Recently in Civil liberties Category

Recently I had an exchange with an old school acquaintance who accused me of defending an enemy of my country, namely Abu Hamza, on my blog. Abu Hamza is currently in jail, having served most of a sentence in the UK for inciting racial hatred, and awaiting extradition to the USA on suspicion of some sort of conspiracy to start a terrorist or jihadist training camp in Oregon. While I dithered over continuing the discussion with this individual, I was provoked into writing this by reading this article in last week's New Statesman, about others facing extradition to the USA under the same odious treaty being used to extradite Abu Hamza.

Further to Tuesday's post about the threat posed by anonymous court testimony, there is a letter in today's paper, in reply to the article I blogged, from two rape campaigners (Cristel Amiss of the Black Women's Rape Action Project and Ruth Hall of Women Against Rape) regarding the threat such testimonies already pose in the workplace disciplinary field; namely, that they know of a woman facing dismissal because of anonymous accusations, which she cannot counter, which she suspects emanate from the man she says raped her. (There's also one from John Laughland - a well-known dictators' defender - about its use in war crimes tribunals.)

Technorati Tags: jill saward, david davis

Among the people who have entered the forthcoming Haltemprice and Howden by-election, triggered by the resignation of David Davis to fight on a civil liberties platform is Jill Saward (campaign site here), who is best known for being the victim of the Ealing Vicarage rape attack in 1986. The last time she was actually famous was in the late 1990s when she was calling for the introduction of what she called a "manslaughter version of rape", i.e. second-degree rape, manslaughter being roughly equivalent to second-degree murder, and suggesting that women who were less than decently dressed might actually be partly to blame for what happened to them. This time, she is openly defending the 42-day detention law, the prevalence of CCTVs and a national DNA database.

The Official Website of Shaykh Pirzada | News | Shaykh Pirzada condemns 42-day detention

Further to the controversy over whether the British Muslim Forum's shaikhs have supported or opposed the position of Khurshid Ahmed, the chairman of the BMF, Shaikh Muhammad Imdad Hussain Pirzada, the director of the Jamia al-Karam and one of the BMF's trustees, has opposed the position of Khurshid Ahmed CBE regarding 42-day detention for suspected terrorists (although he has not condemned him by name):

The founder and principal of Jamia Al-Karam, Shaykh Muhammad Imdad Hussain Pirzada has commented that imprisoning - merely out of suspicion - any individual for up to 42 days does not befit a civilised and developed state such as the United Kingdom. Whilst disagreeing and severely opposing the Counter-Terrorism Bill, Shaykh M I H Pirzada stressed that this Bill is a clear infringement of basic human rights.

Praising the stance of the former Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, Shaykh M I H Pirzada stated, "As a consequence of this, the reaction of the Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, that came in the form of his resignation from Parliament is clear. The courage that he has displayed by giving his resignation is honourable and worthy of praise. Moreover, the Conservative Party has given its indication that if they form the government, they will re-consider and re-examine this Bill."

Appealing to the Muslims, Shaykh M I H Pirzada said, "The Muslims, in particular, have been greatly saddened at the passing of this Bill in the House of Commons by the narrowest of margins, since, it is the Muslims who eventually become the predominant target and victims of such legislation. Therefore, I appeal to all Muslims that they profoundly lobby against this Bill so that this Bill is rejected by the House of Lords."

This should serve as a correction to those who insist that Bareilawis in general are sell-outs or tame "Sufi-wufis", particularly after the antics of certain elements who ran to the media to denounce the Tablighi Jama'at as extremists in order to score petty sectarian points over them by blocking the construction of the Abbey Mills mosque.

We're a nation of interfering traffic wardens | Camilla Cavendish - Times Online

An excellent article (ma sha Allah) in the Times on Thursday (yes, I sometimes read papers other than the Guardian, although in this case I picked it up on the train from someone who had finished with it) about the proliferation of state-funded busybodies and jobsworths which has appeared in the UK recently, which has made a lot of people fearful of involving the state in their lives:

Taller than me, [the official] called for "back-up" on his walkie-talkie because I, with my two small children and our heavy bag, was "obstructing" an empty walkway. We were there because my husband had gone to buy tickets for a train that we were going to miss after Screecher Man had refused our pleas to let us pay on board.

It was his cold hatred that unnerved me, and the acute pleasure he took in making us miss our train. We weren't trying to slip unnoticed across an international border. We were catching the 14.32 to Sutton.

We have become objects of suspicion to institutions that used to make us feel secure: banks, councils, the police. In turn, we distrust them.

A report by Harriet Sergeant for Civitas describes the recent jump in complaints by law-abiding people against the police. A 19-year old student was arrested and detained for five hours for holding a Tube lift door open with his foot. A man was nicked for pulling over to answer a phone call. Each example sounds silly, tabloid. But there are too many to ignore. Surrey Police's recent decision to abandon box-ticking is a measure of their concern about the corrosion of their relationship with the public.

A year ago a respected group of midwives, obstetricians and researchers called the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services wrote to the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson. Their letter said that "there is now no health professional, or official help line that parents feel they can safely ask for help". They described people who avoid health visitors, because they see them as "health police". They told of mothers with postnatal depression who will not go to the doctor for fear of alerting social services. They said that an increasing number of children are taught at home because "the educational system is now seen as part of the surveillance process". Their letter made 15 points, many devastating.

This should give anyone a clue who wonders why people resist obvious moves to increase the powers of state bodies, as with the stubborn refusal of the Irish to ratify the new European treaty by referendum, despite its approval by their country's two main political parties. I question the comparison to traffic wardens, though - most traffic wardens seem to be foreigners, usually West Africans.

The Sun reported today that "Britain's top Muslim" had given his support for the government's plan to increase the time police can hold someone on terrorist charges to 42 days, from the current 28. The man involved is one Khurshid Ahmed, the chair of the so-called British Muslim Forum. He is quoted as saying:

"I am delighted the Government has listened to the concerns we expressed.

"I am reassured safeguards proposed go a long way in protecting civil liberties.

"As we saw in the July 7 attacks, Muslims are just as likely to be victims of plots as any other British people.

"We have a shared interest in the police and security services ensuring our protection.

"The Muslim community will do all it can to protect our society and our values."

As it is late on a work-night, I have to point out that his organisation might be better called the British Bareilawi Forum, because its Board of Trustees seems to consist entirely of Bareilawi imams and scholars (how much input they have into the BMF's policies I am not sure, although Shaikh Muhammad Pirzada's homepage has a link to their old page). I am not sure if they represent most of eveb the Bareilawi community in stances like these; many of the young seek ways to break through old divisions in the community such as the Bareilawi-Deobandi conflict, and might not take too kindly to a Bareilawi organisation trying to prove its "moderation" and score sectarian points by agreeing to a government proposal which puts them (particularly the young men) in danger.

As you can see, I have not blogged much this week, mainly out of being tired after getting up in the morning to do various driving jobs. However, it's Sunday and I'm well and truly recovered, so I've decided to come back (actually, I did Friday and yesterday as well, but could not write well when I was tired).

Yesterday a campaign was launched to ban a device called the Mosquito, which emits a high-pitched sound audible only to young people, intended to disperse groups of them who loiter in public places and cause a nuisance. Small shop owners say they are effective against such groups and protects the public from them. The "Buzz off" campaign is backed by the children's commissioner of England and Wales, Al Aynsley-Green, who lays out the fairly obvious disadvantage: that they are indiscriminate.

BBC - Radio 4 - News and Current Affairs - Recruiting Muslim Spies

This is a BBC Radio 4 programme about attempts by the British security services to recruit Muslims as informants, supposedly to help them track down terrorists. People allege that they have been pressured to join by threats related to their immigration status or past criminal activities, and on one occasion setting up an arrest in Pakistan as an attempt to force them into joining. The reasons why Muslims are reluctant to become spies is obvious - it's against Islam and specifically forbidden in the Qu'ran, which is made clear in the programme, but another aspect not discussed in the programme is the fact that employees of the security services are required to lie about their occupation to even their close family, by telling them they work for the Foreign Office or the Government Communications Bureau. Given Muslims' past experience with the security services elsewhere, particularly in the USA where people were set up by government agents recruiting for fake terrorist plots, I don't believe MI5 et al will have much luck in recruiting Muslims to inform on each other.

This morning they were talking on Today about the woman who called herself the "Lyrical Terrorist", who wrote ghoulish poems about slicing people's heads off and was convicted of possessing material "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism" last month. The conviction has caused an outcry, with some, like Matthew Parris, alleging that she was prosecuted for "thought crime".

For myself, I suspect that the reason there has been an outcry over Samina Malik, to the extent that serious talk is now being made, and not just in civil libertarian circles, of rewriting the laws under which she was convicted, is simply that Samina Malik, unlike those previously convicted for such offences without any evidence of actual terrorist activity, is a woman. She may or may not be an aspiring terrorist, but what she has been, like anyone else who downloads such material over the internet, is pretty naive and stupid.

CCTV is no silver bullet - it risks making life less safe - Guardian Unlimited

A timely article by Libby Brooks about the proliferation of CCTV cameras in the UK. We have 20% of the world's total and there is no restriction on private organisations putting them up. I notice it most when I'm out driving, because every few yards there is yet another camera or set of cameras, and the feeling of being spied on is unsettling. Why do they need to have so many? Of course, being caught inadvertently doing 3mph over the speed limit is also a worry.

The article mentions how the CCTV epidemic has even found its way into small towns, how its effectiveness in guaranteeing our safety is limited and unproven, and its effect of making us value our privacy much less, hence the rise of programmes like Big Brother, something I had never thought of.

Chicken Yoghurt » Public Service Announcement

Yesterday, several British political blogs were pulled down, including Bloggerheads, that of the former ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, Bob Piper and Boris Johnson, when their web host gave in to threatening letters from lawyers acting for the Uzbek/Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov, who is trying to buy Arsenal football club. The threats were in response to allegations posted on Murray's blog, which were reproduced here among other places. I can't testify that what Murray says is true, of course, but Murray himself says has not received any correspondence from Usmanov's lawyers. They have gone for the easy option of simply censoring his claims by leaning on his web hosts. (The whole article is still available at Indymedia. More: Pickled Politics, Serious Golmal, David T @ Harry's Place, Iain Dale.)

Guardian Unlimited: Faith schools should not be tax-funded, and here's why

This is a reaction by a feminist to the decision by the Catholic church in Ireland to tell schools to shut down their Amnesty International groups (as one school in Belfast has already done) on account of the organisation's move to support women's "right" to abortion. I opposed this at the time, not only because it could cost the organisation support for its core work - freeing prisoners of conscience - but because it simply has nothing to do with that core work; it is a distraction from it.

However, for the Catholic church to tell schools not to support Amnesty anymore is reprehensible - it gives the impression that the Catholic church, or that section of it, is so concerned with opposing abortion that it is willing to stop those under its control from helping other innocent people. I fail to see why such groups cannot continue to work with AI on the issues in which they were previously involved, which is presumably the bulk of ordinary supporters' work, such as writing letters to governments telling them to free prisoners of conscience. I don't agree that it justifies ending state-funded faith schools, but it's a sad reflection on the attitudes of some religious people.

Technorati Tags: amnesty international

Amnesty International last week announced that it had abandoned its policy of neutrality on the issue of abortion in favour of supporting it "in some circumstances", including pregnancies resulting from rape or incest or when the mother's life or health is at stake. Naturally, this has caused a lot of upset, with the Catholic church threatening to withdraw support from the group. Cath Elliot, "a feminist and a trade unionist" who works in local government, wrote an article for Comment is Free supporting the new position, alleging that "forcing a woman to continue with a pregnancy against her will is a continuation of the violence against her"; Sunny at Pickled Politics agrees.

Given that I'm a Muslim, you might guess what my position on abortion is (not pro, although not as strictly anti as the Catholic church is). However, it seems like another example of an organisation succumbing to "mission creep", involving itself in matters which have nothing to do with the reason it was set up - rather like the Soil Association threatening to remove organic status from air-freighted African produce because of the environmental damage air-freighting causes. Amnesty's main work is to free prisoners of conscience, people jailed for peacefully-held beliefs. It also opposes capital punishment - a policy adopted more recently, and sometimes controversial; I remember seeing a letter in their magazine from someone "shocked" at being asked to write on behalf of a mass murderer facing execution in Guatemala.

However, abortion is a totally separate issue, and it seems that they have opted for a "western secular liberal" stance rather than remaining a broad organisation fighting for political freedoms. Surely there are already enough people fighting for women's abortion "rights"; for Amnesty International to take this on as a side issue hardly helps that cause but hurts its own, because of the inevitable falling-off of funding. It is a mistake.

This morning I heard a news item, marking a month since a ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces came into force, involving one Dave West, a club owner on Jermyn Street, London W1, who was attempting to defy the ban. He apparently had a sign on the entrance to his lap-dancing joint saying "smokers welcome", and was insisting that the smoking ban was an infringement on some 14 million people's civil liberties. He has hired Cherie Blair's legal firm, Matrix Chambers, to fight his case. Excuse me while I decide whether to wheeze or throw up.

Technorati Tags: apple store, bentalls, kingston

This afternoon I had my third encounter with the police under the present anti-terrorism régime. However, it's the first time that suspicion has been raised about me personally.

Kingston has an Apple Store, which like other such shops, has a room full of Macs which offer free internet access. When I'm near an Apple Store, I always go in to check my email and my blog, so as to approve any legitimate comments and delete any spam. Others go in for similar email-related purposes and to engage in long chats over various chat systems in various languages. The staff must know me: I go in there often, visit the same websites, stay about 15 minutes (less than I do in Regent Street, because Kingston is near my home and I've no need to stay an hour) and go.

In the wake of the recent disappearance, as yet unresolved, of Madeleine McCann on the Algarve in Portugal, nobody who listens to the British media could have missed the flood of smug mums and drive-by dads castigating the McCann family for leaving their daughter unsupervised for half-an-hour at a time while they ate just yards away (more here). On the Vanessa Feltz show the other day, however, a crazy idea which was first mooted a few years ago was resurrected: that of implanting chips into kids' bodies so that their location can be detected any time and anywhere. Feltz dug up the inventor who had first proposed such technology a few years ago, but had dropped it due to the controversy it caused. Now, it's back, with this nutty inventor having received enquiries from numerous countries, and what better time to discuss it than when a little girl has gone missing?

Is the smoking ban a good idea? | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

In a few weeks' time, smoking in enclosed public spaces will become illegal in the UK; such places include pubs and bars, the usual places people go to socialise. The Guardian, today, dedicated its entire G2 section (its magazine-sized feature section) to the subject: of how smoking was perceived, and represented in culture through the decades, and how its advertising changed, particularly with increasing legal restrictions until its advertising was banned in 2003. The lead feature, however, consists of two articles, one by Christopher Hitchens opposing the ban, the other by Simon Hoggart, the paper's political sketch-writer, supporting it. It's worth quoting Hoggart's closing statement:

In America I saw this sign in an office: "My pleasure is beer, and this creates urine. Your pleasure is smoking, and this creates poisonous fumes. Don't pollute my air space, and I promise not to piss on your desk." Precisely.

Naomi Wolf has an article in today's Guardian entitled Fascist America, in 10 easy steps, which lists ten things governments generally do when turning a country from a democracy to a dictatorship. It's not the first time I've seen a comparison between Bush's America and fascism (see this animation with fourteen characteristics of a fascist state which, it is argued, the USA under Bush clearly displays), but although Wolf refers to other types of dictatorship, including military and communist ones, using the term "fascist" prominantly misses the point. There have been plenty of countries, particularly in the third world, which have slipped into dictatorship by steps similar to those Wolf outlines - there are several countries in the Middle East right now which have fake democracies with freedoms curtailed by "states of emergency" which have lasted decades. Screaming fascism leads people to retreat to a misguided sense of security; what the USA - and, to a lesser extent, other western countries - show signs of relapsing into is the state of a miserable third-world banana republic. (More: Lenin's Tomb.)

Sunday Telegraph: A passport to misery, if you ask me...

Jenny McCartney, in today's Sunday Telegraph, on the bureaucratic nightmare that the British government's demand that all new passport applicants attend a face-to-face interview at one of twenty interviewing centres (at their own expense, of course). Among those to be asked is when, precisely, they moved into their present address, something I could not answer off the top of my head. I know it was in the second half of September 2001, but that's about all. A few weeks ago, of course, they used the excuse that it would be a once-in-a-lifetime thing - now they are telling us that people renewing their passports will have to do the same from 2009.