Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire
Promoting human rights from Salisbury UK
We today erected the display in the cloister at Salisbury Cathedral to celebrate the signing of Magna Carta and to illustrate the #StopTorture campaign.
It will remain in place for many weeks. There is also a panel on the Human Rights Act.
UPDATE: 5 May … still no sign of a draft of what the British Bill of Rights will contain. People go to the polls in a couple of days time without knowing what is planned. Since the election campaign has been based largely on the deficit and who is going to spend the most on the NHS, oh and being run by Scotland: what is, or is not, in the BBoR may seem trivial. But it touches on all our rights and on our relationship with Europe so it is important.Â
The #Conservative party #manifesto was published today 14 April and as promised, there is a plan to scrap the Human rights Act #HRA. The manifesto says on p73:
We will scrap Labour’s Human Rights Act and introduce a British Bill of Rights which will restore common sense to the application of human rights in the UK. The Bill will remain faithful to the basic principles of human rights, which we signed up to in the original European Convention on Human Rights. It will protect basic rights, like the right to a fair trial, and the right to life, which are an essential part of a modern democratic society. But it will reverse the mission creep that has meant human rights law being used for more and more purposes, and often with little regard for the rights of a wider society. Among other things the Bill will stop terrorists and other serious criminals who pose a threat to our society from using spurious human rights arguments to prevent deportation.
This will have profound implications in our relations with Europe and we still do not know what the new bill will look like even after many years of discussion about the abolition of the HRA. Incidentally, although the Act was introduced under the Labour administration, it was voted for by many Conservatives as well.
A draft of the BBoR has been a long time a coming and the latest we heard was that it was to be published before Christmas. One assumes a draft will now appear before polling so that voters can see in more detail how it differs from the existing HRA.
The Conservatives seem to have got themselves into something of a bind with this Act. They were happy to go along with the anti-European sentiment expressed by most of our newspapers and were obviously spooked by the Ukip surge over the last few years. There has been a torrent of misinformation and disinformation about the workings of the HRA which, apart from the honourable exception of Dominic Grieve MP, they have made little or no attempt to counter with facts.
What got them steamed up most of all – and got our tabloids into a fearsome lather – was the case of Abu Qatada or the ‘preacher of hate’ as he was called. Many attempts were made to deport him but the problem was not just the HRA but the fact that he might be tortured when he was returned to Jordan, or the Jordanians would convict him using evidence obtained from torturing others.  Is this an example of ‘spurious human rights arguments’? Since, quite apart from the ECHR, we are signatories to treaties banning the use of torture, there was a problem in getting him out of the country in any event. We might note in passing that the Jordanians had to clean up their judicial act as part of the agreement to send him back.
A puzzle though is that the other area which gets politicians steamed up is the issue of a right to life yet this is quoted as being ‘an essential part of a modern democratic society.’ Something about a cat.
The fact remains that many ordinary people are beneficiaries of the Act. Lawyers can use it in their day to day work with individuals and their dealings with authorities of one kind or another. Little of this gets published in the media and most are unaware of it unless by chance they know of someone who has benefited.
As far as the Strasbourg court is concerned, the UK are the ‘good guys’ since we still have a largely uncorrupted police and judiciary and people can appeal decisions in cases of injustice. Our police operate under PACE and suspects have a right to a lawyer.  Very few of the cases which go to Strasbourg get overturned – we believe there were only eight last year.
As one of the original countries, along with France, who prepared the ECHR after the war at the behest of Winston Churchill – a Conservative – if we leave the Convention it will have significant repercussions in places like Belarus, Turkey and Russia. Belarus is the last country in Europe with the death penalty and human rights are largely ignored.
It will be interesting to see how our local Conservative candidate John Glen reacts to this. When he came to see the local group to discuss this topic he did agree to be more balanced in his comments which we welcomed. This followed an article in the Salisbury Journal saying he wanted it abolished. But now it is part of the manifesto for his party we shall have to see…
Around 160 people attended the Cathedral this evening to hear Dominic Grieve QC MP give a brilliantly lucid lecture in support of the Human Rights Act. He traced some of the key clauses of the Magna Carta and showed how they had continuing relevance today. We hope to include a transcript of his lecture soon. His lecture followed the annual Amnesty evensong which also was very well attended with around 120 people.
UPDATE 25TH MARCH
The film Bastards (12A) was shown this Wednesday 25 March starting at 7.30 and the audience reaction was very positive indeed. There were many questions to the producer Deborah Perkin.
In Morocco, as in all Muslim countries, sex outside marriage is illegal and women bear the brunt of society’s disapproval. But what is the fate of the children of those single mothers?  They cannot attend the better schools, are turned away from infant immunisation clinics and refused government posts. Jobs, housing and a huge range of social advantages are denied them. They are despised outcasts, condemned to a life of discrimination. Bastards is the first film to tell this story from a mother’s point of view.
We shall have a petition to sign about torture in Morocco. Morocco is one of the five countries highlighted by Amnesty International in its #StopTorture campaign. We are pleased to say many people signed our petitions at the end of the showing. Thanks to the Arts Centre.
The February minutes are below thanks to Karen. A full agenda as you see with a lot going on.
SCHOOL NOW CLOSED
The new South Wilts University Technical College in Salisbury is to be part-funded by arms companies and a number of people are concerned that young people will be corrupted by such firms. The Salisbury group has campaigned in the past on the issue of arms as Salisbury is surprisingly rich in arms companies. It is likely that because we are near to Salisbury Plain – where a number of regiments are based – and the garrison towns of Bulford and Tidworth, it is attractive to such firms to set up here. We are also near Porton Down and to Boscombe Down.
Some years ago, we discovered that a firm based in Salisbury was supplying the Indonesians with armoured land rovers being used in the oppression of the East Timorese. Chemring, which has a factory at a place called High Post near Salisbury, was also the subject of press interest recently for allegedly supplying CS gas to the Hong Kong police to help suppress demonstrations, and to Israel. Chemring supplied CS gas which was used in Egypt.
So the activities of arms companies are a matter of interest to us. It has to be said straight away that, unless you are a complete pacifist, there are aspects of the arms trade which are perfectly legitimate. We need to defend ourselves and therefore have a need to make armaments. We can also sell such arms to countries we trust or to whom we are allied. The difficulty is when arms are supplied to regimes who have little interest in human rights. This is why Amnesty among others has been promoting an arms trade treaty. Another problem is the shadowy world of dealers and brokers who go on to supply anyone willing to pay.
Anyone interested in the arms trade, then a book to read is The Shadow World: inside the global arms trade by Andrew Feinstein (Hamish Hamilton, 2011). This remorselessly describes the trade and the high degree of corruption involved in its activities. The industry is over £1tn in size and money flows via tax havens and brokers around the world.
Look at almost any news broadcast and it doesn’t matter who is fighting whom, what is noticeable is that they all seem to be remarkably well armed. The various belligerents drive around in military vehicles, and they seem to be guns and rocket launchers aplenty. These arms don’t appear out of nowhere, they are supplied by the shadowy world of the arms dealer and are financed via various tax havens, many of which are Crown dependencies.
Feinstein expresses it well in his introduction:
In our twenty-first-century world the lethal combination of technological advances, terrorism, global crime, state sponsored violence and socio-economic inequality has raised instability and insecurity to alarming levels. At the same time, the engine that has driven this escalation, the global arms trade, grows ever more sophisticated, complex and toxic in its effects.
It might therefore be thought essential that the world’s democratic nations should address this trade effectively and urgently. If it must exist, then surely it should be coherently regulated, legitimately financed, effectively policed and transparent in its workings, and meet people’s need for safety and security?
Instead the trade in weapons is a parallel world of money, corruption, deceit and death. It operates to its own rules, largely unscrutinized, bringing enormous benefits to the chosen few, and suffering and immiseration to millions. The trade corrodes our democracies, weakens already fragile states and often undermines the very national security it porports to strengthen.  (p xxii, ibid)
Arms sales are promoted by the British government by the Defence Export Services Organisation (DESO). There has been a lot of publicity recently as various ministers – including the Prime Minister – visiting the Gulf states to sign arms deals. Some of these countries arrest or harass oppositions, use torture regularly, execute people in public, mistreat their women and have corrupt judicial systems. No matter it seems, there’s trade to be had. The Campaign Against the Arms Trade CAAT held a meeting in Salisbury recently to publicise the financing of this college by four arms firms. The firms involved include Chemring, QinetiQ, Esterline and Dstl. Serco is also involved which has a dubious record.
Some of the questions to ask of this college are: will their young people be free to discuss the activities of this trade?  If it transpires that munitions supplied by one of these firms are used to suppress demonstrations or are used to kill unarmed people for example, will students be free to debate this? Will the effects and practices of the arms trade be a topic of discussion in Citizenship activities? Interesting questions … CAAT allege that the firms will use the college as a means to promote their image. It will be interesting to see how this UTC deals with the ethical and moral issues of the arms trade and adopts an appropriately impartial position when and if allegations of wrongdoing emerge.
The college is part of the Baker Dearing Educational Trust and none of its trustees has any local links.
Article in Salisbury Journal. CAAT item discussing the college is here.
UPDATE
The College has now closed (2019)
Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire 