INTERVIEW:The debate on human rights in the UK is 'pretty scary', according to campaigner Shami Chakrabarthi, writes CAROL COULTER
THE THREATS to the UK’s Human Rights Act at present being voiced by a number of Conservative politicians have implications well beyond these islands and even Europe, according to Shami Chakrabarthi.
The director of UK-based human rights body Liberty was speaking to The Irish Times during a conference on the European Convention on Human Rights in Dublin. She referred to a proposal from a certain politician to replace the Human Rights Act, which incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into British law, with a British Bill of Rights.
While she said she took “some comfort” from the fact the deputy prime minister and Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, had said the Human Rights Act “is here to stay”, she pointed out it was not protected in the coalition agreement. Instead, a commission has been created to look at a British Bill of Rights.
“For a mature democracy like the UK to turn its back on universal human rights in favour of a British Bill of Rights wrapped in the Union Jack would send a message around the world,” she said. “I know this from colleagues in Egypt, in Russia and other countries who have been working so hard for human rights. It would send a very mixed signal – that we are happy to talk about human rights in the Arab spring, but happy to scrap the Human Rights Act in the British winter.”
The Human Rights Act was met with complacency at first, she said. The “war on terror” changed this. “It taught us that parliamentary sovereignty unchecked by any human rights framework can lead us to a very dangerous place. The Belmarsh case showed us that without the Human Rights Act we would have had internment without trial in the UK.”
She agreed that, had it been in existence in 1971, there may not have been internment without trial in Northern Ireland and history may have been different. The march which resulted in Bloody Sunday in 1972, which in turn led to an explosion in membership of the IRA, was held in opposition to internment.
Ms Chakrabarthi is scathing about some of the opponents of the British Act. “They are not honest about what they object to. They want something different in the content, or the content is all right and they want something different about the enforcement, or they think it’s too ‘European’. Yet it means British judges, sitting in the UK, can adjudicate on these issues, while before, people went to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg,” she said.
Some of the criticisms of the Act come from vested interests, in particular some sections of the media, she said. “They were very worried about article 8 . We now know why! You can’t have it both ways – be concerned about the intrusion of the state but not that of big corporations, including media corporations. And article 10 also protects the freedom of the press.
“The biggest beef its critics have is that this is a ‘human rights’ Act, not a ‘citizens’ rights’ Act; that is, it is not contingent on nationality or good behaviour or adulthood. They are concerned it might prevent deportations in certain cases. During the ‘war on terror’ we found we could not deport people to torture. If we could have done so, extraordinary rendition would have been fine. How could we protect from torture in the world if we could contract it out?”
An aspect of the Belfast Agreement was harmonisation of human rights protections in both parts of Ireland, including incorporation of the convention. Does she consider this relevant to the discussion on the Human Rights Act in the UK? And could the commitment to a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland feed into the campaign for a British Bill of Rights?
“The constitutional complexity of these islands is a good thing from that point of view,” she said. “People I’ve spoken to in Belfast are alive to that threat . I came here today seeking solidarity. The debate about human rights in the UK is pretty scary at the moment.
“In the era of globalisation and the internet we need universal human rights. A person could be on a computer here and face allegations of committing speech offences in Iran, and then face a dispute about where the offence took place.”