Counter-Terrorism Is Not An Excuse

The United Nations, recently, had an expert release a statement expressing his belief counter-terrorism is used too much to curb human rights and justify violations of the human rights of the ‘enemy.’ It has been incredibly prominent in the past decade as the counter-terrorism fight has grown immensely and spread to many states throughout the globe. Ben Emmerson, the UN expert, is a citizen of the United Kingdom who serves as a jurist reporting to the Human Rights Council about such violations. The violations, according to Emmerson, are not only in states that are still developing, but also in states that have prided themselves with having strong democracies. He believes that the current implementation of human rights should be studied first and sees if prevention is a better tactic.

The connection to human rights is quite obvious because it is speaking of the violation and possible implementation of human rights in the states that are participating in counter-terrorist activities. Human rights that have been violated in the name of counter-terrorism include right to life, security of self, freedom from inhumane treatment in prison, freedom from torture, and many others. These have been violated by everyone from the very top of the food chain to the very bottom in the name of protecting the states and people.

I, personally, always felt that such measures are counterproductive to the purpose of counter-terrorism. If someone ignores their human rights they will reciprocate it and in many cases just grow to hate the group more over time. If the group respects their human rights and tries to instill more it will become harder to hate them and over time the incentive to participate in terrorist activity will fall. I think it is particularly despicable of the large, Democratic Western states to take part in such types of counter-terrorist measures since they have signed many documents promising to support human rights and should play to part of role model in such situations. It seems as if some many people speak one way, but act the other and in so many cases it does not fix anything, but makes it worse.

Is it okay to break someone’s human rights because they are party to a terrorist group? Is it counterproductive to do so? Would it be better to ‘kill them with kindness’?