New anti-terrorism bill targets dissent
By Alec Smart
LONDON — Legislation allowing police increased powers of arrest and detention is being fast-tracked through the British parliament. "Anti-terrorist" laws, rehearsed and fine-tuned in Northern Ireland to devastating effect, will now be turned on civil campaigners in Britain.
The revised Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) broadens the definition of "terrorism". Whilst the existing definition covers "violence for political ends", and was drafted to deal with insurgency in Northern Ireland, the new definition is based on that of the United States' FBI: "the use of threat, for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological course of action which involves serious violence against any person or property".
Although the PTA does not create a specific offence of terrorism, it provides police with extended powers to stop, search and detain individuals or groups, and set up cordons (which can last 14 days and be extended to 28 days) whenever they suspect people of constituting, or being about to constitute, a "serious risk". It requires only the authority of a superintendent to establish the cordon or to stop and search an individual without a warrant.
The bill will also introduce the new offence of "violence to property", which includes the "threat of serious violence to property".
The PTA will also be extended in Northern Ireland to allow the British army the right to enter and search premises without a warrant and to stop and search people, if they can claim they're "searching for munitions and radio transmitters".
Politically motivated
Home secretary Jack Straw rejected some ministers' concerns that campaigning groups such as Greenpeace will be inhibited. "The new definition will not catch the vast majority of so-called domestic activist groups ... I know of no evidence whatever that Greenpeace is involved in any activity that would remotely fall within the scope of this legislation", he claimed.
However, environmentalists who dig up genetically modified crops will now be liable to prosecution under the clause against "serious violence to property". Greenpeace has involved itself wholeheartedly in trashing GM crop fields.
The PTA is ostensibly a means to prevent the support, recruitment and funding of proscribed organisations overseas from within Britain. Yet the wider scope of the new bill ensures that police will be able to deter other direct action campaigners.
For the first time in British law, it will be an offence to "incite" others to commit acts of violence abroad. Under Clause 3, the home secretary can proscribe an organisation if it "promotes, encourages or is otherwise concerned in terrorism".
Clause 10 creates an offence of belonging or professing to belong to these organisations. Clause 11 makes it illegal to invite support, by addressing or being involved in organising a meeting which furthers the activities of (or includes a speech by) a member of a proscribed organisation.
Clause 12 makes it an offence to "wear an item of clothing or display insignia to arouse reasonable suspicion that one is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation" (remove your Zapatista T-shirts, lest you want to risk arrest!).
There is much scope for prosecutions under pressure from foreign governments. For example, pressure applied to the British government by Turkey to restrict the activities of Kurdish nationalists abroad could propel the police to monitor and arrest Kurdish separatists campaigning in Britain.
Sanctions against "incitement" do not apply to those holding office under the crown, such as in MI6, other intelligence-gathering departments and the armed forces. While campaigners seeking funds to help the PKK's resistance to Turkey's brutal occupation of Kurdistan will find their activities severely kerbed, home secretaries and MPs who surreptitiously armed Indonesian-backed militias who commited genocide in East Timor would have been protected.
Arrestees' civil rights will also be undermined. Under the revised PTA, access to a lawyer can be delayed for up to 48 hours after arrest. DNA samples and fingerprints, which have to be compulsorily supplied when charged with an offence, will not be destroyed if a person is not convicted. Conviction itself carries a penalty of up to five years' imprisonment.
Direct action
The bill's political motivations are also made clear in broad definitions which allow action against protesters. Clause 116 defines "organisation" as "any association or combination of persons", whilst "premises" is extended to include "a tent or movable structure".
This arouses the suspicion of campaigners involved in protests to halt roads' construction through environmentally sensitive areas. Such campaigners' limited success has relied upon their ability to physically challenge the authorities by establishing temporary accommodation at the sites of road construction. Clause 116 suggests that the PTA is specifically geared to target these temporary protest camps.
The existing Police And Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 has not been enough to diminish the successes of the direct action campaigners of the past decade. Their activities have included hunt sabotage, GM crop destruction, mass animal rights demonstrations, roads protests and anti-racist campaigning.
After property damage during the June 18 demonstration targeting "global capitalism" in London, police authorities named key groups which they perceived as advocating forcible replacement of the capitalist system. These included Earth First!, Reclaim the Streets, the Animal Liberation Front and the loose coalition Rebel Alliance, amongst others.
Authorities also began discussing new powers and methods to reign in these agitators: the revised PTA seems to be a clear result. Certainly, clauses in it sit well alongside existing and proposed police strategies against direct action protesters.
A document entitled "Winning the eco-war — a new policy for policing environmental protests", printed in Police Review's August 27 and September 3 issues, advocated "pro-active policing" to counter and disperse protest sites before they were established. This was to be done through establishing that a "threat to endanger life" might occur.
Construction of tunnels, tree-houses and other construction impediments could arguably be demonstrated to put at serious risk of personal safety the bailiffs and police employed to evict such encampments. The revised PTA has just such a provision, granting police the power to arrest those committing or suspected of intending to commit a "serious risk to the health and safety of the public or a section of the public".
Restrictions on journalists
The new PTA will also make it an offence to collect or possess information likely to be useful to terrorists, severely restricting investigative journalism.
Clause 18 states that someone has committed an offence if they fail to disclose "information which comes to his attention in the course of a trade, profession, business or employment". Paragraph 13 of Clause 36 forces a subject to give an account for any material found during a search, which could also apply to investigative journalists.
The media has done much to create a climate conducive to introducing such draconian laws; it can hardly claim surprise that it is now being hit by them.
When, in May 1990, metropolitan police baton charges from horseback turned a massive anti-poll tax demonstration into a riot, several of Britain's high-profile newspapers published photographs of rioters in action. Some papers, led by Rupert Murdoch's Sun, even offered rewards to readers who provided the names of rioters to police.
Press photographers and news journalists have lost trust and respect amongst most campaigners. Many demonstrators now arrive to protests masked-up, for fear of being identified by news organisations supplying information to police.
As trust between campaigners and the media has eroded, so a void of information in the public interest has been created. "Articulating their cause" has been replaced by apparently unexplainable rage. This in turn has been exploited by authorities keen to strengthen their own powers and discourage popular dissent.