too broad and subjective

UPDATED: One more pong

Correspondence:
Ping (me)
Pong (Rentoul)
Ping (me)
Pong (Rentoul)
PING...
POOOONG (You shill, you)
NO PINGS ALLOWED

John Rentoul, chief political commentator at the Independent on Sunday, has also boarded the We Hate The Human Rights Act bandwagon, along with the Daily Mail, the Sun and Daily Torygraph. How Independent. How liberal.

He joins other esteemed correspondents at the Indy who hate human rights - or who hate them when they get in the way of our middle class 'freedoms'. Mary Dejevsky believes in deportation of the Roma, on the grounds that they are criminal and parasitic, and too expensive for the richer nations to support. Bruce Anderson believes we have a duty to subject the families of terrorists (suspected terrorists?) to torture: 'torture the wife and children' if the terrorist won't talk. And Rentoul, who is a bit more circumspect about the details of which rights he would withdraw, and from whom, thinks the concept of inhuman and degrading treatment is 'too broad and subjective', and therefore probably is fine for terrorists, suspected terrorist (and foreigners).

I wrote to complain about a single paragraph in one of his (two) recent articles against the HRA:

From his article
A Pincer movement on No 10
[Blair] and his home secretaries talked of "revisiting" or even "repealing" the Chahal judgment of the European Court of Human Rights that would not allow the UK to deport a suspected terrorist. Which, needless to say, could not be done.

My letter:

Dear John Rentoul
In your column in the IoS, you say the following: 'At other times [Blair] and his home secretaries talked of "revisiting" or even "repealing" the Chahal judgment of the European Court of Human Rights that would not allow the UK to deport a suspected terrorist. Which, needless to say, could not be done.'

In fact the UK is quite able to deport a suspected terrorist. The Chahal judgement was about someone who had not been convicted of any crime, but who had, while in India, been beaten to loss of consciousness, electrocuted on various parts of his body, and given a mock execution. We tried to send him back to India. The European Court decided that he would almost certainly face torture again if he were sent back there - and it was that fact that meant we were unable to deport him.

If we really decided that we wanted to be the type of country which sent individuals back to be electrocuted, beaten, and probably worse, we would need not just to stand back from the European Convention, but also the UN Convention against ?orture, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the European Torture Convention, and almost certainly the UN Refugee Convention. Then we really would be a pariah state.

There are important debates to be had about human rights, but it does not help when cases such as these are presented so misleadingly in newspapers such as your own.

Thank you for your attention
ek

He replied:

Dear ...
Thank you for your thoughtful email. I defer to your greater knowledge of the case. My understanding was that Chahal was suspected by the British Government of being "involved in planning and directing terrorist attacks in India, the United Kingdom and elsewhere"; that his claims of mistreatment by the Punjab police had not been corroborated; and that the finding of the European Court of Human Rights was that there was a "real risk" that he would be subjected to "torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" if he were returned to India.

The case was certainly cited as a precedent in advice to Tony Blair and his home secretaries that they would not be able to deport suspected terrorists to various countries.

So I do not accept that my article was misleading; it was an attempt to contribute to the important debates about human rights of which you write, including the debate about what degree of certainty of what degree of mistreatment in one country is the responsibility of another.

If you wish to write a letter for publication, it should be addressed to sundayletters@independent.co.uk with your postal address.

With best wishes

John Rentoul

top

My reply:

Dear JR,
Many thanks for replying - and I've also just seen your blog piece acknowledging our correspondence. My response to yours would be that the British Government did indeed suspect Chahal of being involved in the acts you list, but he was never actually charged. Under human rights law - and indeed, under British law for centuries prior to international human rights law - an individual is innocent until proven guilty.

Furthermore, the ECHR did indeed find (only?) that there was a 'real risk' of his being subjected to torture - but short of certainty, you can't get much closer to torture than that. Subjecting someone to a real risk of torture is something we have undertaken not to do - not just in signing up to the European Convention, but in the other documents I listed.

You may be right that Tony Blair used this example to claim that we were unable to deport suspected terrorists - it would not surprise me. But he was wrong (and he must have known it), except where those suspected terrorists faced a real risk of being tortured.

And that is why I felt that your paragraph was misleading: the average reader would assume either that you were making the claim, or that you were repeating a correct claim made by a former Prime Minister, to the effect that the Chahal judgement prevented us from deporting suspected terrorists. Whereas in fact it (only) prevents us from deporting suspected terrorists (or convicted terrorists, or anyone else) if that entails subjecting them to a real risk of torture.

Perhaps that prohibition is something that people want to debate (sadly, I suspect it may be). But the debate should be about whether or not we are prepared to subject people - whether guilty or not - to torture, and not about whether or not we should be allowed to deport suspected terrorists. Because the latter we can do anyway, with or without the European Court.

Thanks again,
EK

top

He replies again, but fails to answer any of those points, instead moving off on a completely different tack:

Thanks again for your reply. One further point: Chahal faced what the Court described as a "real risk" not necessarily of torture but of torture or "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". I think that is too broad and subjective. The problem faced by successive home secretaries is that there is a large number of countries to which this "real risk" is held to apply, which makes it impossible to deport a lot of people who otherwise would be deported.

Best wishes

JR

top

One last blast

Thanks - but just because 'inhuman or degrading treatment' feels subjective to non-legal ears, it is in fact no more (and no less) so than torture, plus the bar is set very high. The terms have been defined and refined by the best legal minds in this country and elsewhere, and there is broad consensus over what does or does not qualify. I would suggest that you read some of the case law if you doubt this, or if you doubt the severity of treatment that is regarded as inhuman and degrading.

On your second point: that torture or IDT is widespread may be a 'problem' for our home secretaries, but it is still more of a problem for those the home secretaries wish to send off to receive it. And home secretaries are not absolved from obligations, however problematic they may be, that we have taken on (by which, of course, I mean our parliamentary representatives have taken on).

So I repeat, that if we are unhappy with these obligations, then we need to withdraw from the various treaties I have mentioned. But we should realise that we would be the only so-called developed country to consider doing so - and we should ask ourselves whether we are really happy to be the type of country which knowingly sends people, whether innocent or guilty, to be treated in inhuman ways (in the strict sense given over more than 60 years of case law).

From your replies, and from your unwillingness to acknowledge the difference (or the significance of the difference) between your original statement and what is in fact the case, I sense that you are happy for us to do that. It does not appear to matter to you that someone is innocent, as long as they are suspected of being guilty. And it does not appear to matter to you what happens to such individuals - as long as we can remove them from our territory, and as long as our hands are not fitting the electric probes or wielding the truncheons used to beat them to unconsciousness.

Thank you for enlightening me on the distance (backwards) travelled by the so-called liberal media.

top

A public flogging

I think it was that last sentence that gave away my hard-left psycho-ideological bent. Or should I say, that gave away my paymaster. A plague on us, shills and paymasters alike, a public ponging for our devious ways. Big guns are needed for the mighty Media Lens (and their mini shills): Rentoul decided to unmask me in a column which described with frightening accuracy the inner workings of our cult: Banging the drum against human rights

I tried to post a comment to the article, to confirm that everything he said was true, but they have a shill-busting moderator at the Independent, of higher sensitivity than JR's weak defences. Pong. Pong. Pong. Smash your weedy ping machine.

So I went back to my paymasters and they handed me my crock of gold and allowed me to post the psycho-ideological comment on their message board for a small fee, and on condition that I continue to do their dirty business until the end of time.

This was my confession.

On why I am a shill

I wrote to Rentoul because - as I said to him in my first letter - there are so many lies being told about human rights that they are obscuring serious debate. I find it depressing that a high profile correspondent can make such a basic mistake, and put it out to readers as the truth. At a time when human rights are under fire - to the extent that we may be the first, or only 'developed' nation to renounce the rights that the world agreed to over 60 years ago - it seems particularly important that we know what it is we are in danger of renouncing (and what we are not).

More depressing even than the basic ‘mistake’ was the fact that when pressed, it became clear that Rentoul did not appear to have qualms about sending individuals suspected but not convicted of terrorist activities back to a country where they were at real risk of being subjected to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment. If high profile correspondents in so-called liberal papers can contemplate that as an option, despite the commitments we have made to do otherwise and despite the thin or – I would say – non-existent line between carrying out the act ourselves, and facilitating the process so that others can carry it out – then we have indeed moved into dangerous territory.

I did not tell Rentoul that I post on the Media Lens board because I knew he would not then engage with me. And as I explain in my post there, I wrote to him because I objected to what he had said in his column, and not for any strategic reasons (let alone as a favour to Media Lens). I don’t feel particularly proud of posting without telling him I planned to do so, but he is a public journalist with a public platform and if he makes mistakes and won’t admit to them, or if he believes in the acceptability of what is generally regarded as unacceptable, then I believe that given his position as revered opinion-shaper, and given how high the stakes are, such views should be laid out for people to see. My only real access to ‘the public’ is through that board.