Balancing war on terror with upholding human rights

NO BLASTED THEORIES: A peace rally in Ahmedabad against the Nov 26 Mumbai attacks.

        

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In an attempt to fight terrorism, the Government is proposing amendments to existing anti-terror laws that will extend police custody of the accused to 180 days, that will place the proof of innocence on the accused if he is armed, prohibit foreign terror suspects from getting bail, permit the Government to seize assets of any organisation suspected of terror links and give a 10-year prison sentence to anyone in possession of a weapon of terror.

On Tuesday, the Government introduced two bills in Parliament that seek to tighten India's anti-terror laws. But does the war on terror have the potential to become a war on our basic individual rights and freedoms? Should human rights take a backseat in the war against terror?

CNN-IBN debated the issue on Face the Nation with a panel comprising Congress MP and former Delhi commissioner of police Nikhil Kumar; BJP member and senior journalist Sheshadri Chari; and Executive Director Human Rights Law Network Colin Gonsalves.

At the beginning of the show, 70 per cent of the people who voted in said that human rights should take a backseat in the war against terror while only 30 per cent disagreed.

DEFENDING HUMAN RIGHTS

Anti-terror legislation across the world has been criticised as being damaging to individual rights. In America, the Patriot Act, The Homeland Security Act or the Guantanamo Bay prisoners are seen as examples of how individual freedoms have been destroyed to fight terrorism.

In India, laws like POTA have been called draconian and simply a means to implicate innocents. The question is whether the new law that the UPA Government is proposing will manage to do a balancing act between human rights and being tough on terrorism.

Colin Gonsalves said that many of the people who voted in on the show may simply not have understood the meaning of the question.

"To take the stand that human rights should take a backseat would be to go by the Bush doctrine, to take advantage of a whole country like Bush did and then to make every American citizen suspect, violate the rights of American citizens. He went ahead and invaded Afghanistan and bombed Iraq and what was the result? America today is weaker than it has ever been," Gonsalves said.

He cited the case of a former prime minister of Sweden, Olaf Palme who was assassinated outside a cinema hall in 1986. "In this case, the professional police force was put into play, but the human rights of Swedish citizens were not diluted and every person in the society did not become a suspect. They didn't say we want more guns and tougher laws, instead they strengthened democratic rights and today Sweden is at peace. So why should human rights be diluted?" he asked.