Human Rights We Should Recognise

The recent riots have brought up a lot of commentary about the Human Rights Act, and Call Me Dave’s attack on the Act as contributing to the unrest. All this commentary seems to be from the point of view of the rioters, and the rights given under the act encouraging criminality and violence.

I want to look at the other side, my big gripe with European human-rights legislation. What I object to is not just the rights given that should not be rights, but also the fundamental rights that are not given; these also affected the course of the riots. Of course once the Human Rights Act was made law, it is often assumed that anything not included is not a human right.

The example here is the right to self-defence, including the right to keep and bear arms for this purpose.

For years the right of an Englishman to defend himself, his family and his property have been eroded. The change in this is discussed in an article on Powerline. The claimed reason, that we should rely on the police to protect us, has never been very sound. The police could never claim to be available at every time a man might need to defend himself, so the idea of abdicating this responsibility to the sanctioned authority was always ridiculous. The allegation that police are being told in cases of violent disorder to avoid arresting people and simply try to contain the situation makes it farcical.

Like any well-read lad I enjoyed reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as a boy; most people have seen Sherlock Holmes on film and television. Does it not strike people that Watson frequently carried a revolver, as occasionally did Holmes? It was clearly unremarkable to Conan Doyle, and of course it was an assumption at that time that a man might carry a weapon, and defend himself with it. Crime was a lot lower then, around a tenth for more than half the population, for a crime rate of around 1/6 to 1/7 today’s.

In 1964 advice to police was that self defence was not a reason to allow a fire-arms certificate to hold a handgun. Between 1997 and 1998 handguns were banned altogether (high-calibre in 1997, .22 in 1998). Now we are not allowed to carry any weapon at all for self defence. There is no requirement for the police to even suggest that the person was a threat to anyone else. If a person carries a weapon, or anything that can be used as a weapon, without a good excuse he or she can be prosecuted.

Since then there have been increasing cases of police persecuting and prosecuting people who defend themselves. There are cases that should never have come to court, there are cases of arrests that never resulted in charges but still cause distress to people who have already suffered the trauma of attacks on themselves or their homes and businesses.

So where is the human-rights legislation to protect rights of crime victims from the Police, when the criminals receive so much protection?

Of course there are many other rights that are being stripped by the government and the EU, or rights one of us might argue for, but because they are not coded into the European Convention on Human Rights there is almost no chance that they will be recognised as human rights.

Recently there was a television programme about fake Euro notes. It is a strict-liability offense in the Euro-zone to even own fake Euro notes, and also to try to spend them. Yet there are millions of fake notes in circulation. Many people might have them completely innocently. At least one British person, unfamiliar in any case with Euros, tried to spend a single fake note in a large bundle he had directly from a travel agent, yet had he been charged his lawyers had said he was best to plead guilty, as he had no defence. That the Austrian police did not charge him was good sense from them, to his fortune. Not everyone has been so lucky, and a law that relies on luck and the good sense of officers is a poor law.

Where is the protection of our human rights to carry currency without worrying that we might inadvertently commit a serious criminal offence?

What about the one right on which all others, and our freedom and political rights depend, the the protection of our right to free speech? It is protected under article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, with a few exceptions. One of which is protection of morals, another is maintaining the authority of the judiciary. Both of these exceptions are incompatible with what I would see as the human right to free expression.

Of course the UK libel laws are not compatible with natural rights to free speech, nor are the reporting restrictions on family courts, for example. So even our most fundamental right is not protected.

I could go on. Rights to privacy that Americans recognise in the fourth amendment to their constitution, right to free assembly, right to silence under police questioning (broken in the UK; if you disagree with my objection to the current British police caution of rights, I recommend this video "Don't talk to the police", advice from an American lawyer), rights to due process of law and against double jeopardy, rights to speedy trial.

All of these are rights recognised in the constitution of the USA, you will notice; the USA so criticised by sophisticated Europeans as the barbaric outpost of rednecks.

I would argue for other rights: the right to self determination, taken as far as euthanasia, the right to a proportional tax rebate if you choose supply from a third party of services currently offered by government, the right to freedom of choice to the degree that government cannot place extra taxes on products politicians feel we should use less (petrol, home energy and alcohol affect me, but tobacco is unfairly taxed too), and a few more radical libertarian positions. I am even willing to give credence to arguments in favour of right to use certain drugs that are currently illicit, although I am not a libertine and feel that more information is needed to decide on some of those issues.

There is even one right of criminals, to blind justice without considerations of motive (such as “hate crime”) or the victim’s wishes in sentencing. Both of these allow or encourage revenge, not justice.

So, not only does human rights legislation allow rights that are not natural human rights, especially to criminals and those who are not legally resident in this country, but by not mentioning certain rights, or by curtailing them in exceptions, it restricts the rights of the majority. This happens because when the British common law assumption that we have all rights that are not removed whether by historical precedent or by legislation has been supplanted by the European Convention on Human Rights.

Finally I believe that supplanting is unconstitutional. It is entirely at odds with British legal tradition, and if there is any one thing at the heart of the British constitution, tying together the various threads of our written constitution, it is legal tradition.

I’m Calling Buckingham For UKIP

And which of us would be disappointed?

Despite already having a staff of press officers and media advisors attached to the office of Speaker, John Bercow has decided in his image and profile needs to be raised. No, Mr Bercow, it doesn’t. Your image is irrelevant to your role. I suspect and hope that your constituents agree.

Mr Bercow was one of very few non-Labour MPs involved in flipping, among the most dishonest practices relating to abuse of allowances. He has taken the unprecedented step for a Speaker of appointing a special advisor. That adviser is a former Times journalist, and as the Telegraph puts it “Among his duties will be raising Mr Bercow's personal profile”.

It appears that Mr Hames duties will also include the creation of a "broader external role for the Speaker". The role of speaker is critical to the constitution. It is not for the fatuous Mr Bercow or anyone he appoints to redefine.

Mr Bercow’s vanity has never been well-hidden, but this really takes the piss out of us, along with up to £107,000 per annum plus benefits.

Honduras Referendum Results

It has been reported in a Catalan newspaper (link is to an English-language blog post with a translation) that a computer seized in the Presidential Palace in Honduras contains the result of the referendum to change the constitution. The referendum was to allow the President to serve more than one term, which is banned by the current constitution. The results in the computer file was in favour of the change.

Of course the referendum was never held, so if this is true then Zelaya’s corruption goes deeper than previously reported, and will be better understood by those unaware of the Honduras Constitution.

The English-speaking media are behind on this. The Independent has even been spouting pro-Zelaya, pro-Chavez lies in the last couple of hours. The piece gets a unanimous pounding in the comments.

Hat tip Instapundit for the article and Maria in Honduras writing in comments in the Indie article for the video.

Beginning to Reverse Opinion on Honduras?

Hot Air reports a story in The Hill that prominent Democrat Representative Eliot Engel, chairman of the House committee that dealing with Honduras, has backed away from his initial call for Zelaya to be reinstated. As I have reported before, it appears that the constitutional crisis in Honduras was not a coup, and Zelaya’s removal was popular as well as legitimate, but Obama has been supporting the wrong side. Perhaps he can now be persuaded to support democracy over socialism. Can the EU be persuaded to follow?

No Coup

It appears I was wrong. There was no coup in Honduras. This could all be incorrect, but it is consistent with everything else I can find, and makes sense.

It seems that Obama might have been not only premature but entirely wrong, when he demanded that Honduras be run in a constitutional manner and restore Zelaya. According to the article Zelaya’s removal was not only permitted but required by the constitution, and restoring him would be unconstitutional. Another case of western leaders ignoring constitution in favour of their own politics? Not even his own constitution this time.

Honduras

There has been a military coup in Honduras. You might be forgiven for having missed it, there has not been much in the UK newspapers. However there have been protests by tens of thousands of pro-democracy supporters.

You probably won’t have heard about that, either. The demonstration was in favour of the coup. There have also been much smaller demonstrations against the coup, and the UN and Barrack Obama have demanded that President Zelaya is reinstated. The EU countries have refused to recognise the new government (so tell me again why we should allow the EU to have a common foreign policy).

This was an unusual coup. Of course from this distance it is impossible to be certain, but it appears to be benign. The army was backing a decision by the Supreme Court that Zelaya’s must not attempt to run rather a suspect referendum, by which he was trying to bully the Congress into changing the constitution to allow him to remain in power. The interim government installed is led by a member of Zelaya’s party.

So it appears that various organisations and governments that have been rather equivocal about the stolen Iranian election (even the Iranian government admits that in many regions more votes were cast than there are registered voters) have come out in favour of Zelaya, who was breaking the law and the constitution. In this they are on the same side as Chavez and Castro, and one should always be cautious of agreeing with murderous communist despots. Surely some people should have learned that by now.

Hat tip Gateway Pundit.

Update: a lot more detail here, written from Honduras, with a lot of information about the Honduras constitution. Hat tip to Instapundit.

Constitutional Crises

In the USA successive governments and activist judges have challenged or ignored the Constitution. Reason TV has made a short video about the destruction wrought to the rights of Americans.

But hasn’t the same thing been done in Britain, over the last 36 years, although much faster in the last twelve?

Most of these elements are or should be in the United Kingdom Constitution. There is a myth that Britain does not have a written constitution. The Magna Carter, the Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement, the Acts of Union and a couple of dozen more are conveniently ignored. There are unwritten elements to the constitution, largely in terms of conventions, but written or unwritten there is no excuse for not following them.

The Bill of Rights allows freedom of speech, yet people are questioned by police and threatened with prosecution, even taken to court, for expressing unpopular beliefs. Property rights are arbitrarily set aside, contrary to the Petition of Rights (for example fishermen who are broken and gaoled in a Kafkaesque process). The right to silence has been thrown away, and the right not to incriminate oneself. Repeated attempts to interfere with rights to Habeas Corpus have largely failed, fortunately. The latest attack on Parliament has failed, but others have been taken further. The very concept that a sovereign Parliament represents the people, as established by the Bill of Rights, has been ignored, and Brown intends now to throw it away by setting a committee above the Commons, instead of using transparency and votes to hold MPs to account.

Although the UK Constitution is complicated by the history of its development, this should be its strength not a weakness. It is only because politicians, journalists and judges ignore the constitutional implications of government decisions that this is allowed. Some have argued that we need a written constitution to protect us from authoritarian governments like our current one. The video shows that is not a solution. Both the UK and USA need people to notice when their constitutions we have is being breached, and need to respect the crucial protection afforded by these systems developed over centuries.

Hat tip to Instapundit for the link to Reason TV.