ECHR report
01 March 1993
Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits the infliction of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. It has been a shaming contradiction that the European Court of Human Rights has found violations of Article 3 in the chastisement of schoolchildren, but not in the return of asylum- seekers to lengthy imprisonment and torture. Now at least some sense of proportion has returned with the judgment that the administration of three whacks with a slipper sole on the bottom of a seven-year-old at an independent school did not violate Article 3. Costello-Roberts v UK reported in Independent 24.3.93
The UK was found guilty of violations of the ECHR provisions on 20 occasions in the past twelve years according to a reply by prime minister John Major. Independent 19.3.93
A woman deported to the Punjab leaving seven children behind in Britain is to take her case to the European Commission on Human Rights. Kailash Kaur and her family came to Britain in 1984 for a visit but applied for asylum after their home was destroyed in rioting. They were refused and ordered to be deported in 1988. Kailash's oldest daughter made the six younger children wards of court to try to prevent their mother's deportation, but despite the wardship, which prevents the children from leaving Britain without the judge's permission, their mother's deportation went ahead.
Guardian 16.3.93
In the case of Ludi v Switzerland, decided on 15 June 1992, the European Court of Human Rights held that "preventive" telephone surveillance (conducted on the basis of suspicion that a crime was going to be committed) was a legitimate interference with private life under Article 8 ECHR, since it was necessary in a democratic society for the prevention of crime. The use of an undercover agent posing as a willing buyer of drugs was not an interference with private life. However, in refusing to let the defendant any opportunity to question the agent at any stage of the subsequent criminal proceedings, on the ground that his anonymity had to be preserved, the Swiss authorities were in breach of Article 6(1) and (3)(d), aspects of a right to a fair trial.
Transcript 15.6.92.