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Text File | 1994-05-02 | 29KB | 548 lines

<text> <title> United Kingdom: Human Rights Watch </title> <article> <hdr> Human Rights Watch World Report 1992 Helsinki Watch: United Kingdom </hdr> <body> Human Rights Developments The United Kingdom receives relatively little attention from the international human rights community. Yet in recent years freedom of expression in Britain has been restricted; there is an appalling use of lethal force by all sides to the conflict in Northern Ireland, and the U.K emergency legislation there suspends certain basic due process guarantees; and conditions in many British prisons violate international standards. Northern Ireland A state of emergency has existed in Northern Ireland since its partition from the Irish Free State in 1922. Various emergency laws enacted during this seventy-year period have given security forces--the police and the British army--broad powers to suspend civil and political rights. Since repeal of the Special Powers Act in 1973, police powers to address political violence have been defined by the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act (EPA), originally enacted in 1973, and the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act (PTA), in effect since 1974. The EPA applies only to Northern Ireland; the PTA applies to all of the United Kingdom. Both acts have been regularly renewed by the British Parliament. Among the powers conferred by these emergency acts are: -- the power to stop and search people; anyone can be required to answer questions regarding his or her identity and recent movements. -- the power to arrest, detain and interrogate suspects for up to seven days without a criminal charge and without an appearance before a judge. -- the power to search residences without prior judicial authorization. -- the power to exclude people from Northern Ireland or all of the United Kingdom without a trial and without judicial review. -- the power to detain people by executive order, although this power of "internment" has not been used since 1976. The legislation also declares certain paramilitary organizations illegal and makes membership in them a criminal offense; suspends trial by jury for a large number of "scheduled offenses," including murder, armed robbery, possession of explosives, and certain lesser offenses; and sets a lower standard for the admissibility of confessions than is applicable in the rest of Britain. The U.K. has enacted other legislation and issued administrative orders that affect people charged with or suspected of involvement in politically motivated violence, such as the 1988 Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order, which curtails the right of suspects not to have inferences drawn against them from their silence. Over half (54.4 percent) of the 2,900 deaths since "The Troubles" began in 1969 have been of civilians with no known connection to political violence. Another 31.1 percent have been police or soldiers. Members of paramilitary groups (known as paramilitaries) make up the rest; 10.6 percent of the deaths were of Republican paramilitaries (Nationalists who favor a unified Ireland) and 2.6 percent were Loyalists (Unionists who favor maintaining union with the United Kingdom). The level of violence by paramilitary groups is appalling: paramilitaries were responsible for 2,313 murders between 1969 and 1989--1,608 people were killed by Republicans and 705 by Loyalists. Most of those killed--1,206--were civilians with no known connection to political violence (574 of these were killed by Republicans and 632 by Loyalists). During the same period, Republican paramilitaries killed 847 members of security forces, and Loyalist paramilitaries killed ten. Paramilitary groups use such barbaric tactics as the Irish Republican Army's "human bombs"--people strapped into vehicles loaded with explosives and sent to bomb security checkpoints--as well as bombs aimed at civilian targets. Loyalists carry out "tit-for-tat" killings by going into Catholic areas and killing Catholics at random in revenge for Republican killings of Loyalists. Killings of civilians by paramilitary groups violate the fundamental prohibition in international humanitarian law against targeting civilians. In addition, paramilitary groups kill security-force members and opposing paramilitaries by approaching them disguised as civilians, in violation of the principles of customary international humanitarian law that prohibits perfidy because it breaks down the distinction between combatants and civilians. As for killings carried out by security forces, police and soldiers killed 329 people between 1969 and 1989; of these, 178 were civilians, 123 were Republican paramilitaries, thirteen were Loyalist paramilitaries, and fifteen were themselves security-force members. The use of plastic bullets--supposedly nonlethal weapons--for crowd control has also resulted in fatal shootings. Fourteen people have been killed by plastic bullets fired by security forces since 1973. Members of security forces who have killed civilians or paramilitaries are rarely prosecuted. Since 1969, police or soldiers have been prosecuted in only nineteen cases in which killings took place while they were on duty. In only three of these cases have defendants been found guilty of murder or manslaughter. The only member of the regular British army to have been found guilty of a murder committed while on duty received a life sentence, but he was released from prison after serving only two years and three months of his sentence, and was allowed to rejoin his regiment. One problem in prosecuting members of security forces is that under British law if a police officer or soldier intentionally kills someone, he or she may be charged only with the offense of murder. No lesser charge, such as manslaughter, can be filed. Because police and soldiers are so rarely prosecuted for fatal shootings, often the only way that a family can discover what happened to a person who was shot and killed is during a coroner's inquest. But coroners' inquests are subject to inordinate delays; coroners' juries are not permitted to reach full verdicts; (These juries cannot find, for example, an "unlawful killing by unarmed persons," but only that "death resulted from a bullet in the head.") security-force members implicated in deaths are not required to testify; and victims' families and their attorneys are denied access to evidence before an inquest begins. There are significant problems in detention. The U.K.'s Prevention of Terrorism Act permits detentions for up to seven days. The European Convention on Human Rights requires that detainees be brought "promptly" before a judge. In 1988, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that a detention of four days and six hours did not meet the "promptness" requirement. The U.K. then formally derogated from that provision of the European Convention. There have been many charges of physical abuse of suspects in detention from both detainees and attorneys. Some of these allegations have been upheld in court. A detainee's access to his or her attorney is frequently delayed. The power to intern without trial remains part of the emergency laws of Northern Ireland, although it has not been used for fifteen years. Security forces frequently stop, search and question people on the street, often in an inhuman and degrading manner. In addition, members of the police and army have conducted thousands of destructive house searches, some of which appear to violate Northern Ireland laws. A high percentage of these do not produce weapons or equipment used for bombings. The right to a fair trial has been significantly compromised. The right to trial by jury has been withdrawn from defendants in cases that allegedly involve political violence ("scheduled offenses"). 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