Global: Review of anti terrorism laws in the Commonwealth

Media Release, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, 13 September, 2007

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. Due for release at CHRI’s twentieth anniversary conference in London, on 14 September 2007, the report highlights disturbing trends in counter-terrorism laws passed, and the resulting police abuses, on the basis of the preservation of national security.

With terror-tactics changing and governments’ responses to them, many Commonwealth countries have strengthened existing security provisions or enacted new anti-terrorism legislation. Highlighting instances of enforced disappearance, torture and extra-judicial killings, the 2007 Report points out how human rights violations have often been the result of hastily enacted, ill-considered laws, coupled with bad policing, even as international consensus is still being sought for a clear definition of “terrorism”’ Providing practical solutions for how the state, police and civil society can work together for the improvement of security, the 2007 Report calls upon the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) to recognise that 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. To ensure effective responses to counter terrorism, state action must be distinguishable from terrorist activities. 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.

For further details contact:

Manjiri Dube, Project Assistant CHOGM Team, CHRI Email: [email][email protected] Tel: +91-11-2686 4678 Lucy Mathieson, Human Rights Advocacy Acting-Coordinator, CHRI Email: [email][email protected] Tel: +91-11-2686 4678 For more information on the CHRI 2007 Report, and its launch, refer to our website: www.humanrightsinitiative.org