Sign the Petition
Britain was involved in the CIA’s torture programme, and some of our politicians knew about it. ACT NOW with Reprieve - Please can you write to your MP and ask them to attend the debate on torture and make sure the right questions get asked? Read more and send a letter here.
Stop the Criminalisation of the Kurdish Movement: 3 Kurds are currently being prosecuted by the Belgian courts. They spoke out for the Kurdish cause and promoted Kurdish culture. At the behest of the Turkish state innocent people are criminalised in Belgium for alleged involvement in terrorist activities. Read more and sign here.
Sign our petition NOW to tell Brazilian authorities to #KeepitOn during the Rio Olympics: Internet shutdowns -- including "jamming" or blocking the mobile internet -- harm human rights, block emergency services, and stifle the economy. . Read more and sign here.
Events
Films
Noam Chomsky (2014):
Why you can not have a Capitalist Democracy!
Articles & resources
CAMPACC has produced 5 new briefings, available to download (pdf format):
Somali communities targeted by UK 'counter-terror' measures: the need for solidarity
Baluchistan under state terror: The UK ban on the Baluchistan Liberation Army
Euskal Herria: The struggle for independence in the Basque Country and the impact of ‘terrorist’bans
The UK ban on the PKK: Persecuting the Kurds
The Tamils of Sri Lanka - oppressed at home and persecuted in the UK
CAMPACC statement: UK anti-terror regime: creating hatred of Muslims as a suspect community
NUJ Ethix Council Guidelines on reporting terrorism
Opposing the UK 'Terrorist' List: Persistence as Resistance CAMPACC paper, February 2009 (pdf file)
Read papers and reports from a series of seminars on "Terrorist lists", proscription, designation and human rights.
"Our tragedy and pain is part of the series of pains that is felt by people in cases like ours when laws are destroyed and flames ignited by politicians whose only desire is the achievement of their tyrannical subjugation and the spreading and domination of their lowly thoughts engulfs any notion of human rights."
Anti-terrorism laws: unjust powers
Do anti-terror laws make us safer? Whom do they protect?
- define terrorism more broadly, thus blurring any distinction between anti-government protest and organized violence against civilians;
- label numerous organisations as ‘terrorist', as a basis for placing entire communities under suspicion of associating with ‘terrorism';
- use ‘intelligence' obtained by torturing detainees abroad;
- and detain and prosecute people for suspected activities which could just as well be handled under other laws. Read more
What's new
We deplore the police entry into the Ecuadorian embassy to drag out Julian Assange and to arrest him. This was only possible because of the despicable act of the current Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno who has reneged on the granting of unconditional political asylum to Assange in 2012 by the previous government of President Rafael Correa. His confinement in the embassy was found by the United Nations to be a case of “arbitrary detention” in violation of international law in 2016. Assange’s removal by British authorities came just as the UN expert on torture announced his intention to visit him also noting that his extradition to the US was a real risk.
IHRC's latest briefing looks at what was missing in UK Counter-terrorism chief, Neil Basu's comments on the link between mainstream media portrayal of Muslims and far-right attacks. It looks at the run up to the Finsbury Park attack in the UK in 2017, giving links to articles which demonised the event Osborne initially targeted. Islamic Human Rights Commission, 26 March
Human rights advocates are blasting what they call the “PREVENT lobby” for exploiting the New Zealand massacre in order to expand the powers of the national security state. Former counter-terror chief Mark Rowley and former ‘integration tsar’ Louise Casey recently wrote an article calling for more powers to fight terrorism. Mohamed Elmaazi, The Canary, 22 March 2019
Activist Moazzam Begg has placed the massacre of at least 50 Muslims in New Zealand into its wider context, blaming advocates of the so-called ‘War on Terror’ for actually ‘generating’ such far-right terrorism. The Canary, Mohamed Elmaazi, 19 March 2019
Non-Jewish German people have been smearing Jewish people (from both Germany and Israel) as antisemites. Why? Because of their activism for Palestinian human rights. The Canary, Mohamed Elmaazi, 19 March 2019
After becoming the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy, Narendra Modi visited the United Kingdom in 2015, and what a welcome he received! Almost 60,000 British Indians from 450 community groups attended his rockstar reception at the Wembley stadium. About 800 performers participated in the free concert that preceded Modi’s speech, and he was introduced on stage by the then British Prime Minister David Cameron. Since his visit coincided with the Diwali festival, it also featured what has been billed as one of London’s largest ever firework displays. How did Modi, a man on the banned-visa list of the United Kingdom for his alleged direct connection to the 2002 Gujarat pogrom in which about 1000 Muslims were murdered, achieve such celebrity status? The Telegraph (India), Adrija Dey, Chandni Chawla and Siddharth Chakravarty, 14 March 2019
You will find below the text of an open letter from Statewatch and four other NGOs calling on MEPs in the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee to oppose the requirement for mandatory fingeprinting in a proposed EU Regulation on identity cards and travel documents. - Statewatch, 8 March 2019
With the increasing mobilisation of Far Right forces in recent years, antisemitic attacks have become a more serious threat. However, a high-profile campaign has disgracefully targeted an ‘antisemitism problem’ in the Labour Party and the wider Palestine solidarity movement. For nearly three years, the movement has been countering the false allegations. - IHRC, 2 February 2019