Terrorism Bill

That highlights the paradoxes and absurdities in the Bill. A couple of weeks ago Parliament added to the list of proscribed organisations an Uzbek organisation calling for the removal of the Karimov regime and free democratic elections. Apparently we did so on the advice of the intelligence services that the group in question was responsible for acts of terrorism within its own country. Two days later, in The Guardian, the then British ambassador to Uzbekistan took issue with that and, as someone who had visited the sites where it was claimed that acts of terrorism had taken place, said that they all bore the hallmarks of Government killings, with an attempt to set up the notion that they had been committed by terrorists, although there was no evidence to support that claim. We know that Uzbekistan is a regime with a wretched record of persecuting its own citizens, torturing them and boiling them in oil. It is a horrible regime by any standards, and we ought to be able to call on the international community and the domestic communities to remove it—but under the definition in the Bill, we would not be allowed to do so. The far-reaching consequences of the Bill in its current form are so draconian as to provide legislation that could virtually have been drafted for us by al-Qaeda. If we want to see acts that destroy the framework of liberties, confidence in democracy, accountability to the judiciary and rights of representation, they are to be found enshrined in much of the panic legislation that has been pushed through this House as an extension of the war in Iraq in the form of a war on our own liberties. We are doing what al-Qaeda sought to do by other means, and society will not thank us for it. Those who say that there are lock-in provisions in the preconditions about encouragement, glorification and emulation need to look at clause 1(4), which points out that it is"““irrelevant . . . whether any person is in fact encouraged or induced by the statement to commit, prepare or instigate any such . . . offence.””" So it does not matter what people do; it is the act of saying or writing that constitutes the criminal offence—indeed, the terrorist offence—under the Bill. I know that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway ducked the question about extraterrestrial activities—I assume that that should have been ““extra-territorial””—but I want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that an in-house consequence would follow from the Bill, under the current definition of terrorism. I know that we will come to that at a later stage, but people such as myself who have pledged to be part of the Green Gloves campaign against the growing of genetically modified crops, were they to be allowed in the UK—those of us who will doubtless go out and seek to remove those crops and replace them with organic non-contaminating crops—would be in breach of the Terrorism Bill; and also if we made the intellectual and political case for doing that. There are many people outside the House who are extremely happy to see the definition of terrorism widened in a way that will allow global corporate interests to define civilian and domestic opposition to the policies that they are trying to push through, not as acts of resistance by consumers but as acts of environmental terrorism—a phrase that they are already beginning to use. They will use exactly the same terms as appear in clause 1, and say that people are guilty of acts of encouragement, glorification and encouraging others to emulate what they have done—and thus are committing terrorist offences. The dangers of criminalising the whole framework of social protest and resistance within our own society is a dreadful draconian step. I would love it if the Bill would allow us to prosecute the President of the United States—but he will not be brought before the courts. Neither will the Baptist minister in the United States who, interviewed on Channel 4 News last week, openly said, with regard to the 7/7 bombings in London, that the only shame about it was that 1 million people were not killed. He said that England deserved to be bombed in that way. Will he be branded as a terrorist? Will he be brought to trial before the UK courts? No. The Rev. Pat Robertson, the head of the Christian Coalition in the United States, will not be brought to trial here either, although he has openly, on television, called for the assassination of the elected President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. No one like that will be brought before the courts, but Muslim lads in this country making similar claims or criticisms about events in the middle east are precisely the ones who will be picked up. They will be defined as being in breach of the terms of the Bill, because it is not directed at crazy mullahs who are notionally on ““our”” side, but only at the crazies on other people’s sides. The real danger is that the Bill is a first step down the path that leads us away from judging people on what they do. In the end, we will all be judged—by our own courts or by international courts—on the acts that we commit. However, we are starting to move away from that premise and to judge people, in broad and speculative terms, on what they say. The next step will be to judge people on what they think. For me, that is the hallmark of a society that is beginning to retreat from the founding and fundamental principles of an open and democratic society, and to take its Parliament, institutions and citizens into dark days of tyranny. That is why I urge the House to support amendments that will change this absurd clause.