Wednesday, August 24, 2005

"The rules of the Game have changed"

Apparently, according to Charles Clarke, if someone hurts your country, you are allowed to send someone who they might have been encouraged by to be tortured. Hmm.
After the attacks in London, which killed 52 people, "the rules of the game" changed, according to Mr Clarke.

DEPORTATION GROUNDS
Fomenting, justifying or glorifying terrorist violence
Seeking to provoke terrorist acts
Fomenting other serious criminal activity
Fostering hatred that might lead to inter-community violence


At-a-glance new measures
Deportations could spark legal battles
He ordered an immediate review of his powers to exclude and deport people, saying he wanted to ensure that any non-British citizen suspected of inciting terrorism was deported immediately.

Publishing the results of that review he said the first deportations could happen "very quickly - in the next few days".

"Individuals who seek to create fear, distrust and division in order to stir up terrorist activity will not be tolerated by the government or by our communities," said Mr Clarke

"By publishing the list today I make it absolutely clear that these are unacceptable behaviours and will be the grounds for deporting and excluding such individuals from the UK."

As part of a raft of measures to crack down on "preachers of intolerance and hatred", a new database will be drawn up of foreign-born radicals accused of encouraging acts of terrorism.



The problem with this is, other than that no civillised country should send someone where they may well be tortured, if we have a problem with these people- if we truly think they are encouraging terrorism, and can prove that they do, we should arrest them and try them. That is what a country that believes in the rule of law should DO. Just because some extremists want to ignore this, doesn't mean we should sink to their level.

1 Comments:

At 2:35 PM GMT-5, Blogger the prisoner said...

Agreed. But I have a problem with the whole "hate speech" law to begin with. What exactly is hate speech?

Though I know anything is possible, I think it is highly unlikely that in the US any similar law will be enacted. The Freedom of Speech should be sacrosanct, no matter what is said. The only exceptions to this involve immediate harm, not some imagined order orginating from non-explicit, non-immediate speech.

 

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