Marcel Berlins: Stop blaming the Human Rights Act
The Human Rights Act is increasingly being made a scapegoat for government incompetence, maladministration and badly drafted legislation. Take the case of Anthony Rice, the rapist who killed a woman nine months after being released on licence. From the report by the chief inspector of probation, it is clear that the fundamental mistake was letting Rice out of prison in the first place.
Posted on May 15th, 2006 at 9:18 am
As I said in ‘more fuel for the bonfire of the liberties’, the reporting on this has been all cock-eyed.
What it should have said was:
“The guff about human rights is retrospective wisdom. If “the [probation] board had received “over optimistic†reports of Rice’s progress under treatment and did not have a full picture of his previous crimes†then it was not so much that the board “gave insufficient weight to the underlying nature of his risk of harm to othersâ€Â, but that the board made exactly the right decision according to the information that they were presented with. There is no need to cut away our human rights, but a need to ensure more diligent and intensive reporting on the rehabilitation of prisoners.”
“Appalling criminal act”, eh? This hijacking was so appalling that it involved no violence against any person, and it resulted in the majority of the passengers also claiming asylum. To describe this as appalling is to pander to the self-satisfied hypocrites who have criticised the release of these men.
And another thing - there is no EU aspect to this. To withdraw from the ECHR would entail withdrawl from the Council of Europe, not the EU.
I know ridiculous isn’t it!
i was thinking.. what then if the Human rights Act is repealed. aha! It would be ever so slightly difficult to point to some dodgy nation and say..ooh look at your human rights transgressions..er..why …that’s just like us..oops!
Interesting to see how the Afghan hunger strikers will play out in Dublin’s St Patrick Cathedral.
We may see a trend here. Good Christians that we are.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0515/asylum.html
Actually, membership of the EU has an unofficial (possibly even official) requirement that the state is a signatory to the ECHR. Withdrawing from it may well lead to being kicked out of the EU.