Blair unveils new security measures for Britain
Controversial new laws would allow government to deport or exclude people it thinks 'incite hatred.'
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has announced new measures to deport extremists who "incite hatred." The
Guardian reports that the the list of
suggested reasons for deportation include "fostering hatred, advocating violence to further a person's beliefs, or justifying or validating such violence."
Mr. Blair also said that he was prepared to a change Britain's Human Rights Act "in repects of interpretation of the European convention on Human Rights" if someone tried to fight the new laws in the courts.
"The circumstances of our national security have now self-evidently changed, and we believe we can get the necessary assurances from the countries to which we will return the deportees against their being subject to torture or ill-treatment," he said.
The new measures would also include financing or aiding attacks, receiving terrorism training and the "glorifying or condoning of terrorism" (including on websites and in bookstores) as well as what many consider the most controversial change - allowing the police to hold a suspect for up to three months instead of the current 14 days.
CNN reports that Blair said there would be a one-month consultation period with different groups, including some from Britain's Muslim community, to develop new rules for "excluding and deporting people from Britain."
In an analysis for the
BBC, chief political correspondent John Pienaar said Blair's statement was "
hugely significant." When Blair says the "rules of the game are changing" he means the balance between rights and security, writes Mr. Pienaar, and that means that "confrontation seem certain on several front: in the courts, outside Parliament with the human rights lobby and perhaps inside the Commons on the extent of the powers Blair has unveiled."
At his
final news conference before his summer break, Blair tried to give assurances to the wider Muslim community, saying the new measures were aimed at "
extremists who do not represent Islam." But the
BBC reports that civil rights groups said Blair's plan "attacked key human rights and
would jeopardize national unity."
"It seems he no longer has much truck for fundamental human rights at all [said Shami Chakrabarti of the group Liberty]. He's talking quite actively about deporting people to face torture around the world - that is completely unacceptable and plays into the hands of terrorists."
Reuters reports that most human rights groups in Britain have "taken a step back" since the London bombings on July 7, but they are starting to be
increasingly concerned. They say new measures aren't as harsh as those introduced in the heydays of the IRA in the 70s, but they are moving in that direction.
"It is unclear whether in themselves the new measures will present any enormous (violations), but they are consistent with a trend of corrosion of civil liberties here [in Britain]," said Sonya Sceats, international law expert at think-tank Chatham House. Some lawyers say even existing antiterrorism laws breach European standards and could force London to opt out of parts of the European Convention on Human Rights. Meanwhile, Blair also responded to Thursday's statements by Ayman Al Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's second-in-command that the US and Britain would face
more acts of terrorism if they didn't leave "Iraq and all Muslim lands." Blair said it was a "complete obscenity" for Al Qaeda to justify terrorism against Britain when its terrorist attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan were killing hundreds of innocent civilians.
For his part, Blair has
refused to link the London bombings to his government's support for the US-led war in Iraq, but his Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said this week that the British presence in Iraq was
helping to fuel the insurgency there. Meanwhile polls show that 85 percent of Britons believe that British involvement in Iraq played a role in making their country a target for terrorism.
One of the biggest problems Britain and the US now face in confronting terrorism, argues Jason Burke in a
Guardian commentary, is that
Al Qaeda is no longer an organization (that function has largely been destroyed after 9/11) but an idea.
"...we need to face up to the simple truth that Bin Laden, Zawahiri et al do not need to organize attacks directly. They merely need to wait for the message they have spread around the world to inspire others. Al Qaeda is now an idea, not an organization ...
There may have been no mass uprising in the Islamic world, something that is due to the sense and humanity of the vast bulk of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims rather than any counter-terrorist strategy pursued by the west, but there are an increasing number of angry people who have answered the call.
Al Zawahiri portrayed himself as a warrior and a statesman in the video broadcast yesterday. He did not need any props to demonstrate his extraordinary gift for media manipulation.
Security writer Andrew Gilligan, writing in
The Asian Age says that, while Blair and Mr. Straw may be saying one thing publicly, "many in his own department, just like the think-tank Chatham House [which recently released a report trying Britain involvement in Iraq to July 7], have no doubt at all that there is a link between the London bombs and the presence of British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan." Mr. Gilligan argues that Britain
can't afford to put off confronting the problem.
Britain needs to decide. Do we share the American neocon view, which is that Al Qaeda's demand for Western troop withdrawal and disengagement from the Muslim world is essentially a tactical one to demonstrate Islamist strength and Western weakness; and that conceding it would be a fatal defeat in the "existential struggle" now taking place between the rival ideologies of Islamism and Westernism?
Or do we take the view that, though the Islamists may indeed want to create an existential struggle, it is not for us to oblige them by engaging them on ground of their own choosing; that Islamism has no hope of conquering the West; that the best way to strengthen Islamism is to proceed as we have been doing, and the best way to turn down the gas under this ideology is to change our ways?
In an interview Friday with the
BBC, former CIA agent Robert Baer says that if Al Qaeda has become "an idea" then the only way to defeat it is not by force, but by removing "the causes for the hate and that
would include the war in Iraq - saying otherwise is just silly."
Also...
•
US recruitment hit by Iraq effect (
BBC)
•
The terrorist theory of victory (
PHXnews.com)
•
Rethinking professional military education (
The Heritage Foundation)
• Feedback appreciated. E-mail
Tom Regan
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