5.Memorandum submitted by Campaign Against
Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC)
Last year CAMPACC compiled a dossier on how
UK anti-terror laws have been used to terrorise migrant communities.
We submitted this dossier to the Privy Council review of the 2001
legislation. We also submitted a two page summary statement which
was signed by groups representing over 100,000 people. Both are
available at http://www.cacc.org.uk/ATCSAsummary.htm
We are working with migrant and refugee community
groups to update some aspects of that dossier. We would like to
present additional information when the Committee holds its hearings.
For now we have two additional comments about Parliament's role.
1. The terms of reference for your inquiry
are suitably wide-ranging but are also ideological, pre-empting
key issues that should be investigated. For example, you assume
that community relations are harmed by the threat of terrorism.
Rather, such problems result from persecution by the state authorities,
mass-media scares, institutional racism, etc which use the supposed
threat of terrorism as a pretext for political agendas.
2. Regardless of Parliament's intentions
in approving anti-terror laws, it is complicit in arbitrary attacks
on civil liberties. In particular the High Court accepted the
following interpretations of anti-terror powers:
— That the police can carry out stop-and-search
exercises simply on the basis of a belief that terrorist acts
may be planned in an area ie, needing no specific grounds to target
individuals (as in the case of protestors at the DSEI arms fair
in September 2003).
— That the Home Secretary may intern
a foreign national for an indefinite period, simply on the basis
of "hearsay" that the person may have links with "international
terrorism" ie, needing no evidence at all.
In both cases the Court rejected legal challenges
on grounds that they were challenging the will of Parliament,
as expressed in the wording of anti-terror laws. Therefore MPs
remain complicit in such injustice until they vote to repeal the
special anti-terror powers.
Going beyond interpretation of those specific
laws, the High Court also accepted the use of information which
may have been obtained from torture, as a basis for interning
foreign nationals. Such a prospect effectively encourages torture
in various detention centres around the world. Parliament must
share responsibility for such effects of the law that it approved.
12 September 2004
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