I started back doing support work this week. I’m supporting a student who’s on an Access to Law course, which includes Government and Politics and ‘Freedoms under the Law’ modules. Cue dramaz. The class was discussing the anti-terror laws and watched an episode of Dispatches which looked at the lives of terror suspects who were under indefinite house arrest and several of whom had been in prison previously for several years, all without trial. Many of the students were sympathetic to the suspects’ stories but there were a couple who weren’t. One girl was sitting directly behind me and was angry that these suspects were even allowed a few hours each day outside of their houses, within a mile or a mile and a half radius of their homes. I questioned personally how much of a risk these men were really perceived to be if they were even allowed to travel on public transport within their permitted areas, but I guess you have to have the common sense to look further than what is presented to you to start asking questions like that. What really enraged me about this girl was her complete naivety with regard to the British government and the police force. In her opinion, you ‘can’t be too careful’ if you suspect someone of being a terrorist, even if you end up making terrible mistakes, such as the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting. My blood boiled at that point. It was so frustrating. I couldn’t turn around and give her a verbal bitch slap because I’m not a student.
I suppose my gripe is this: terror suspects do not receive a fair trial. If this government and the government of the United States are supposed to be the models of modern democratic society and if they throw their weight around and condemn regimes which practise arbitrary detention of suspects without trial (unless of course it’s somewhere like Saudi Arabia, where they make too much profit from business relationships), how can the discrepancy not be obvious between what they are meant to be and what they really are? It’s the secrecy that is the main problem. It’s like there’s a modern-day Gestapo going around and deciding appropriate means of detention and punishment without scrutiny. Constant scrutiny is crucial in circumstances as delicate and as controversial as these because there are so many differing viewpoints and if decisions and reviews of decisions are not taken democratically (at least by elected parliamentary representatives) at all stages of the process (voting on acts of parliament every now and then is not enough), the very mandate and authority of the government falls into question. If the governments of the ‘free world’ were open about their policy on detention of suspects (note: suspects, not convicts, because they have not been put to trial) and were not portraying themselves as such high and mighty role models or, even better, if they were not practising arbitrary detention in the first place, perhaps they could hold their heads up high in relation to foreign policy. Countries around the world would not necessarily see countries like the UK and the US as hypocritical thugs who target their short-term enemies with almost no consideration for long-term consequences.
