NI detention plan 'risks alienating Muslims'
The British government was today warned its plans for 42-day detention for terror suspects risk alienating Muslim communities.
Leader of the nationalist SDLP Mark Durkan told a commemoration of the North’s Civil Rights movement that the Government had not learned the lessons of the past.
He said the Counter Terrorism Bill currently going through Westminster risked causing alienation in the way government policies of the past fomented resentment among Irish communities.
“We have warned the British government that their 42-day proposals, from our experience here and the Irish community in Britain, that these counter-terrorism plans can be counter-productive with the aggravation, alienation and injustice they can generate,” Mr Durkan told the commemoration in Derry.
“Just because we might now dare to hope that the potential victims of miscarriages of justice or harassment under such a law might not have Irish accents or Irish names we cannot be complacent or comfortable.”
The Civil Rights Movement in the North emerged in the 1960s before the outbreak of the Troubles and campaigned peacefully for the removal of the anti-Catholic discrimination of the unionist government.
Attempts to stamp-out the calls for reform antagonised nationalists in the North, while later security policies that interned people without trial after violence broke-out only served to worsen conditions.
“Civil rights are not just for us, for our own or for our own shores,” said Mr Durkan.
“That’s what I told Gordon Brown when he offered me a promise of something in the future in exchange for the votes of SDLP MPs.
“Civil rights are part of our DNA. We must assert our proper ideals not accept improper side deals.”
He added: “From our experiences I tried to warn the House of Commons not to feed what it is trying to fight and the essence of civil rights ethic is not to destroy what it is meant to defend.
“42 days is not that Bill’s only odious provision. Its proposals for secret inquests are just as worrying.
“A Secretary of State is able to remove an inquest jury on virtually any grounds, at any time and not just for terror-related cases and allowed to sack the Coroner too.
“So, first we had Diplock courts, now we are facing Diplock inquests.”
The SDLP leader said government proposals for parliament to oversee the use of any new detention powers was absurd.
“These are somewhere between fig leaf and figments of procedure. A Parliament acting as grand jury would violate due process and create not just a form of executive detention but parliamentary detention,” he said.
