Official: UK terrorism legislation ‘vague’, threat to freedom of expression
I was just reading yesterday’s Guardian piece, Labour warned over limits to free expression, when Ian Brown’s post dropped in the intray. Ian has plucked the relevant sections from the UN Human Rights Committee report critical of certain aspects of UK legislation:
24. The Committee remains concerned that powers under the Official Secrets Act 1989 have been exercised to frustrate former employees of the Crown from bringing into the public domain issues of genuine public interest, and can be exercised to prevent the media from publishing such matters. It notes that disclosures of information are penalized even where they are not harmful to national security…
25. The Committee is concerned that the State party’s practical application of the law of libel has served to discourage critical media reporting on matters of serious public interest, adversely affecting the ability of scholars and journalists to publish their work, including through the phenomenon known as “libel tourism”. The advent of the internet and the international distribution of foreign media also create the danger that a State party’s unduly restrictive libel law will affect freedom of expression worldwide on matters of valid public interest…
26. The Committee notes with concern that the offence of “encouragement of terrorism” has been defined in section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006 in broad and vague terms. In particular, a person can commit the offence even when he or she did not intend members of the public to be directly or indirectly encouraged by his or her statement to commit acts of terrorism, but where his or her statement was understood by some members of the public as encouragement to commit such acts.
With respect to section 26 the UNHRC recommends that:
The State party should consider amending that part of section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006 dealing with “encouragement of terrorism” so that its application does not lead to a disproportionate interference with freedom of expression.
Very interesting. See further comment from the Guardian here.
This is the document I was talking about on Friday. I’d forgotten about section 26, which refers to the legislation that summoned up the most of my blood. The “definition” of a terrorist publication is anything but definite. You could plausibly contend that Section 1, subsection 3(a) could refer to the Quran.
It looks like the UNHRC is particularly concerned about Section 1, subsection 2 (a)(ii), in which you need only be “reckless” as to whether your “publication” might (or equally might not) “directly” (or equally “indirectly”) cause bother:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts2006/ukpga_20060011_en_2#pt1-pb1-l1g1
Good luck to our learned friends in the CPS when trying to make any of that stick.
As a postscript, you should congratulate the UNHRC for referring to our government as “the State party”. It makes them seem all the more Stalinist, if indeed that were possible.