Dear Media Watch friends
I enlcose a great read which analyses the erosion of
human rights - It also points at the role of language
- good + evil - and how this emotional unlogical
language clouds any clear discussion.
It's a lovely and elegant analysis which will blow
away any spiderwebs of confusion.
I enjoyed the read.
Hope you do too. (15 pages but it's worth it!)
All the best
Sigi
The link to the text is
http://www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/human-rights/index_documents.htm
http://www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/human-rights/index_documents.htm
Click the third text on the page!
And it will download as pdf:
Human rights in an age of counter-terrorism (lecture
delivered as part of the 2006 Oxford Amnesty Lectures,
which took as their topic the 'War on Terror'), 23
February 2006 Professor Conor Gearty
OXFORD AMNESTY LECTURE
23 February 2006
HUMAN RIGHTS
IN AN AGE OF COUNTER-TERRORISM
CONOR GEARTY
This lecture was delivered by Conor Gearty as part of
the 2006 Oxford
Amnesty Lectures, which took as their topic the 'War
on Terror'.
Terror and terrorism
For many years I worried with all the other so-called
‘terrorism experts’ about the fact
that there was no proper, objective definition of
terrorism. I even abandoned a law
textbook I planned on the subject on account of the
inadequacy of my introductory
chapter. In the end I wrote a book on terrorism that
was more about language and
the power of labels than it was about killing and
kidnapping.1 This was because it had
eventually dawned on me that the whole point of the
subject of terrorism was that
there was no definition. The importance of the
subject, its utility to those who
mattered, relied upon the impossibility of it ever
being tied down. For the moment
terrorism is given an objective meaning, one that can
be commonly agreed, is a
dangerous moment for the experts, a point in time when
the term risks taking on a
rational life of its own, and therefore being rendered
capable of being ascribed to
events beyond the experts’ power of categorisation.2
Take just as an example a
straightforward definition, one that sees as terrorist
violence, the intentional or
reckless killing or injuring of non-combatants, or the
doing of severe damage to their
property, in order to communicate a political message.
Expressed like this, it is clear
that terrorism is a method of violence, and as such is
one that can be used by any
actor who has chosen to deploy violence in pursuit of
this or that political goal. It can,
it is true, be used by the kind of weak group that has
few other military or political
options in its locker: the Al Qaida’s and ETA’s of
this world. But it can equally well be
deployed as a method of violence by other, stronger
forces, by guerrilla organisations
for example that are able to muster other kinds of
military action as well if the need
arises, and by insurgent forces in a civil war
situation where terror violence may be
just one option among many. In failed states it is
available, among other brutal
techniques, to all the ambitious, power-hungry
factions.
It is equally clearly a kind of political violence
that can be deployed by state forces,
either in isolation – the French action in sinking
Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior in
1985 is a good example as might be the American
decision to bomb Tripoli in 1986 –
1 C A Gearty, Terror (Faber and Faber, London, 1991).
2 For an elaboration on what follows see C A Gearty,
‘Terrorism and Morality’ [2003] European Human
Rights Law Review 377.
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