Anti-terror Laws Controversy Flares Up in Britain

Labour MPs and Muslim groups fiercely attacked Hazel Blears, Home Office Minister, for stating that the Muslim community should accept as a “reality” that they are more likely to be stopped and searched.

The controversial laws allow the government to place so-called control orders on citizens it deems “terrorism suspects”, including electronic tagging or even a form of indefinite house arrest without trial.

Adamant to pass the laws as they stand, Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected Conservative proposals to put a time limit on the measures, which sparked fears it would erode the country’s long-established human rights by targeting people on “mere suspicions”.

“Hopping Mad”

It was the statements of Blears that renewed fears that Muslims and other ethnic minorities would bear the brunt of the fiercely-contested anti-terrorism measures.

Blears said Muslims should accept that they will be targeted by police because the new laws were geared to deal with “Islamic extremists”.

“The threat is most likely to come from those people associated with an extreme form of Islam, or who are falsely hiding behind Islam,” she was quoted by the Independent as telling MPs Tuesday, March 1, during the all-party Home Affairs Select Committee’s inquiry into the impact of anti-terror powers on community relations.

“It means that some of our counter-terrorism powers will be disproportionately experienced by the Muslim community.

“I think that is the reality, and I think we should recognize that. If a threat is from a particular place, then our action is going to be targeted at that area.”

The remarks draw outrage even from Labour MPs, who expressed fears the remarks will further alienate Muslim voters who were already threatening to desert Labour because of the war on Iraq.

Alice Mahon, the retiring Labour MP for Halifax, a West Yorkshire seat with a high Muslim population, wrote a protest letter to Blears, saying she was “dismayed” by her comments to the Home Affairs Select Committee.

“It is wrong for the security service to single out any section of our community disproportionately. Your remarks will anger and isolate the Muslim community, who are already being unfairly blamed for the actions of a few extremists,” she was quoted by the Independent as saying.

But the Prime Minister’s official spokesman defended the minister, saying Blears “understands there is a perception that stop-and-search powers are aimed particularly at one community, but … what is happening is that those powers are aimed at those who are suspected of carrying out or planning certain activity who happen to come from one community. It is not police policy to aim these powers at a particular community.”

Scaremongering

Islamic groups, which have repeatedly claimed that the minority is being victimized under anti-terror legislation, condemned Blears’ remarks.

The Islamic Human Rights Commission described her comment as irresponsible.

Massoud Shadjareh, who chairs the commission, was quoted by the Independent Thursday, March 3, as saying Blears’ comments would be “music to the ears of racists”.

Shadjareh, who sits on a Home Office advisory panel on stop and search, accused the minister of “playing an Islamophobia card”.

Inayat Bunglawala, the spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, was quoted by the British daily as saying Blears was “scaremongering” to help get anti-terror laws allowing control orders on terror suspects on to the statue books.

“On the one hand we are told that we have made great inroads to deal with the specter of racist and Islamophobic targeting and yet we are now told that perfectly innocent citizens can be stopped on the street, searched and, in the context of the debate going on in Parliament, locked up,” said Raj Joshi, vice-chairman of the Society of Black Lawyers.

Ordinary Muslims also expressed fears the new proposals pushed by Blair’s government would increase their feeling of alienation.

“My wife and I were driving through King’s Cross. Police were stopping [non-white] people. I asked a policeman why. He said, ‘There are a lot of people dealing drugs here’. I said, ‘What’s that got to do with me’? It was insulting.

“Just because I’m a certain color … the fact that he pinpoints me is horrible. It’s humiliating. You don’t feel part of the country you grew up in and love,” Abdurahman Jafar, 32, London barrister, told the Independent.

The proposed measures, if adopted, would replace an earlier law allowing “foreign terror suspects” to be jailed without trial, which Britain’s highest court of appeal struck down late last year after ruling it contravened human rights obligations.

Proposals Rejected

Meanwhile, the bitter political debate over the government’s terrorism laws intensified Wednesday when Blair spurned Conservative proposals to put a time limit on the measures.

Blair said the bill was vital to national security, implying the Conservatives would be responsible if no terrorism law was on the statute book by March 14, the date on which the current act expires, according to the Guardian.

Blair’s large majority in parliament ensured the bill’s approval by 309 votes to 233, although some Labour members voted against it.

But the House of Lords could throw out the legislation in the coming days, as Labour lacks a majority there, Reuters reported.

The Conservatives suggest that the new legislation should expire automatically on November 30. A group of privy councilors would prepare alternative laws in the interim.

But Blair argued that the Tories’ “sunset clause” was unnecessary because the house arrest control order would be reviewed annually.