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An end to our basic Human Rights?

On May 24th 2007 a story broke in the press about three people who where under control orders, a measure taken by the UK government to try and monitor potential terrorists, had dissapeared and where presumed missing. John Reid was called to parliment for an emergancy session to explain what had happened. You can watch his official statement on BBC Parliament . To simplify his statement to the main points; he blamed the system for the failure, claiming that the governement didn’t have enough powers to monitor terror suspects in a way which would ensure that they could not escape. He finished by saying that new legislation may mean that the UK has to ‘opt-out’ of the European laws on Human Rights, previously hammered out in the building pictured.

I think this is one of the most shocking and frightening changes to UK legislation our government has announced in it’s ten year tenure of rule. There are many factors that are each as equally as disturbing as the other, so I will try and distill what worries me so intently into managable bite-size chunks.

The first detail that jumps out at me is exactly who these people are and why this information is lambasted all over the media. All of the media was reporting on information they received from the Government, not journalism or investigation from inside the media itself. This means the Government told the media themselves of the missing persons that they consider dangerous.

It would be easy to dive head first into conspiracy theories at this point about misinformation, but I don’t have too. As we have seen over WMD’s, the Iraq war, and David Kelly, this Government simply cannot be trusted when it comes to information they release to the public. Before Alistair Campbell resigned as Press Officer for 10 Downing Street, we all knew what to look for and when to doubt, but since [his] departure it seems as though the spin-doctors have gone into overdrive, releasing all sorts of snippets of so-called ‘intelligence’ much like a chicken running riot without its head (the aforementioned Alistair Campbell).

So the obvious course of action would be to request (under the Freedom of Information Act 2000) details of who these people were and what threat the British intelligence services thought they posed. But I know the Government’s response would simply be that this is sensitive information that cannot be released due to national security implications, even if I was to sign a non-disclosure agreement. The Freedom of Information Act is a joke when it comes to government anyway, as they’ll dismiss it for whatever reason. It is now managed by the newly created Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA for short), which is ironic as the last time I checked we do not have a constitution in the UK, or anywhere in Europe for that matter. So this department manages legislation that doesn’t even exist. But I’m getting off the original point of this article.

I have a lot of faith in our security services and I strongly believe they are probably up there as one of the best in the world. Hard to measure I know, it’s not like there is an annual Intelligence Awards although I think there should be, it would be great. With that glowing endorsement, I am very confident that if our security services actually thought these people were a threat, they would have kept tabs on them, not asked them to pop into their local Police station once a week to have a chat.

John Reid said that the security services did not have enough powers to stop or prevent suspected terrorists from doing all their terror work. Well we are told that they stopped a great number of attempts before July 7th bombings in 2005, at which point our laws were comparatively liberal when compared to todays. I think what he was suggesting was that he wanted the powers to lock people up if the security services believed they may pose a terror threat. Sounds good doesn’t it? Get rid of all the ‘bad’ people before they act. The problem is that our law states clearly that everyone is considered innocent until proven guilty, in a court of law and in-front of an impartial jury. So the actions John Reid wants to take completely rewrite our current laws, turning ‘innocent until proven guilty’ to ‘guilty until proven innocent’.

What’s the big deal with that? Well quite simply this means that anybody the government slightly suspects is a terrorist or involved in terrorism (even the receptionist - thanks Bill Bailey), [they] will be able to lock up in a UK style Guantanamo Bay prison. No trial by jury or any evidence presented to anyone; do not pass go; do not collect Â£200; go to jail! The removal of bad people before they do bad things seems like a wonderful idea in theory, but is rubbish in practice. Many books have covered the subject. Famously Philip K. Dick’s short story, Minority Report tells the tale of a state that prosecutes people for crimes they haven’t actually committed yet.The story examines the moral dilemmas surrounding whether you can actually incarcerate someone for a crime they haven’t committed, even if it is believed strongly they are going to commit it, mainly around the concept of free will (I use ‘concept‘ with caution). This is effectively what John Reid is asking for and what the US is doing with Guantanamo Bay.

The problem that our Government has is that we are a part of Europe and have to abide by the very European laws we have lobbied for and signed up too, along with every other country in the European Community. The European Law on Human Rights clearly states that like British Law, any suspect is innocent until proven guilty and authorities are only allow to hold suspects for up to 48 hours before charging them, or releasing them. This is the very law that our Government is now trying to change, but can’t without opting out of all of the previous EU Laws on Human Rights that we have signed up to. The anti-Europe lobby will love this as it is pointing out what they have been shouting about forever. I personally am glad that we are part of Europe and governed by pan European law, because it ensures that when our government (or any other European government) tries to inflict laws that fly in the face of freedom, they can’t. The larger the governing body, the more sensible it becomes, especially when there are delegates from all creeds and cultures involved. The only way John Reid can get this new legislation into UK law is to ignore current EU legislation, which will cause a lot of trouble and could bring even more problems in future - trade embargo’s being an obvious first step.

But the biggest problem is that terrorism isn’t really what the government is worried about. It may be true that the laws they are trying to pass will help the security services and although I severely doubt it, the government might think they are doing this for our greater good. But we have seen time and time again that powers like these are open to abuse and humans are easily swayed by all new powers given to them, causing corruption and abuse of power. What is to stop authorities locking up anybody under new terrorism laws for any offence? Sounds a little Orwellian, but think about it. Someone, like your humble author, who publishes or promotes ideas that hurt the government or highlights something they don’t want people to notice will suddenly disappear. Removed from society under terrorism laws with the authorities claiming they ‘were a threat to national security’. Any family orfriends trying to discover where their loved one is will get no information from the authorities and may never see them again. Does that sounds fair? You may think I am being blowing this out of proportion, but the laws the government are talking about introducing will allow them to do exactly that. Couple those laws with the other recent suggestion of giving Police more powers when stopping and searching and I can see a very scary future for UK ~~citizens~~, sorry ~~subjects~~, prisoners.

The three terror suspects, or failed asylum seekers? Going back to the three supposed terrorist suspects that have gone AWOL, I don’t believe they have without support from; or coerced by our Government. They may have been deported as failed asylum seekers! They may have been killed! In fact who knows? What I do know is that our Government has not released mug shots like this before, and looking at the photos they do not look anything like the pictures that Police take when they create an official record of a suspect. I couldn’t begin to speculate where the photo’s are sourced from. So what are [they] doing? John Reid said these people do not pose a significant risk to the United Kingdom, so why tell us about it in the first place. This is exactly the sort of thing the Government would usually keep quiet. Actually this is the sort of thing MI5 and MI6 work on every day and never ever tell us about until a resulotion. They have not, until last week, ever talked about on going operations. Especially if those operations had gone wrong, as would be the case if we were to believe the Government. All of this makes me suspect that once again we are being lied to, but why?

I believe the Government has released this information solely to try and pull public opinion behind their moves to create new legislation that will detrimentally effect our human rights, currently protected by EU law. To announce that the UK was opting out of EU Human Rights laws would cause a public outcry. But couple it with a fabricated story of about some medium to low risk terrorists that may or may not exist, suddenly everyone gets scared and blindly supports legislation without thinking of the consequences.

Hopefully all of this new legislation with either be laughed out of the House of Lords or Gordon Brown dismisses it when he comes to power as Prime Minister. But if neither happens, I am seriously considering my future in this country because 2008 is starting to sound like 1984.

If you are interested or worried by all of this, please go out there into the ether and find out more yourself, tell me about it using the comment box below. If you are opposed to this new legislation, you can help support a number of movements that fight for human rights;

If you feel strongly that John Reid is pushing the UK Government further over a line it has already crossed when it comes to basic human rights, please give to either organisations as they are fighting for our rights (or both if your pockets are well lined). If you do agree with John Reid, then don’t worry your human rights are safe in the hands of the Government.

Since the writing of this article, I have found a number of other resources that you should definitely read.