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Once lost, these freedoms will be impossible to restore
Posted on 2001-12-12 14:54:23 by dalliaa |
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 The author of the article Hugo Young, discusses the impact of September 11th on the march towards curbing civil liberties in both Britain by home secretary David Blunket and the United States by Attorney General John Ashcroft.
John Ashcroft, the US attorney general, is a politician of the ultra-hard right. David Blunkett, the British home secretary, comes from the old Labour left. They meet tomorrow, when Mr Ashcroft makes his first stop on a tour of coalition nations designed to ensure they all understand what must be done, in the field of law and justice, to defeat international terrorism.
He may have some difficult conversations. But his talk with Mr Blunkett should be easy. Anglo-American relations now reach into zones of thinking about justice with a ferocity that transcends the opposite origins of these two ministers. The special relationship is not dead. It's alive and kicking the ass of all judges and lawyers who ask a question about the anti-terrorism machine.
Ashcroft and Blunkett have in common, first, the tampering with due process. They've instituted regimes that remove the rights of anyone whom the security authorities merely suspect of aiding and abetting terrorism, a word both of them are prepared to define widely. Ashcroft has already arrested 1,200 people, though that number is unofficial since their names are nowhere collectively available. Blunkett is pushing through parliament a power of detention without trial, though in Britain the list of detainees will probably not be secret.
These ministers, secondly, share a similar attitude to critics. Ashcroft implied last week that critics were traitors to US interests. "Your tactics only aid terrorists," was his brutal verdict. Criticism, he told the Senate, "gives ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends". For his part, Blunkett charged anyone who declined to let his anti-terrorism bill go through on the nod with complicity in a terrorist attack at Christmas.
See Full Text of the Article from the Guardian.
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