Republican News · Thursday 10 May 2001

[An Phoblacht]

The worst human rights record in western Europe

BY FERN LANE

Britain has the worst record on human rights in western Europe. To date, it has lost more than 50 of the cases brought against it at the European Court of Human Rights. Twelve of those cases, almost 25% of the total, have been directly connected to the conflict in the Six Counties, where Britain has been found to have breached articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) on the right to life, on the prohibition on torture, on the use of inhuman or degrading treatment, on unjustified detention and on the right to a fair trial. Twice, Britain has been forced to derogate from the ECHR under Article 15 because of its use of illegal seven-day detention orders.

The ECHR was finally incorporated into British law in October last year, some 50 years after it came into being. The refusal to incorporate the Convention was based on Britain's continued use of the Ôtemporary' Prevention of Terrorism Act, most specifically the use of seven-day detention orders which were in flagrant breach of all human rights conventions and legislation. Under the Labour government, the British state has managed to circumvent the threat to the PTA posed by incorporation of the ECHR simply by making the legislation permanent (the new Terrorism Act) and by making seven-day detention dependent upon a magistrate rather than a police officer.

In summary, the rights provided by the ECHR are:

  • the right to life

  • prohibition on torture or inhuman and degrading treatment

  • no slavery or forced labour

  • no unjustified detention

  • the right to a fair trial

  • right to respect for privacy, family life and the home

  • freedom of thought, conscience and religion

  • freedom of expression

  • freedom of assembly and association

  • right to marry and found a family

  • no discrimination in rights

  • right to property

  • right to education

  • right to free elections

  • no capital punishment

Some of the most notorious breaches of the ECHR by the British government include:

  • On 18 January 1978, Britain was found, by 16 votes to 1, to be in breach of Article 3 of the ECHR, which states that ÔNo one shall be subjected or torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment' in respect of the case of the Ôhooded men' who, in August 1971, had been held for interrogation at Girdwood Barracks in Belfast.

    The one vote against the ruling came from British judge Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice, who argued: ``According to my idea of the correct handling of languages and concepts, to call the treatment involved... inhuman is excessive and distorting unless the term is being employed loosely and merely figuratively''. The men had been hooded, made to continuously stand spread-eagled against a wall for up to six hours at a time (or until they collapsed, when they were simply revived and made to continue); they were submitted to continuous and monotonous Ôwhite' noise; they were deprived of sleep and denied proper food and water. One of the men, Sean McKenna, father of hunger striker Sean McKenna, did not recover properly and died in 1975 aged 45.

    In 1984, the British government was found to have breached Article 2 of the Convention - the right to life - when British soldiers shot and killed Thomas McLaughlin, together with Sean Ruddy and Robert Anderson, during the course of a robbery in October 1971. The British government paid £37,000 to McLaughlin's widow.

  • In September 1995, Britain was again found to have breached article two in respect of the execution of unarmed IRA Volunteers Mairéad Farrell, Sean Savage and Dan McCann in Gibraltar by the SAS on 6 March 1988. The then Conservative British Home Secretary, Michael Howard, declared in the British parliament that the government would Ôignore' the ruling. It was, however, ultimately compelled to pay compensation to the families. One of the RUC officers most closely involved with the Gibraltar killings, Assistant Chief Constable Brian Fitzsimmons, was killed in the Mull of Kintyre Chinook helicopter crash.

  • In June 2000, the Court ruled against the British government in the case of Gerard Magee, finding that he had been denied the right to a fair trial because of his treatment in Castlereagh interrogation centre after his arrest in December 1988. He was awarded £10,000 in legal costs. At the time of his arrest, Magee was denied access to a solicitor for two and a half days and was eventually convicted solely on the basis of a statement beaten out of him. Magee's victory has huge implications for all those who were convicted of so-called scheduled offences solely on the basis of confessions obtained whilst under interrogation at Castlereagh.

  • In addition, in a report published in April 1997, Amnesty International accused the British government of indulging in Ôinhuman or degrading treatment' in its use of Special Secure Units (SSUs) to hold republican prisoners in British jails. Predictably, the Home Office denied this, but by September of the same year it had been shamed into removing all of the prisoners (some of whom had been incarcerated for eight years in these concrete bunkers with resulting severe physical and psychological effects) effectively closing down the SSUs.

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