UK becoming a 'police state', UN warns

Press Esc
Saturday June 16, 2007

Counter-terrorism laws are rapidly turning the United Kingdom into a police state, a United Nations independent expert warned today and added that targeting Muslims through religious profiling was counterproductive.

Asma Jahangir, the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, was particularly concerned about the new stop and search rules allowing the police to to stop and search an individual without having to show ‘reasonable grounds’ for the action, which the British police themselves have deemed unnecessary.

Such laws are widely believed to target the UK’s Muslim population and “undermine the human rights of all,” Ms. Jahangir said in a statement issued in London after wrapping up an 11-day visit to the country.

“A discriminatory application of stop-and-search powers and religious profiling may ultimately prove to be counterproductive,” she said, but added.

While she understood that States were obliged to adopt measures to thwart terrorism, Ms. Jahangir also noted that she has heard allegations of abuses of counter-terrorism laws, particularly of the provisions which criminalize the failure to disclose information about terrorist acts.

Home Office figures show that although more than 1100 people have arrested on the suspicion of terrorism, only 40 of them have ever been convicted of terrorism related offences.

Civil liberties groups told Ms. Jahangir that, given the media circus that attracts arrests carried out under terrorism legislation, terrorism legislation has blighted the lives of more than a thousand innocent individuals and their families.

Opposition politicians and rights groups also expressed concern to the Special Rapporteur about the mammoth DNA database that the government was building, which now includes genetic records of eight percent of all Britons.

During her visit to the UK, Ms. Jahangir met with Prime Minister Tony Blair, senior Government officials, politicians, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and academics, while she also toured a school, a prison and an immigration removal centre.