[Reader-list] On Liberty (?)

[rehan ansari]

I wrote this piece on civil liberties recently for a
mumbai paper, would be happy to have comments.
rehan ansari


Of this war on terror that has gone on for as long as
it has, and commentators all over are parsing what has
been won and lost, it is worth noting that the clear
victories for the liberal values of the west are not
in Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on. They occur in the
courts, parliaments and other institutions of the
west, including within the US Justice Department,
where the great western value of habeas corpus has won
occasionally.

What I regard as true victories in the war on terror
happened last week. The Canadian parliament let lapse
two draconian laws that were put in the books post
9/11 (one allowed police to arrest people suspected of
planning an imminent terrorist attack and hold them
for three days without charge) and Canada's supreme
court struck down a law that the government used to
detain foreign-born terrorism suspects
indefinitely—employing secret evidence and not filing
charges.

That the real victories of this war on terror are on
the side of civil liberties is not an anti-war
argument, or based on non-violence. Looking
cold-bloodedly at the last five years the war has only
created more war to the detriment of the west—even
Republicans are disheartened. If the central aim of
the war, as Rumsfeld himself would put it, was winning
hearts and minds to the values of the liberal west,
then the physical war has not done that but the
opposite. It is worth underlining that among those to
be won over are the immigrant populations in the west
as well.

In the hyper aggressive conduct of the war Bush, Blair
and the leadership of some other liberal democracies
came up with laws that undermine habeas corpus. New
Delhi too was tempted, post the parliamentary attack
of 2002, to beat war drums and champion POTA. Such a
garrisoning by the state is seen by an increasing
number of law enforcement officials as unnecessary in
capturing real terrorists, and horrible in its
relationship to the innocent.

I suggest we look for the truer fight for western
values, which at times feels like clutching at straws,
than the staccato news of drones, troop surges or
numbers arrested in terror raids.

We win in the war when I see news like on Jan 24th .
As the British Parliament debated the war on terror
for the first time (sic), Sir Ken McDonald, head of
the Crown Prosecution, said that the "fear-driven and
inappropriate" response to the terror threat could
make Britons abandon respect for fair trials and the
due process of law. He said, " London is not a
battlefield. Those innocents murdered on 7 July 2005
were not victims of war. And the killers were not
'soldiers'. They were criminals." He said that our
response should not be to wage war but to catch
criminals.

Similiarly heartening: on Feb 15th, rebuking
surveillance practice greatly expanded by the New York
Police Department after 9/11, a federal judge ruled
that the NYPD must stop routine videotaping of people
at gatherings. Four years ago, at the request of the
city, the same judge, Charles S. Haight Jr., gave the
police greater authority to investigate political,
social and religious groups.

Here's the experience that won my heart and mind, call
it a secular 'conversion.' Soon after 9/11, as Editor
of Independent Press Association-New York , I was at a
meeting of lawyers looking at law enforcement. At
issue was a Justice Department request from the N.Y
Mayor's office to share the data of drivers' license
registrations. My blood ran cold, what were they going
to do with that information.., when a senior lawyer
spoke with a passion that seemed out of place. From
his ring finger, his accent, his name, it would be
understandable if this family man, from Brooklyn,
Jewish, feared the idea of terrorists. For all he knew
there may be one in that database. But then he said,
'It's just not right, not right that they search for
certain kinds of names. I will fight this."

The garrisoning of the state by liberal democracies
goes on: UK detains and deports people it has
insufficient evidence against (under its Prevention of
Terrorism Act 2005). As for the Canadian decisions
last week, the contrast with the US is shocking. Last
week a US federal appeals court in Washington ruled
that Congress can deny Guantànamo prisoners the right
to a court challenge. Keeping the faith in the ancient
value of habeas corpus should not be as difficult as
this.

Appeared in DNA somewhat differently.


 
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