Issue No. 591
International
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20 - 26 June 2002 Issue No. 591 International |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Lean, mean, eavesdropping machine
These days, despotic regimes are not the only ones sidelining democratic processes and citizens' rights, writes Mukul Devichand from London
Somewhere in the world, a country's interior minister declares that henceforth, almost all official bodies can access certain private information about the country's inhabitants at will. From now on, he announces, no judges will be involved or search warrants issued. A person's history of phone calls, letters and e-mails and a list of all the websites they have ever viewed may now be accessed by almost any government employee.
What country is this? Earlier the same week, the same interior minister steamrolls new immigration legislation through. He allows almost no time for the people's elected representatives to debate the confusing new system. The new law means that potential refugees will henceforth be kept in sealed-off centres and their children made to attend segregated schools.
Just two days later, the same minister proposes to his country's neighbours -- all of which are prosperous northern European nations -- that they will withhold international aid donations to countries that refuse to take back those who flee them as refugees, even if those countries are desperately poor and war-ravaged.
The country is Britain under Tony Blair's New Labour Party and the minister is Home Secretary David Blunkett. All of the above occurred last week in Britain. Meanwhile, the population was engrossed in other affairs, such as the English football team's progress in the World Cup and the hangover that followed the celebrations of Queen Elizabeth II's jubilee. Still, just as the early summer breeze dispelled the heavy grey clouds that dominated Britain's skies, so are there signs that at least some people are beginning to notice what is happening in the "mother of democracies", the ancient title that Britain's parliamentary system bears.
In the historical parliament chamber the rot was not completely unopposed. A 30-strong group of rebel Labour members of parliament (MPs) voted against the asylum-seeker law. Neil Gerrard, the London MP who leads the group in opposing the party line, told Al-Ahram Weekly, "The bill was rushed through too fast, with so many last-minute changes that we weren't even sure what they meant."
"That is bad news. No one is saying that the idea of Britain as a democracy is under threat exactly," says Roger Bingham of the British civil rights group Liberty. "But what we are seeing is a worrying trend in which very extreme government measures are being pushed through. It's about more power and more control of people's basic freedoms," he told the Weekly.
Bingham's case in point is Blunkett's recent proposal to the extension of government powers under the ominously titled Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act. The controversial law allows government officials to demand any information held by phone, Internet and postal companies. The legislation effectively hands over to investigators a complete dossier of a citizen's communications with the outside world.
Police and security agencies have held these powers for two years already but two days ago Blunkett's department tabled a draft order to extend them to a huge range of other government bodies including all local councils, several government departments and semi-official bodies -- even the Food Standards Agency was included in the list. Strikingly, Blunkett extended the powers using a "statutory instrument", a technicality which means there was no requirement for parliament to debate the issue. When newspapers and TV journalists kicked up a fuss, however, Blunket opted to delay the measure rather than go for a full debate.
"What the law means is that thousands of bureaucrats across the UK can get this information without any permission from a judge or any proof of reasonable suspicion of criminal activity," Liberty's Bingham explains. "The person being investigated is not even told that his personal information is being used. Laws such as the RIP Act jeopardise Britain's position as a democratic leader -- rhetoric that it has never hesitated to employ, whether during the country's long colonial history or in its "humanitarian interventions" since. For many, the RIP Act flies in the face of English civil rights legal traditions.
Is this merely a case of the state using the excuse of the war against terrorism to expand at the expense of citizens' rights? As Bingham says, "The new powers are being given to people who do not investigate serious crime or terrorism. But at the same time, the government has shown a shameful tendency to mislead the public, claiming that certain issues are related to terrorism and security issues when they really have nothing to do with them," he concludes.
The same kind of war-on-terror rhetoric is being used to justify harsher controls on asylum seekers and refugees, according to human rights group Amnesty International. "There has been an intermingling of necessary anti-terrorist measures and I must emphasise that they are necessary measures with refugee and asylum issues," Neil Durkin of the organisation's UK office told the Weekly.
Two particularly controversial New Labour asylum proposals were introduced last week. The first, a new asylum bill, was passed using New Labour's overwhelming majority in parliament despite Gerrard-led backbench rebellion. The Labour MP was particularly annoyed with the new law's provision that the children of asylum seekers are now to be educated separately from the local population. "I think it sends the signal that asylum-seekers' children are a problem, that the asylum-seekers themselves are a problem," he told the Weekly. "There's a serious knock-on effect which says that all foreigners are, basically, a problem." He rejects the idea that the war on terror has given the government a license to exclude foreigners, however. "There have been some unhelpful links made with anti- terror policy, but this owes more to the idea that asylum seekers are scroungers," he says. "It's noticeable that when British people think others really have been suffering, as they did during Britain's Kosovo intervention when they were bombarded by TV pictures showing the ethnic Albanians' suffering, they do make refugees feel welcome," he adds. "So I'm weary of making too close a connection. The consequences of 11 September are being felt far more by Muslims and people of Middle Eastern origin, than by asylum-seekers."
Amnesty's Neil Durkin agrees that harsher anti-asylum policies go beyond the war on terror. "Curiously," he says, "asylum applications are actually down across Europe. In the period 1992-2001, they were actually half what they were in the previous period." So, why are Blair and other European leaders now so much harsher in asylum policy? "One can only suppose that European capitals have over- reacted to right-wing electoral successes in places like France and Austria," says Durkin. "They have got it wrong by taking on these policies themselves."
Britain is by no means alone in its increasingly draconian laws. Last Thursday, David Blunkett took a second step towards policing refugees more severely at the European level. Addressing his European Union (EU) counterparts in Luxembourg, he outlined proposals for a coordinated EU policy which would involve border guards and, most controversially, the threat of aid being cut to countries that do not take back people who have fled from them should their asylum applications fail.
The signs are that such draconian measures are waking the British people up from their slumber and that they are beginning to react to anti-democratic practices by their government. The idea of cutting aid has been opposed from within New Labour itself, most notably by International Development Secretary Clare Short. "This new proposal flies in the face of the 1951 Geneva Convention," says Amnesty's Neil Durkin. "There ought to be no conditions on foreign aid. It may even be illegal."
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