Save Abu Qatada

I'd have thought this was obvious, but judging by my Twitter feed, it isn't. So here we go again, in simple words. 

The Conservatives want to export Abu Qatada to Jordan, where evidence obtained under torture will be used to imprison or execute him. 

Four objections to torture: 
1. It's immoral.
2. It's illegal.
3. If you don't like 1 or 2, try this: it doesn't work. People will say anything to make it stop. 
4. If you do it to your enemies, your enemies will do it to your people. Once Britain openly supports torture (rather than simply practicing it, as currently), nobody can object when British people are tortured elsewhere. 

The Conservatives are thinking of temporarily suspending the UK's membership of the European Convention on Human Rights (largely drafted by British lawyers) so that they can send Qatada away. Again, in simple terms, here's why that's a bad idea. 

Currently, the ECHR says this:

No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. 

Nice and simple. Not 'No one nice'. 

1. Human rights are acquired by being human. There's nothing in the concept which adds 'unless we don't like you'. That's the point of universal human rights: everybody's got them. Someone tweeted that you have to shoulder responsibilities to gain rights. Wrong. Babies have human rights. People with mental health issues have human rights. Rapists and genocidal maniacs have human rights. 

It's like this: to be a civilisation, you have to behave in a civilised fashion. If you decide that you'll behave in the same way as a genocidal maniac, you've resigned as a nation/state/entity from civilisation. The mark of a civilised polity is how it treats the worst people, not how comfortable the lives of the conformists may be. A nation which tolerates the vilest people is a great nation. 

2. Once we decide that human rights can be switched on and off like a tap, where do we stop? Today, cartoon beardy terrorist sympathisers. Tomorrow: Basque nationalists. The day after: student protesters in need of a kicking, secondary picketers, badger cull saboteurs, the unemployed and roads protesters. Then a leftwing government might decide that if huntsmen torture foxes on video, they don't need the right to a fair trial or a lawyer. Perhaps we'll decide that the BNP, who don't believe in human rights, don't deserve to benefit from them. And so on until rights are reserved only for golfers and 'decent chaps' who don't make a fuss.

Personalised law is no law at all.

And Qatada? We're constantly being told he's Al-Qaeda's representative in Europe, that he's a dangerous terrorist mastermind. If so, he's committed multiple crimes: the UK has instituted the most draconian legislation in judicial history over the past 20 years: Orwell's 'thoughtcrime' is pretty much a reality. Put him on trial (although I suspect he's unlikely to get a fair trial in this country, given the government and media coverage thus far). Sending him to Jordan for an unfair trial because 'he must be guilty of something' isn't justice, it's blind reaction. Not coincidentally, when I did jury service, the forewoman said to us all 'He must be guilty because he doesn't look sorry'. Laugh? I almost cried. 

Unless, of course, he's nothing more than a vicious, reactionary peddler of hate. In which case, argue with him, spy on him, ridicule him: just don't subvert one of the pillars of civilised society simply for the satisfaction of having one horrible little man murdered in some torture cell by a puppet state. I can't think of an easier way of proving to his supporters that he was right all along. 

Seriously people: grow up. Being a scumbag doesn't mean you deserve to be murdered. If you think it does, you're a moral pygmy.

Paul Uppal: will he never find a war criminal he doesn't like?

The MP elected to represent the interests of his poor, Midlands constituents is - of course - pursuing rather unedifying subjects of his own. 


Hot on the heels of Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary's dubious meetings with President Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka (who presided over the wholesale slaughter of Tamil civilians and arrested for treason a man who dared stand against him in the elections), Paul Uppal spies opportunity knocking. 


Who's he talking too? Well, it's Foxy himself. Clearly the presence of Fox's business partner, researcher, flatmate and best man at every meeting he had doesn't deter our doughty defender of business interests:

Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West, Conservative) I thank my right hon. Friend for the sterling work he has done in respect of Sri Lanka. Will he elaborate on the work that he has done in relation to the Sri Lanka Development Trust, and specifically on the work that Ministers have done in that regard?

Liam Fox (Secretary of State, Defence; North Somerset, Conservative) As I have said, the point of involvement in Sri Lanka is to create greater stability which will contribute to stability in the region. I was particularly keen to see a mechanism for investment that could reduce some of the regulatory restrictions imposed by the Sri Lankan Government, on the basis that a proportion of the profits would go into social projects that would benefit ethnic minorities. I still hope that that project will succeed, and give it my full support.

To recap: Sri Lanka's government murdered thousands of people, and Dr. Fox paid a social call to Rajapaksa to congratulate him, bringing along his little pet. Now he reckons the only problems is Sri Lanka are 'regulatory restrictions'. Here are some highlights:

One of the most serious claims of violations of the laws of war and human rights law centers on the shelling of civilian areas, including hospitals, during the final phases of the conflict.

The Sri Lankan army has been accused of knowingly shelling Puthukudiyiruppu Hospital in February 2009. When an eyewitness to that incident, Dr. T. Vartharajah – one of the Tamil government doctors who was detained by the army at the end of the conflict was questioned about this incident, LLRC members repeatedly asked about the position of LTTE artillery, the presence of LTTE members inside the hospital and LTTE imposed restrictions on freedom of movement. Dr. Vartharajah was never asked whether government forces shelled the hospital. (After some time in detention, Dr. Vartharajah publicly recanted reports of civilian war casualties at a government-sponsored press conference, leading to charges that he had been compelled to contradict his earlier statements.) 

Enforced disappearances are a gross violation of human rights and a particularly persistent form of abuse in Sri Lanka – where tens of thousands from earlier periods of conflict still remain unresolved and unpunished – but enforced disappearance is not specified as a crime under Sri Lankan law  

No doubt the whole exchange is part of the whipped (i.e. compulsory) Tory turnout in defence of their bent colleague, which shows you what a mightily independent 'thinker' Mr Uppal is. If you need an arse licked, he's your man. I hope he's proud of himself.

Women's Lib Reaches Saudi Arabia?

I suppose it's good news: women will be allowed to vote in local council elections by 2015. Maybe. It's been promised before. And it's hardly worth applying match to bra for, quite frankly.

I see Saudi women as one of those unfortunate social groups whose rights have to be set aside to keep the rest of us in the style to which we have become accustomed. You know, like the Palestinians, or those little Bangladeshi children who make such a good job of stitching together my undercrackers. Such nimble fingers.

After all, if we told our Saudi friends that women were people too, they might not sell us all that lovely oil. So it's much better to keep quiet. So what if they aren't allowed to leave the house without a male relative, drive cars, travel, work or marry without male permission, or object to marital rape? Collateral damage.

No, it's much better to bomb neighbouring countries in the name of human rights.  Before Paul Uppal MP was a twinkle in the Tory Party's eye, I asked my Labour MP why he voted for the Iraq war because it would 'bring democracy and human rights', while declining to invade Saudi Arabia on the same grounds. To my eternal regret, he refused to explain beyond saying that the situation was 'totally different'. Really?

Bingham inconveniently pops off

One of the greatest legal minds of the past hundred years has died: Lord Bingham, most famous for his trenchant defence of human rights. Amongst his greatest hits:

ruled that detaining foreign suspects without trial was a breach of rights

argued that the Iraq war was illegal

Inconvenient because the new government wants to abolish the Human Rights Act and withdraw from some of the international Human Rights treaties the UK has signed - to be expected from Tory Scum, but shame on the Liberal Democrats, who used to care about such things.

When you write to your MP - and don't expect a reply if Paul Uppal is your representative - perhaps you should follow Lord Bingham's advice:

 'Which of these rights, I ask, would we wish to discard? Are any of them trivial, superfluous, unnecessary? Are any of them un-British? There may be those who would like to live in a country where these rights are not protected but I am not of their number'.

Maybe it's just me…

This advert made me hugely angry last night. IT's the casual abuse of the language of rights. This would be OK if everyone already possessed the rights to life, free speech, freedom of assembly, privacy and all the other rights listed in the UN Declaration - but they don't. So for a bloody deodorant manufacturer to steal the language to sell some chemical paste is just hugely insulting - it turns fundamental arguments about the human condition into a joke.

The Rights of Undera..
Watch the ad...

Khaled Said RIP

Egypt is one of the biggest recipients of Western aid, military supplies and support. Lots of people go on holiday there.

It's also a brutal, repressive dictatorship.

This was Khaled Said:

This is Khaled Said too, but dead:

and this is how he got like this:

Numerous witnesses say Khaled Said, 28, died after being kicked and punched by the officers before eventually smashing his head against a marble shelf in an internet cafe on 6 June . Security officials claim Said died of asphyxiation after he swallowed a packet of narcotics hidden under his tongue.

The officers dragged Said into their car and drove off, before returning to dump his body on the street in front of the cafe, the witnesses said.

Human Rights Watch called for the prosecution of the two officers, who remain on active duty. The campaign group also criticised the police investigation and the interior ministry, which accused Said of being a wanted criminal, an accusation his family denies.

"Even if Khaled Said had been wanted, that does not give licence to police to attack and murder him in cold blood," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director for the organisation. 

This is what happens if you're a friend of the West - you can do what you want. Just ask any Saudi Arabian woman, Palestinian, Western Saharan or Diego Garcian (and any black South African until the Soviet Union collapsed and the West no longer needed apartheid SA's services) if human rights and democracy are universal.