Civil liberties - new material (73)
01 October 2008
Die Rote Hilfe. Vol 34/2008, EUR 2, pp 82. This quarterly magazine by the left-wing legal support association Rote Hilfe e.V. examines the new law regulating the Federal Crime Police Force and civil liberties infringements through data collection law and practice (health and tax systems, police databases, etc.) as well as providing updates on running trials against left-wing activists, notably those criminalised in the run-up and aftermath of the G8 summit protests. Available from redaktion@rote-hilfe.de, ++49 174 477 9610.
Besieged in Britain, Victoria Brittain. Race and Class Vol. 50 no. 3 (January-March) 2009, pp. 1-29. This though-provoking article examines how the war on terror is exacerbating Islamaphobia: “the rounding up, imprisonment and indefinite house arrest of a number of Muslim men resident in the UK [is] a situation analogous to Guantanamo. Held for years without charge, under restricted regimes of twelve to twenty-four hour curfews, with virtually no access to the wider world and kept in ignorance of the alleged evidence against them, the impact on them and their families has been devastating. Many had come to Britain as refugees seeking a safe haven; some have been driven to madness, some hhave attempted suicide, some have left their families and returned voluntarily to regimes where they may face imprisonment and torture. The mental and physical health impacts on the men and their families, of an inhumanity that beggars belief, masked under the bureaucracy of “control orders”, SIAC deportation bail and tortuous legal process, is here unveiled.” Institute of Race Relations, Tel. +44 (0)20 7837 0041.
Senate Armed Forces Committee Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in US Custody. Senate Armed Forces Committee December 2008. SAFC report holds the former US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, directly responsible for the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib, Iraq and in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Conclusion 19 reads: “The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own. Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions, and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at GTMO. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s 2 December 2, 2002 authorisation of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officials conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody. What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that detainees be treated humanely.” :http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2008/Detainees.121108.pdf
To Tell You the Truth: the ethical journalism initiative, Aidan White. International Federation of Journalists, 2008, pp. 184 (ISBN 978-90-9023846-3). This book introduces the “Ethical Journalism Initiative” (EJI), a global campaign launched by journalists’ unions and associations from around the world. It provides background to the EJI and explores the traditions that underpin current journalism and media and “encourages journalist, media professionals, policy-makers and civil society to find new ways of embedding the first principles of journalism in the culture of modern media”. These principles are: 1. Truth Telling, 2. Independent and Fair stories and 3. Humanity and Solidarity. It is available from: IFJ, International Press Centre, Residence Palace, Bloc C, Rue de la Loi 155, B-1040 Brussels, Belgium; email: ifj@ifj.org
Surveillance: Citizens and the state, Vol. I (Report) and Vol. 2 (Evidence) Select Committee on the Constitution. House of Lords (Stationery Office, London) February 2009. These reports were stimulated by the Information Commissioner’s 2004 observation that the UK is “sleepwalking into a surveillance society”: Commissioner Richard Thomas expressed concern about a raft of new government proposals, including the establishment of a national identity card scheme and the creation of a database containing the name and address of every child under the age of 18. The report charts the rise in surveillance and data collection by the private sector and the state, and warns that the relationship between the state and its citizens, the cornerstone of democracy, is being undermined. The report’s opening paragraph says: “Surveillance is an inescapable part of life in the UK. Every time we make a telephone call, send an email, browse the internet, or even walk down our local high street, our actions may be monitored and recorded. To respond to crime, combat the threat of terrorism, and improve administrative efficiency, successive UK governments have gradually constructed one of the most extensive and technologically advanced surveillance systems in the world. At the same time, similar developments in the private sector have contributed to a profound change in the character of life in this country. The development of electronic surveillance and the collection and processing of personal information have become pervasive, routine, and almost taken for granted. Many of these surveillance practices are unknown to most people, and their potential consequences are not fully appreciated.” The Committee makes 44 recommendations to protect individuals from invasions of their privacy related to surveillance and data collection. Available as a free download: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldselect/ldconst/18/1802.htm
Homophobie/ZAG. Anti-Rassistische Initiative e.V., ZAG 53/2008, EUR 5, pp 11-24. The focus of this issue of the bi-annual anti-racist magazine is homophobia. Articles examine racism in the prejudicial dogma - fed by 'integration' politics - that migrants, in particular Muslims, are inherently homophobic. It puts homophobia in former Ottoman regions into a historical (read: colonial) context and current homophobic attacks committed by second generation Turkish Germans into the current politic context. Also examined: homophobia against Lesbians in Poland, discrimination and homophobia in Reggae and Hip-Hop and new publications on homosexual Nazis, and homosexuality, migration and Islam. Available from: redaktion@zag-berlin.de, 0049 30 7857281.