Ramblings of a Scottish Teen

I bought The Independent Newspaper today and plastered across the front page was a story about an Afghan Journalism student who has been sentenced to death for blasphemy.

He downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.

This report was then distributed amongst students and staff of the University that he attended with the sole view of provoking a debate on the matter.

This sentence of death has been approved and he now awaits execution.

It is concerning that Afghanistan is still using such abhorrent and draconian rules and legal penalties after being liberated from the grips of the Taliban

To read the story in the Independent click the following link:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/sentenced-to-death-afghan-who-dared-to-read-about-womens-rights-775972.html

Immigration is always a hot topic and it gets people angry for all sorts of reasons. What gets me angry about immigration is the lack of understanding people have of the system!

Immigration is not simple; it is a very complex system with different people classed as different forms of immigrants – there are two the people often seem to confuse: Economic Migrants and Asylum Seekers. There is a very real difference between an Economic Migrant and an Asylum seeker (from their legal status, to benefits and all sorts!)

Economic Migrants come from within what is known as the European Economic Area (which is essentially made up of the countries of the European Union). When people talk about those who come from Poland they are talking about Economic Migrants. They, largely, have the freedom to move around the EEA to live, work and/or study. Brits often go and live or work in France or Spain – this is no different to the polish coming here (it is governed by the same rules). However, some of those coming from EEA countries (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) have to register under the Workers Registration Scheme before legally gaining employment in the United Kingdom.

Once people from the countries listed above have been working in the United Kingdom legally for 12 months without a break in employment, they will no longer have to register on the Worker Registration Scheme. At this point they can then obtain a residence permit confirming your their to live and work in the United Kingdom.

I think that covers economic Migrants coming from the EEA. An Asylum Seeker is different from an Economic Migrant coming from the EEA and I will now write about that.

The United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees guarantees a right to refugee status. It defines refugees as people outside their country of nationality, who cannot return there due to ‘a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of their race, religion, nationality, or membership of a particular social group or political opinion’. The Convention has universal application and is the cornerstone of refugee protection. It is part of the law of the United Kingdom.

Different countries have their own systems of deciding whether a person fits the UN definition, and national courts may interpret the Convention differently. Not all people who have strong reasons to leave their countries necessarily fit this definition. Nevertheless, they may still be entitled to protection under international human rights law. They may therefore be allowed to remain under the laws of a particular country, and given a discretionary status: for example, exceptional leave to remain in the UK.

A lot of people say that it is easy to get into the UK, and they would be right if they were not talking about Asylum Seekers. As for Economic Migrants from the EEA it is probably no more difficult than them getting into France, Spain or Portugal.

The United Kingdom has many barriers when it comes to non EEA citizens coming into the country. The main barriers are:

• Visas – Asylum seekers coming from certain countries have to seek permission to travel to the UK before coming. This creates a Catch-22 situation, because there is no visa to claim asylum. In order to reach safety, refugees may therefore have to travel without visas, obtain forged visas or carry forged passports.

• Carriers’ liability – governments have enlisted airlines, hauliers and train operators into immigration control, by fining them for bringing in people without the correct documentation or visa. In the UK, the penalty is £2,000 per passenger. People suspected of needing asylum can therefore be prevented from travelling. They may then be forced to turn to peoplesmugglers and pay large amounts of money to ‘agents’ to help them, through providing forged documents, or by hiding them in lorries or under trains.

• Detention – to retain control over applicants while their claims areprocessed, the UK has a policy of selective detention. This can have a deterrent effect on other asylum seekers.

• Support systems – governments believe that differences in financial support to asylum-seekers are a pull-factor and therefore seek to limit support as much as possible.

• Governments working together in order to unify their procedures and share information, so that people cannot try again in another EU country if one application is refused. The EU plans a series of measures to harmonise minimum standards in asylum and to create barriers around the whole EU.

Economic migrants from the EEA don’t face any of the above problems!

When an asylum seeker arrives in the country they are given houses and money by the Government – this often causes rage amongst those who are from the UK (usually because they don’t understand why this has happened). However, for the most part those Asylum seekers who are in this situation are still awaiting a decision or appealing the decision and are therefore not legally permitted to earn a wage!

In short, we can’t stop Asylum Seekers coming here because we are legally obliged to accept them under International Law; Polish people are not Asylum Seekers and Asylum Seekers get financial and housing help from the Government (once they eventually manage to get here) because they are not legally permitted to seek or gain employment until a decision on their application has been reached.

For the last seven years or so one topic that has been raised more frequently is torture, and in particular should the Police and Security Services be allowed to use torture when interrogating potential terror suspects.

To suggest that it is a good idea is not without merit – there are clear advantages to such a proposal. However, the negatives of permitting torture far out-weigh the benefits!

Firstly, if you are tortured for long enough and severe enough you will say anything they want you to. This could put other innocent people at risk as you give names of co-conspirators or just confess to the crime they say you are committing. Your sole purpose in doing this is not to tell the truth, but to make the pain and suffering stop.

Statistically people are racially profiled when looking into terrorism (especially in the wake of the World Trade Centre Attack in 2001). It is not on that we could be subjecting innocent people to a vile process just because of their race!

Then we must look at the statistics of terror arrests. Between the WTC Attack and early 2005 there were almost 1,200 arrests under ant-terror legislation. Only 40 have led to, and more than half the suspects held have been released without any charge at all. The Police and the Security Services are not good enough at investigating and are arresting too many innocent citizens!

All 1,200 of these people would have been subjected the unacceptable conditions allowed under the Terrorism Act (which have become even more unacceptable). At the time they would have been subjected to interrogation for u to seven days with limited access to a lawyer and the other rights that other suspects have when in Police Custody.

Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) states:

 “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950) states:

 “No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

 
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a signatory to both treaties and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental is enshrined in domestic law in the form of the Human Rights Act 1998.

In recent times Human Rights have been blamed for a lot of bad (I fail to see how they can eve be considered bad, but that’s a topic for another time). However, here is a brilliant example of them doing nothing but good!

It doesn’t take much for a police officer or member of the security services to suspect you of terrorist offences and not much more to arrest you under the Terrorism Acts of 2000 and 2006.

There are some people who argue that it is better to torture a couple of innocent people in the pursuit of getting the real terrorist and that torture would help flush out the true terrorists! Those who do I pity you.

Tomorrow it could be you; would you like to be subjected to these abhorrent methods in order to extract “information” or “confession” from you? I think not. I’m sure if you were for torture and then were subjected to it you would soon change your mind!

What really annoys me, being a law student, is when people who try and bring our judicial system into disrepute, without actually understaning the part of the system their complaining about!

I heard someone the other day comment how she was annoyed that someone was in the jail and not getting punished, it later transpired that this person was being held on remand pending trial!

Remand is not a punishment! This person has not yet been found guilty of a crime if they are being held on remand and as such the principle of “innocence until guilt is proven” applies. This principle is one that is enshrined in our legal system (this is why the crown has responsibility for proving that a person committed a crime and the accused need prove nothing). The day we remove this principle opens the system up to serious abuses.

While on remand the accused will get privileges that others in the prison population do not and are generally held separately from the general prison population.

Yes, remand is a temporary measure. This is because a person on remand is still legally innocent. The law protects the accused from a protracted period on remand in custody by stating that a trial must commence before 110 days have expired after the accused has been fully committed and remanded in custody. Extensions to the aforementioned timescale can be sought by the Prosecutor through application to a Judge of the High Court but such applications are rare and would need to justify sufficient cause.

That's my rant over for today. However, I intend to post a blog on the subject of "Torture" (mainly in regard as to why introducing it would be one of the worst reforms of the Legal System in a long time) in the next few days!

Well it’s my second entry, not too long after the first. It is on another abhorrent idea coming out from the United Kingdom Government.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has backed plans to introduce a scheme of presumed consent when it comes to organ donation. This quite simply is not on!

Everyone has the absolute right of ownership of their own body in both life and death!

Why should the state be allowed to presume that I want to give my Organs? The short answer is they should never be able to make such a presumption.

This policy is just to try and plug a gap in the lack of organ donors. It’s a bit like the Chinese using the organs of executed prisoners for transplant (although, I’ll concede it’s a bit less vile). However, the same problem can be solved quite easily:

Educate more and provide easier access to the forms to register as an organ donor. Currently there is little publicity and advertising on this issue (other than when the talk about a system of presumed consent unless one opts out) and few people actually know where to go in order to sign up to the organ donor register.

It's quite simple. I don’t want the state having ownership of my organs unless I go and sign some forms to get my ownership back!

I'm not against organ donation, in fact I'm considering becoming a donor (but I feel that should be my choice, not one the state presumes)

Well welcome to my blog. This is my first post and I’ll start as I mean to go on.

Ministers in the United Kingdom Government are planning to introduce one of the most abhorrent and draconian infringements upon our Civil Liberties and Human Rights that they have introduced in their last 10 years in Government!

The Independent on Sunday yesterday revealed plans by ministers to reform the tagging systems we have in the UK to monitor offenders who have been released into the community. Instead of a tag around ones ankle Ministers are proposing to implant, by way of an injection, a tracking device the length of two grains of rice into the arm of offenders released into the community.

The current tag around the ankle is enough of an infringement upon one’s person and privacy without a piece of electronics being placed into the body in order to track and monitor us!

The mentality of “we track cars, so why not people” is worrying. People are not the property of the state and as such the state should stop treating us as such. Big Brother is well and truly watching us in society and the government seem to be getting more and more power over us. If the government cannot see the difference between a car and a person then we are truly living in a time of desperation.

George Orwell wrote a very famous novel entitled Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is horrifying how society is developing at a rapid pace into an Orwellian world. I believe that Orwell provided us with a very valuable warning, but this warning has been taken as an instruction manual by the people we elect into Parliament.

There will be some people who argue that this is a good way forward. To you I say beware. The Government can never have such powers over the citizenry. The more liberty we give up the less freedom we have and we go down a slippery slope to an autocratic police state.

This system will not make us any safer or provide any more security against paedophiles, murders, rapists or any other offender the government decides to open this system up to. It is argued that this will remove the potential for people to evade the system, but it will not be long before someone finds a way around the system. How do the government propose to stop people digging this tracking device out of their own bodies? The answer is that they cannot stop a person doing such a thing, so it does nothing to remove the possibility of the person removing the tag.

Also, what signal does this send out to the pubic? Those offenders who are not in prison supposedly pose no threat or danger to society, but yet the state feels compelled to monitor and track their every move? If they’re not a danger of threat to society why do they need to be monitored and tracked? The answer is they don’t. This is just another draconian and useless idea to cut prison numbers without having to build new prisons.

Who would have thought that words spoken in 1759 would be so pertinent in 2008? It was 1759 when Benjamin Franklin said “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”