Civil Liberties - new material (53)
01 January 2004
Big Brother Britain, 2004, Maxine Frith. Independent 12.1.04, p.1, 4. The newspaper has a start of year round-up of surveillance, observing that with more than four million surveillance cameras Britain is "the most-watched nation in the world." The article continues: "The number of closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras has quadrupled in the past three years, and there is now one for every 14 people in the UK. The increase is happening at twice the predicted rate, and it is believed that Britain accounts for one-fifth of all CCTV cameras worldwide. Estimates suggest that residents of a city such as London can each expect to be captured on CCTV cameras up to 300 times a day and much of the filming breaches existing data guidelines."
My hell in Camp X-Ray. Daily Mirror 12.3.04, pp1-7. Interview with Jamal al-Harith, who was detained without trial or access to independent legal advice at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for two years, after being kidnapped by the USA during their invasion of Afghanistan. Jamal is the first of five detainees, released in March, to have the opportunity to present their side of the story. Held by the USA as a Taleban terrorist, Jamal was actually imprisoned by the Taliban who thought he was a spy because of his British passport. During his two year incarceration in Camp X-Ray, Jamal claims that: US forces attempted to drug him; that punishment beatings "with fists, feet and batons" were handed out by guards known as the Extreme Reaction Group and that prisoners faced psychological torture (including taunting by naked prostitutes). Jamal says: "The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you psychologically. The beatings were not as nearly as bad as the psychological torture - bruises heal after a week - but the other stuff stays with you."
El fundamentalismo democrático, Juan Luis Cebrián. Taurus 2003, pp.179. In this book, Cebrián describes as "democratic fundamentalism" the attempt to impose a political party's principles and beliefs as "certainties", against the backdrop of the Partido Popular's two terms in office in Spain. The author considers that: "It is necessary to highlight the totalising, absolutist and demagogic trends of a large part of the powers that are active in the world at present, and to issue a warning about the mystification of democracy, of its conversion into a closed ideological body and its misappropriation, in order to protect the interests and obsessions of the dominant classes. Overall, this could be seen as a universal problem, but its symptoms have become evident in a particularly virulent way in Spain during the years of right-wing government."
Release our prisoners, Louise Christian. Guardian 21.2.04. Christian is a solicitor acting for several of the families of the victims of US justice held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Here she considers the release of five of the nine detainees who are held without recourse to law; the remaining four are likely to be tried before US military tribunals, a miscarriage of justice that even this supine British government finds "a process that we would not afford British nationals." Christian accuses the Home Secretary of playing to the same gallery on terrorism and calls for his post to be filled "by someone with a strong sense of the importance of the rule of law; someone capable of using measured language and reasoning even in the face of rabid unreason and prejudice."