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Freedoms being
undermined Oct 25 2004
The Government is using a "climate of fear" over terrorism and crime
to force through changes that threaten ordinary people's civil
liberties, Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy is set to warn.
Mr Kennedy will accuse the Government of rushing in measures like
detention without trial, derogation from the European Convention on
Human Rights and the proposed introduction of ID cards without first
securing widespread public support.
He will also accuse the Tories of seeking to roll back individuals'
liberties under the guise of a war against political correctness and
the rights culture.
"In this post-9/11 world, a climate of fear is being created which
is being used to threaten our civil liberties," Mr Kennedy will tell
Lib Dem activists in London.
"Extraordinary threats - like those posed by international terrorism
- may require us, in times of emergency and for limited periods, to
find a different balance between our hard-won liberties and our
security.
"But the correct response to such threats should not be, as the
current Home Secretary appears to think, the abandonment of some of
the liberties that generations of Britons have relied upon.
"Hard-won rights, once lost, may never be regained."
The Labour administration has succumbed to the temptation to use the
terrorist threat to justify measures that go far beyond the
necessary requirements of safety and security, Mr Kennedy will
argue.
Some of its actions may even have hampered the fight against terror,
by alienating the very communities whose co-operation the police
need.
Muslims in Britain were "justly aggrieved" over the detention
without trial of 11 terror suspects in Belmarsh high-security jail,
as well as the 300% increase in numbers of Asians stopped and
searched under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act.
Source: IC Hounslow
26-10-04
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