Start with the end: it is not an easy one. and it has been challenging philosophers for a while (though it is certainly not the most baffling definition challenge around). As related to this discussion, the right for freedom of speech is taken as very intimate, as a part of being complete (within a social environment, granted, but shutting you up is close enough to telling you what to think, according to some views), while actions (with a more "physical presence" in the world) are taken as more likely to affect your fellow members of society. I'm not saying this solves it (hardly), rather that there is quite a simple intuition that people tend to follow (and at least that is not too hard to see).
As for the rights comments you made, I'm not sure in which way you mean that. It sounds like you are suspicious of the whole "right thing" altogether, and mostly for it's ambiguous nature/lack of clear cut justification-manifestation of "where do these rights actually come from". (I take that mainly from "To me 'rights' don't have much relationship to the way society works, or is forced to work", which I hardly suspect you mean descriptively - surely you'd know that is not universally true - but rather that "they shouldn't be" - etc. ). If so then sure, you're not alone in that (I don't know exactly what your field is` but you seem to know something about it). Philosophers been fighting it, and the challenge to show the above has always been there.
However, it does not mean necessarily we need to fold and give it up entirely. Even if there really are "contradicting", indeed, "seemingly excluding" rights (though obviously that would make balancing them more tricky. I have to admit at least that ). I'd say the big question (at least politically, if not deeply, or theoretically) is always: what's the alternative? what sort of arrangement would provide us with the necessary protection of our individual, as well as social-communal needs, interests, desires, etc?
As for the specific case (which I must say I find less interesting by the moment) it is, at least to me personally, quite sad if he got the harsh treatment "because he's no one". That cases tend to be resolved in favor of power (and, as you say, manifesting injustice) is both the way things are and a reason for us to be on guard. Nothing new here, actually. But this is one that never goes away.