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Stamping Out Rights
This report is an advocacy document which sets out the nature of current anti-terrorism legislation relating to police powers, and how that power has impacted human rights and the rule of law. In the effort to cooperate in countering terrorism, many Commonwealth countries have enacted new anti-terrorism laws or strengthened existing security provisions. Following the terrorist attacks in the US in 2001, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373 urged member states to take adequate measures to counter terrorism and its financing. With terror-tactics changing and governments’ formulating strategies and responses to counter the changing tactics, many Commonwealth countries have either strengthened existing security provisions or enacted new anti-terrorism legislation. The CHRI’s 2005 report "Police Accountability: Too Important to Neglect, Too Urgent to Delay" urged police reforms across the Commonwealth. Only two years later, the CHRI finds that far from improving the practices of civilian policing, anti-terrorism legislation throughout the Commonwealth has had the counter-effect by pushing police further away from democratic policing. Instances of enforced disappearance, torture and extra-judicial killings are highlighted in the 2007 report to demonstrate how human rights violations have often been the result of hastily enacted, ill-considered laws, even as international consensus is still being sought for a clear definition of "terrorism." The six chapters deal with various aspects of policing, previous reports and instances of human rights violations in member countries. Listing of international provisions, conventions and treaties that exist for the enforcement of human rights is a valuable database. Effective and practical solutions to terrorism lie in the real and not cosmetic adherence to universal standards of human rights. CHRI maintains that a compromise of these standards is counter-productive. The CHRI 2007 Report presses for the reform of policing and laws in compliance with universally accepted human rights standards. When states themselves use guerrilla tactics to achieve their own ends, so-called "legitimate" state action, or "legitimated violence", becomes difficult to distinguish from terrorist activities. In the absence of a clear definition, police must determine on a case-by-case basis when, how and to whom these laws should be applied. A democratic model for police accountability shows how effective accountability requires scrutiny of policing. Fake encounters are a case in point. A "fake encounter" is the killing of a "suspect by the police during a staged gun battle". The victim may or may not be in police custody at that time. The police later claim that the victim was a suspected terrorist, a militant or a dangerous criminal. The expansion of police powers to stop and search, arrest without charge, and extend periods of preventive detention have increased the potential for human rights abuse. The report should be read by not only activists, lawyers and media professionals but, more importantly, by police officials who need to be sensitised.
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The
launch of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative’s (CHRI) 2007
Report to the Commonwealth Heads of Government, Stamping Out Rights:
The impact of anti-terrorism laws on policing, focuses on the need
for police and legislative reform in the Commonwealth in an age of
terrorism. Released at CHRI’s 20th anniversary conference in London,
last month, the report highlights disturbing trends in counter-terrorism
laws passed, and the resulting police abuses, on the basis of the
preservation of national security.