Fear cannot set agenda for struggle ahead

By David Cronin

Date: 01/04/04

"YOU can't have civil liberties at the expense of life and limb," Ireland's Justice Minister Michael McDowell declared after he presided over the recent emergency session of his EU counterparts.

It was perhaps an understandable comment at a time when the death toll due to the Madrid attacks was still climbing.

However, the experience of McDowell's own compatriots suggests that eroding civil liberties does nothing to protect life and limb. If anything, draconian laws can fuel the grievances and resentment that sustain conflicts.

For more than two decades, the Irish community in the UK was placed under general surveillance. Introduced by a Labour government in response to IRA pub bombs, the 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) became a pretext for anti-Irish harassment. A 1993 study by Britain's Commission for Racial Equality found that 60% of Irish emigrants surveyed had been stopped and questioned under the act.

Its role in preventing atrocities was marginal. Of the 7,000 people - most of whom were Irish - detained under the law (often for days on end, without access to a lawyer), only 14% had charges brought against them. But its role in some of the best-known miscarriages of justice in recent British history was pivotal. The first man to be charged under the PTA was Paul Hill, who spent 15 years behind bars before the courts accepted that he, and the three other members of the 'Guildford Four', were innocent of the bombing for which they were convicted. According to Paddy Hillyard, the academic who became a leading authority on the PTA, it turned the entire Irish community in Britain into a "suspect people".

The climate of fear that has arisen since the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US has also seen a similar 'stop and search' response. This time, though, it is Muslims who have become the "suspect people".

A study by London-based civil liberties group Statewatch found the number of people stopped and searched under the PTA's successor - the UK's 2000 Terrorism Act - and criminal justice provisions in 2002-03 was 71,100 and that a disproportionate number were Muslims. Almost 70,000 of those arrested are not known to have committed any offence.

The EU as a bloc has not yet introduced anything directly analogous to the PTA.

But last week's summit of EU leaders did pave the way for a system which would give law enforcement agencies carte blanche to snoop on whole communities.

While the far-reaching measures introduced in the US following the Twin Towers and Pentagon attacks have been widely criticized by human rights advocates, the sprawling anti-terrorism action plan adopted by the Union goes even further in some respects.

For example, America's Homeland Security Act stops short of making it compulsory for telecommunications firms to retain details of telephone calls, faxes and emails for inspection by police. The EU action plan does, however, provide for mandatory data retention - a measure that, according to various legal analyses, would contravene the right to privacy clauses in the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 8 of the convention states that intrusive surveillance should only occur in "specified and sanctioned circumstances".

Nor does the US require that everyone who applies for a passport or national ID card has to have their fingerprints taken. But if the EU action plan was implemented to the letter, then all passports and national identity cards issued in the Union would come complete with a microchip containing the holder's fingerprints.

However, this measure may only be of marginal benefit in deterring terrorist attacks. As a new paper by Statewatch points out, Spain already has a compulsory ID card but this did not prevent the 11 March bombings.

Repressive measures resorted to by the US since 11 September 2001 have included detention without trial in Guantanamo Bay and the reported increase in targeting people due to their ethnicity rather than any link to terrorist organizations.

These actions prompted Timothy Edgar, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, to warn recently: "We run the danger of letting our fears, not our values, set public policy. The American public deserves a government that preserves both their security and their liberty."

People who plant bombs on trains during the commuter rush hour obviously set out to cause panic. But experience has shown that a panicky response to vile deeds can do more harm than good.

There has been much talk in the past few years about how, despite their differences, the EU and US adhere steadfastly to common values. Yet both could be letting fear set the agenda.

Article considers the balance to be made between fear of terrorism and infringements of civil liberties in seeking to prevent atrocities.

• Primary Source

http://www.statewatch.org/ http://www.statewatch.org/

http://consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/en/misc/79635.pdf http://consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/en/misc/79635.pdf

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