By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
After having, officially, rescinded on the so-called “control orders” and, supposedly, scrapped them, the British government has just come up with something new, at least to Britain.
It is “internal exile” in everything but name.
While it is, supposedly, for terror suspects – that is people who are believed, often without the slightest proof, to pose a threat to the Realm – virtually any “dissident” could find him- or herself put into that situation, such as environmental protesters. All that the government has to do is to declare their activities, even if but peaceful sit down protests and such, as “terrorist activities” and bingo.
Not that this should really come as a surprise to anyone now seeing how involved the UK security services were with extraordinary rendition and such like; and that not just to Libya, you can bet.
Under the law of jurisprudence anyone is supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, proven in a court of law and not a kangaroo court, and not to be presumed guilty on the flimsiest of suspicions of maybes and probabilities.
Membership in an environmental protest group or protest group on behalf of this or that minority could, if the government so decrees, often just the Home Secretary, the British Minister of the Interior, be regarded as terrorist activity, and this especially if any direct action is involves.
Protesting say at nuclear power plants against nuclear energy certainly could lead to this and it is well known that some people who have been attending such protests are, in fact, on police lists as possible terror suspects. It is, therefore, not far fetched that, on a wink and a nod of the Home Secretary, some of those could find themselves under an “internal exile” order under which they will not be told where there must reside and how far they are allowed to move within a set area; who they are allowed to see and meet if, in fact anyone; and they may have restricted access to telephone and the Internet or none.
Scary, isn't it?
It could affect any of us for we can never know when the government will declare this or that activity – and that could include citizen journalism – as a terrorist related one.
Whatever happened to the mother country of modern day parliamentary democracy and the Magna Carta?
© 2011
