CAMPACC

Civil liberties issues for the 2005 general election

Dear Friends and Supporters,

With the election called for May 5th there are many issues which CAMPACC believes MPs should be concerned about and should be addressing to their constituents. We ask all friends and supporters to raise these demands with the candidates standing for Parliament in their area. Attached to this email is a report on how MPs voted on the Anti-Terrorism Laws. Find out what your MP did or did not do for civil liberties. Coming soon, how prospective parliamentary candidates would have voted on the Anti-Terrorism laws.

1. Repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, which allows punishment without trial and the notion of guilty until proven innocent.

2. Repeal the Terrorism Act 2000, which bans national liberation movements and criminalises communities and activists alike.

3. No political bans on organisations or crimes of ‘association’ with them.

4. Prosecution of UK officials who colluded in the illegal detention and torture of prisoners at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other illegal centres abroad.

5. Apology and compensation by the government to those held for three years in a form of detention contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights, under ‘anti-terror’ powers in Britain’s own Guantanamo – Belmarsh and Woodhill Prisons. Withdrawal of ‘information’ likely to have been obtained by torture.

6. Association: let the former detainees be free to meet and communicate with the media and the government’s critics, and address public events.

7. ‘Torture evidence’ should be banned under any conditions.

8. No extradition or deportation of suspects to USA and other countries where human rights and freedom from torture are not guaranteed

9. Stop criminalising communities like Muslim, refugee and minority groups under the anti-terror laws.

10. Stop the politics of fear and state culture of ‘suspicion’

11. Immediate release of British residents held in Guantanamo. End UK government complicity in detentions there. The government must investigate fully the allegations of torture in all these cases, especially the role of MI5.