• Home /
• Statewatch Database /
• Human rights concerns

Human rights concerns

01 September 1991

Amnesty International's (AI) latest report on the United Kingdom sets out seven major areas of concern: ill-treatment by police and prison officers; fair trial issues; arrests and detentions on national security grounds; killings by security forces; collusion between security forces and armed groups; derogation from international Conventions; and the treatment of asylum seekers. The majority of documented cases of ill-treatment come from Northern Ireland, and relate to the treatment by the RUC of Catholic suspects, in which complaints of assault are consistently high and have almost never resulted in disciplinary action or prosecution against the officers concerned. In England and Wales, the cases documented by AI include that of Mohammed Hajiazim, awarded £25,000 damages in March 1991 as a result of his claim that Metropolitan police officers had hit and kicked him between the legs after his arrest for a parking offence, resulting in his having to have a testicle removed. AI expresses concern that unfair trials result from the denial of legal advice to suspects and the use of uncorroborated and contested admissions to secure convictions - features both present in the Broadwater Farm cases of Winston Silcott, Mark Braithwaite and Engin Raghip as well as in the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six cases. Other concerns in this area relate to the continued use of Diplock courts in Northern Ireland and the special rules of evidence there. AI is highly critical of the national security detentions and deportations of Middle East nationals in 1990 and 1991. Some of those detained and deported may, according to AI, have been detained for their non-violent political activities, and as such may have been prisoners of conscience. The procedure used during the Gulf War whereby a panel of advisers reviewed national security deportations is condemned as contravening international standards of treatment. Suspicions of extra-judicial executions by security forces in Northern Ireland are, according to the report, exacerbated by coroner's inquest rules and procedures which make it almost impossible to get at the truth behind someone's death. AI is also extremely critical of the handling of leaks by the RUC to loyalist paramilitary groups of detailed information on IRA suspects, including addresses, which pointed to official involvement in sectarian killings. It criticises, too, the government's derogation from the European Convention of Human Rights in response to the Human Rights Court's finding that the detention of suspects for seven days under the Prevention of Terrorism Act violated the Convention. Finally, the report condemns the illegal removal of asylum-seekers, the lack of disciplinary action against immigration officers who behave illegally, and the lack of a UK right of appeal against the refusal of asylum. The report was published before the Home Secretary's announcement of changes to refugee procedures and since its publication AI has added its voice to the condemnation of those further restrictions on refugees' human rights. United Kingdom: Human Rights Concerns. Amnesty International, June 1991