and university professor. Dr. Marwan Khoury is a forensics scientist working in the field of security and investigations.