[imc-qc] News - Reflections from PREDA and Fr. Shay Cullen, Philippines # 181

[PREDA Information Office]

We must defend our God given rights - or lose them
By: Father Shay Cullen
(Published in the UK, Ireland, Hong Kong, Philippines
and Worldwide by Internet)


Strong, reasonable and enforceable security laws are necessary to defend 
society from terrorists. No one argues with that. The threat is there and 
even if the belligerent and aggressive bullying of the American Empire¹s 
greed for world economic domination has provoke it has to be defeated. We 
all suffer because of the abuse of the few.

A strong defence is vital and duty and purpose of government but not at any 
cost and certainly not at the cost of fundamental, freedoms and rights. 
However in protecting society government agencies can be intoxicated with 
power and abuse it. They in fact can harm the very people they are mandated 
to protect.

That is why civil society cannot relax its vigilance of government and must 
resist the passing of laws that give excessive power that can be easily 
abused. Some legislators nowadays want to limit the fundamental right of 
the human person to due process. The most important right is that to life 
and freedom and when those rights are being threatened by accusations one 
must have the right to know the charges, challenge the accuser, examine the 
evidence and defend oneself in a court of law.

Those who have never been victimised by security forces and their rights o 
r those of their friends swept away will not be sensitive to the dangers 
behind excessively strict laws. The less you have suffered or seen, the 
less vigilant you will be in guarding fundamental rights and human dignity.

  All you need to be plunged into a nightmare of abuse are a few powerful 
individuals without a conscience striving to get promotion or cover up 
incompetence. So if you are unfortunate enough to be innocently mingling 
with the wrong people in the wrong place you can easily be arrested on the 
suspicion of being a terrorist sympathiser and jailed indefinitely as is 
the practice in the United States. The detention of hundreds of suspects in 
US base at Guantanamo Bay has be declared illegal by a US court.

It easy for the authorities to abuse their powers. We heard how this 
happened so easily to the Guildford Four jailed for 15 years for an IRA 
Bombing of which they were later proven innocent. The prime minister of 
Britain Tony Blair apologised recently for that abuse of state police power.

It really is a frightening thing to be told that there could be as many as 
200 Osama Bin Laden trained terrorists in the United Kingdom especially at 
a time when the government is trying to get public support for a Draconian 
new anti-terrorist law that could indeed do untold harm to the very human 
rights and freedoms that the law is supposed to protect.

I don't feel scared at the possibility of 200 terrorists being around I 
feel scared because of the scare tactics themselves. They seem underhand, 
unworthy of a true democracy, more a manipulation of the public 
vulnerabilities and exploitation of fear. Desperate measures for desperate 
times we are told. To protect and enjoy freedom we have to sacrifice it, 
they say, but does that make sense? How can we enjoy it when it is denied 
us? And how much do we have to give up to save the rest?

That cant be answered because the level of real and present danger is 
classified at any given time and therefore the amount of freedom taken away 
will likewise be unknown. The small print of the law will surely be 
ambiguous. You will know it when you loose it. In other wards when a black 
grey or white van pulls up besides you and bundles you in, claps you in leg 
hand and body irons , pulls a sack over your head and throws you on the 
floor you know you have lost your freedom. Yet you and your family may not 
know it. That's because the very loss of your rights and freedom itself is 
classified.

Have we so quickly forgotten the scare tactics deployed to justify the 
invasion if Iraq? Despite all the so-called 'evidences' of weapons of mass 
destruction that were ready and aimed at the heart of Britain not even one 
wet ballistic squib existed after all?

The scare tactics used effectively by the Bush administration used 
different colour coded danger alert levels that ratcheted up the fear 
factor week by week. The message of the Bush administration being we and we 
alone can protect and save you. The tendency of the people to gravitate 
towards government and allow freedom-eroding laws to pass that normally 
they would resist. This gave American security agencies licence to abduct, 
torture and even kill and has plunged the United States into its darkest 
period since the Vietnam War.

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PREDA Information Office
PREDA Foundation, Inc.
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