← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Julian the Apostate
Thread ID: 16485 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2005-01-29
2005-01-29 07:07 | User Profile
[url]http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=109382005[/url]
Clarke argument for returning to internment is flawed
THE announcement this week by the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, of what effectively amounts to a modern form of internment, to be used against British citizens as well as aliens, represents one of the gravest ever infringements of civil liberties in this country in peacetime. The new legislation is designed to counter the ruling by the Law Lords that it is unlawful to detain foreign nationals, suspected of terrorist links, indefinitely in prison without criminal trial; or to treat foreigners differently from British citizens.
Mr Clarke might have responded by letting terrorist suspects walk the streets. That would have been wrong. But his intended alternative may get him out of the legal frying-pan and into the political fire. For he has opted to swap imprisonment for house arrest; [B]and to extend the power of internment to cover British citizens, including racists and extreme animal rights groups. [/B]
Conventionally, democracies have reserved the ultimate sanction of internment without normal trial to situations of the utmost national emergency. The Second World War was a clear example. Faced with the threat of invasion, Britain held some 8,000 internees, mostly German and Italian men. The United States interned a total of 31,275 people. Of this number, 14,426, or 56 per cent, were of European origin - mostly Germans and Italians. The rest were Japanese.