Category Archives: Society

Britain, European Court, Government, History, Human Rights, Politics, Society, United Nations

Celebrating 800 years of the Magna Carta: why would Britain contemplate leaving the ECHR?

MAGNA CARTA & ECHR

The 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta will be celebrated in Britain this year. This was the treaty signed between King John and a group of rebellious barons in 1215 that guaranteed British citizens a range of freedoms and civil rights. One of the 25 guarantors of the Magna Carta was the Earl of Winchester, Saer de Quincy, whose ancestors were from France. De Quincy fought King John when he failed to respect the Magna Carta and it all contained, and asked the French prince Louis to lay claim to the English throne. Whilst on a crusade, and far away from home, De Quincy died in 1219.

As a crusader today, De Quincy would probably have been labelled a foreign fighter by the intelligence services and would never have made it to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, having been stopped by border control as he attempted to leave the UK. His attempts to have King John of Runnymede replaced by a French king would have landed him in jail under anti-terrorism laws. And no doubt GCHQ, the intelligence services listening outpost in Cheltenham, would have kept him and his fellow barons under 24/7 surveillance as a threat to national security.

Today Magna Carta (and the accompanying legal presumption of habeas corpus) is celebrated as one of the most important documents in the history of civil rights. It is widely seen and accepted as being the precursor to later conventions that protect human rights and the rule of law, including the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and, more recently, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Magna Carta, though, was never meant to protect all the people, whereas the UN and European documents gives equal protection to all citizens, regardless of their status in society.

Today, too, we don’t need charters to protect Barons against the abuse of power by Kings. But we do need laws that protect citizens against abuse of power by governments, and we need not only national laws, but European and international ones.

David Cameron symbolises Magna Carta as the ultimate expression and mantra of British values. While some Tories are now promulgating the argument that the UK should withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and return to those traditional values, against the backdrop of the Magna Carta anniversary celebrations their arguments are especially ironic. For example, they strongly accuse the ECHR of limiting the freedom of governments, but King John probably complained too about the Magna Carta unduly restricting his absolute freedom to rule as he wanted. But crucially those in power must be bound by law in order to protect citizens from arbitrary rule.

800 years on, the values and principles laid down in Magna Carta have been embraced by large parts of the world. They have become universal and their shared values are at the core of the European Union as a community of citizens. We should be glad that European courts in Luxembourg and Strasbourg protect us against governments exceeding and abusing their powers, undermining civil liberties and the rule of law.

Fundamental rights, the rule of law and democratic principles enshrined into nationhood are frequently violated in nearly all EU member states. In some cases, the violations are serious and systematic. The current Hungarian government is one of the most egregious offenders. In recent years, the media has been critically gagged, electoral law changed to secure an absolute majority for the governing party, political opponents weakened and the independence and impartiality of the judiciary undermined. But there are also many other examples across Europe: the ant-gay laws in Lithuania, the deportation of Roma people from France, the cruel and inhumane treatment of underage asylum seekers in the Netherlands, and the collective disregard shown for the law and civil liberties in many countries’ counter-terrorism policies.

If we become accepting of tolerating torture, secret prisons, rendition, abduction, and indefinite detention without fair trials and representation then we will lose our moral authority. Such blots tarnish Europe’s status as a shining beacon of freedom and human rights in the world. EU governments must be held accountable for such crimes, especially those that are committed in the name of defending democracy.

That is why we need legal instruments to uphold our common values, even if this means that sometimes national authorities are overruled. EU member states voluntarily signed up to these supranational laws and conventions for good reason, namely because it is the essence of democracy that those in power are bound by laws and that their powers are limited. Whilst that may sometimes be awkward, such checks and balances are the vital safeguards which protect us against abuse of power by the state.

As it happens, these principles are not politically left or right-wing, nor are they alien to modern British culture. Quite the opposite: safeguarding citizens’ rights and the rule of law have their roots firmly established in that ancient, famous document that will be celebrated this year. Magna Carta does not set Britain apart from the rest of Europe. It is the expression and very epitome of the common European values that we have all come to embrace.

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European Parliament, Government, History, Society, Turkey, United Nations

Genocide. An emotive word that must be used correctly…

GENOCIDE

Intro: Genocide is a highly emotive word and shouldn’t be confused with other mass killings

A century ago, in 1915, Ottoman officials seized upon and rounded up Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul, most of whom were later murdered. Events which followed are still bitterly contested. The official Turkish version says that some 500,000 Armenians died, which included those fighting alongside the invading Russians against Ottoman forces. Others were also slayed as a regrettable side-effect of deportations that were perhaps understandable in the context of the times. However, many scholars say that up to 1.5m Armenians died, and imply that their deaths were a result of a deliberate and orchestrated campaign to eliminate the Ottoman empire’s only sizeable Christian population. Pressingly, given this account of events, members of the Armenian diaspora want events recognised as genocide.

Genocide is a highly emotive word and shouldn’t be confused with other mass killings; use of terminology and language matters as to which word should be used.

In 1948 the United Nations adopted a convention aimed at preventing and punishing acts of genocide, which it defined as the ‘deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnical, racial, religious or national group’. Agreement on the text involved a number of compromises. For example, targeting victims because of their class was not classed as genocide: Stalin would hardly have signed it if it meant being held to account for his mass slaughter of ‘middle peasants’. In the past century, the world has witnessed many mass slaughters, including some which have been acknowledged as genocide and some that do not fit within the UN’s definition. The genocidal nature of the slaughter of Rwanda’s minority Tutsis by majority Hutus militias, for instance, is not in question. Pol Pot’s reign of terror in Cambodia, however, does not strictly qualify, since the Khmers Rouges targeted no particular group.

Genocide as a word has considerable power. If mass slaughter is recognised as genocide when it is happening, it will be much harder for outside forces to sit idly by. When capitulation is over, an official declaration that it was genocide can give any survivors some grim satisfaction. But when that recognition is withheld, because of a technicality or due to political expediency, it will feel like the final insult. And the ‘crime of crimes’ tag that genocide has been given has led to some human rights activists and legal scholars expressing concern that this status sometimes overshadows the horror of other crimes against humanity.

Pope Francis and the European Parliament have very publicly described the Armenian massacres as genocide: the pontiff at a mass on April 12th attended by Armenia’s president, and the European Parliament in a plebiscite three days later commending the pope’s words and calling on Turkey, too, to recognise the killings as genocide. The Turkish government reacted with outrage and fury, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan saying: ‘It is not possible for Turkey to accept such a crime, such a sin.’ Mr Erdogan’s foreign minister claimed Pope Francis had fallen for propaganda disseminated by the Armenians who ostensibly control the press in his homeland of Argentina. The irony, though, is that Mr Erdogan has done more than any previous Turkish leader to acknowledge the suffering and pain of Armenians under the Ottoman empire, such as when he offered his condolences last year on April 24th. But unquestionably, there are limits to the willingness of the Turkish government in facing up to, and naming, the crimes of his country’s past.

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China, Economic, Foreign Affairs, Japan, Society, United States

A bilateral trade agreement between Japan and America looms…

TRADE AGREEMENT

Intro: But why is this potential agreement being treated as a weapon? It shouldn’t be used to contain China

Congressional leaders in America rarely agree on anything, but last week some good news stemmed from Washington. A bipartisan bill has been presented to Congress which, if passed, would for the first time in many years give the president ‘fast-track’ authority when negotiating trade deals. A huge trade deal looms, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the bill would provide a major boost for its prospects. It would bind America with 11 economies (including Japan but not China) around the Pacific Rim. The TPP is being mightily embraced. As Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, heads to Washington for a much anticipated trip – including an invitation to address a joint session of Congress – Mr Abe claimed that America and Japan were close to agreeing the terms of a bilateral agreement on trade.

However, there are two major caveats. First, ‘fast track’, formerly known as Trade Promotion Authority, may still fall foul of Congress. And second, Japan may not make any serious cuts to tariffs that protect its farmers. Yet, underlying this potential trade agreement is that both have been too quick to cast the TPP as a weapon in its desire to contain China.

Flanked by Japan and America, the TPP would link countries which make up 40% of global GDP. That could boost world trade and output by as much as $220 billion a year by 2025. It is aimed at reforming difficult areas such as intellectual property, state-owned firms and environmental and labour standards. It would link economies that lie at different ends of the spectrum of development – from Vietnam to Australia.

But, crucially, the TPP will not happen without fast track, which forces Congress into a yes/no vote on any pending trade deal (avoiding the risk that it will be amended into oblivion). And the passage of fast track will no-doubt face a lot of scepticism from congressional Democrats. There are those who will be implacably opposed, whilst others will want America to have a bigger arsenal with which to fight against unfair traders. Driven by a conviction that China artificially holds its currency down and destroys American jobs, some, such as the New York senator Charles Schumer, remain determined that fast track should include a provision that would make sure any specific trade deal included sanctions on currency manipulation.

Attaching a currency-manipulation clause to trade deals is a poor idea. Not only are they hard to define but the addition of such clauses makes reaching an agreement less likely. But Mr Schumer’s demands are hard to ignore given that the Obama administration has already, mistakenly, directly pitched TPP as a counterbalance to an assertive China.

While Mr Abe has also committed his country to joining the TPP on strategic grounds, the same mistaken logic of counterbalancing China looks set to cause problems in Japan. For example, Mr Abe is a born admirer of free trade. When he first entered negotiations, some of his backers believed that, by playing the China card, Japan would be spared from making real concessions: that America would care more about a pact that excluded China than about prising open Japan’s most protected markets, particularly rice.

Japan will want to keep tariffs high. The best it may offer will be to allow in a fixed quota of tariff-free rice from the other TPP members (including America).

If the China-containment logic prevails and leads to a minimalist agreement, then the economic gains from TPP will be slim. That was never TPP’s aim, but by having real value to set high new standards for world trade. That requires the boldest possible agreement.

In the long run, the world must surely gain if China joins the pact. Yet, the rhetoric makes trade negotiations sound like a contest. It shouldn’t be that way. This is a battle where the more you give away the more you win.

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