Europe, Headlines, Human Rights

RIGHTS-BRITAIN: New Law Strengthens 9/11 Hangover

By Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Jan 23 2004 (IPS) - A new bill gives the British government wide-ranging new powers in what it may determine to be an emergency.

The bill follows an Act of Parliament introduced following 9/11 that vests the government with powers to detain foreigners without trial indefinitely. Fourteen men are kept in custody at present under this Act, some of them for more than two years.

The new Civil Contingencies Bill brought in this month gives the government new powers to deal with terror attacks and other emergencies.

Under new powers set out in the bill the government would have the right to send armed forces into any place in Britain, ban movement of people and vehicles, order evacuation, seize, confiscate or destroy property with our without confiscation, and ban assembly of people.

The bill also seeks to empower the government to overrule Acts of Parliament.

The bill seeks to arm the government particularly against chemical or biological attacks. It covers situations of war, terrorism, contamination of land with “harmful biological, chemical or radioactive matter or oil”, flooding, and “disruption of plant life or animal life.”

Some of these new powers seek to handle situations such as natural flooding or the foot-and-mouth disease. But the thrust of the new powers is against the threat of terror attacks of varying kinds.

The bill is a considerably watered down version of an earlier draft tabled by the government, which was amended following strong objections by a group of members of parliament (MPs).

The previous draft sought to activate the new powers in the face of a threat to “political, administrative or economic stability.” The new draft defines an emergency as a situation which “threatens serious damage to human welfare, the environment or the security of the UK (United Kingdom) or part of it.”

The MPs objected to the “one-size-fits-all” nature of the earlier definition. “We are concerned that as a result the draft bill does not provide adequate safeguards to protect against the misuse of emergency powers,” chairman of the MPs committee Lewis Moonie said earlier.

“In the wrong hands it could be used to undermine or even remove legislation underpinning the British constitution, and infringe human rights,” Moonie said.

The panel asked the government to prohibit regulations which would contravene the European Convention on Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions or “those Acts of Parliament which form the bedrock of our Constitution.”

The government agreed also to restore the right for courts to review decisions taken under the powers the bill would provide.

The bill is set to become law after it is debated and approved by both houses of Parliament later this year. Aspects of the bill could still be amended in the course of those debates.

“The government has taken a step in the right direction,” says Sami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty. “Their initial proposals were quite terrifying. But these present proposals remain worrisome.”

Chakrabarti said “sweeping and draconian powers should not be exercised unless there is a serious and immediate threat to life and limb.”

Reinstating the powers of courts to consider human rights abuses under these laws was “an important concession,” she said. “I very much hope that further compromises will be possible when the Bill is debated in Parliament.”

Civil rights campaigners fear that new emergency laws could become particularly potent taken together with government powers under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (ACTSA).

“We are talking here of a situation in which the government could arrest someone for not obeying the emergency laws and then use another law to detain them indefinitely,” said a spokesperson for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, an independent group in London.

Under ACTSA the government needs no evidence to prove that a suspect is a terrorist or a threat to security, but only “reasonable grounds” to believe this is the case. They can only be defended by “special advocates” approved by the government.

Amnesty International says the detention of 14 men under this Act “violates the right to the presumption of innocence to which anyone subject to criminal proceedings is entitled.”

A spokeswoman for Human Rights Watch in London told IPS earlier that “it is amazing that if the evidence is good enough to hold them in detention for two years, these people have not been put on trial.”