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1994-05-02
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<text>
<title>
Northern Ireland United Kingdom: Human Rights Watch
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
Human Rights Watch World Report 1992
Helsinki Watch: United Kingdom
</hdr>
<body>
<p>Human Rights Developments
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p>Northern Ireland
</p>
<p> 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(Emergency Provisions) Act (EPA), originally enacted in 1973,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.
</p>
<p> Among the powers conferred by these emergency acts are:
</p>
<p>-- the power to stop and search people; anyone can be required
to answer questions regarding his or her identity and recent
movements.
</p>
<p>-- the power to arrest, detain and interrogate suspects for up
to seven days without a criminal charge and without an
appearance before a judge.
</p>
<p>-- the power to search residences without prior judicial
authorization.
</p>
<p>-- the power to exclude people from Northern Ireland or all of
the United Kingdom without a trial and without judicial review.
</p>
<p>-- the power to detain people by executive order, although this
power of "internment" has not been used since 1976.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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).
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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"