1. General comments
1. I would first like to congratulate
Mr Tiny Kox on his detailed report on behalf of the Committee on
Political Affairs and Democracy, which sets out a number of key
issues as regards combating international terrorism while protecting
Council of Europe standards and values and highlights the continuous
concerns expressed in this field by the Parliamentary Assembly in
recent years.
2. The report correctly highlights that acts of terrorism are
not acts of war but heinous criminal offences, which must be combated
as such, and emphasises that the whole of Europe must continue to
work together to find a democratic response to the rise of terrorism.
It draws attention to the need to ensure that criminal law responses
comply with human rights standards. It also touches on measures
that could be taken with a view to ensuring that breeding grounds
for terrorism and religious fanaticism do not flourish.
3. The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights has been invited
to provide its opinion on aspects of this report that fall within
its terms of reference. I would also like to congratulate Mr Pierre-Yves
Le Borgn’ for his opinion highlighting important concerns as regards
the legal and human rights aspects of the fight against terrorism.
For my part, on behalf of the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination,
I will address in this opinion those matters most closely related
to the promotion of equality and of respect for the principle of
non-discrimination, including issues related to racism and related
intolerance.
4. I believe it is essential to distinguish between the necessary
responses to events that have already occurred – which must focus
on determining the facts and their causes – and measures that need
to be taken to prevent repetitions of such events in future. For
this reason, I have divided my comments below into two sections:
Responses to events that have already occurred, and prevention of
future terrorist acts.
5. I also wish to stress that some forms of terrorism particularly
affect or even specifically target women. In Nigeria, for example,
women are not the only victims of conflict,
and
the kidnapping in April 2014 by terrorist group Boko Haram of more
than 200 schoolgirls in Chibok may have pursued several tactical
aims: the use of the girls as human shields and/or as a bargaining
chip to obtain the liberation of Boko Haram militants, access to
a forest where it would be easy to hide, terrorising the population
to prevent them from co-operating with the Nigerian army. But other
reasons for targeting these schoolgirls may have included offering
Boko Haram members access to women without having to pay the traditional
dowry, and presenting their kidnapping as a means of fighting the
girls’ indoctrination with Western values.
Nearly
two years later, the girls have not been released.
The rehabilitation and reintegration of
women who have escaped or been freed from Boko Haram captivity will
require significant efforts.
The
Assembly should pay more attention to the situation of women affected
by terrorism.
2. Responses to
events that have already occurred
6. In the wake of terrorist acts
such as the mass assassinations and wide-scale infliction of injuries
referred to in the draft resolution now before the Assembly, there
is an obvious imperative to investigate the offences committed in
order to identify, prosecute and punish their authors. Equally,
there is a need, in the interests of all of society, to ensure that
criminal law and other legal responses remain proportionate and
fully compliant with human rights.
7. Political responses are equally important. The Committee on
Political Affairs and Democracy has rightly reaffirmed the Assembly’s
strong and consistent message that there can be no justification
for terrorism, and there must be no “but”.
8. Bearing this in mind, political leaders are undoubtedly under
great pressure in the hours and days following terrorist attacks,
not only to express the outrage of society and condemn the heinous
crimes committed, but also to show that they are already acting
to prevent similar events from recurring. In condemning terrorist
acts in their immediate aftermath – as they must – politicians must
however measure their words cautiously. They must take particular
care to avoid making stigmatising generalisations that, deliberately or
otherwise, portray whole groups of the population as responsible
for the acts of individuals: they must remember that it is an individual
choice to act. Ten individuals are known to have participated directly
in the killings in Paris on 13 November 2015.
They
certainly did not act alone, and the criminal investigations under way
have already begun identifying other key actors. But these elements
always need to be set against the fact that this represents an infinitesimal
part of the overall Muslim population, which in France currently
stands at approximately 4 to 5 million people.
Politicians
must make clear, insistently, that they understand the difference
between the very small number of persons engaged in terrorist activities
and the vast and peaceful mass of people who (in the present case)
believe in the same god but do not share the violent criminal tendencies
of the tiny few – and who, indeed, are as traumatised by terrorism
as the rest of society.
9. Following both series of attacks in Paris in 2015, there was
an increase in the number of anti-Muslim hate-motivated offences.
Although they are in a different
league from terrorist offences, hate crimes are no more justifiable
than terrorism. Political leaders must also condemn these acts as
both senseless and wrong. This is not just a question of principle:
it is a question of sending the message to Muslims living in France
that attacks against them, like attacks against any minority group,
are attacks against all of society, and are indefensible.
10. It should furthermore be borne in mind that criminal law measures
and political messages are intimately linked. In the French context,
for example, the impact of wide-scale police searches of people’s
homes and house arrests practised under the state of emergency instated
following the attacks of 13 November 2015 will in due course need
to be carefully analysed from at least two perspectives: on the
one hand, the extent to which these measures effectively contributed
to advancing the necessary criminal law investigations, and on the other,
from the longer term viewpoint of the impact of such measures on
trust in the police forces, and more generally in the authorities,
amongst those groups particularly affected.
3. Prevention of
future terrorist acts
11. One common response of political
leaders and parliaments to terrorist acts is a knee-jerk reaction
of “toughening up” the criminal law arsenal that may be used to
prevent and fight terrorism in the future. Yet there is not necessarily
a problem with the law or with the powers already granted to the
police, security forces and surveillance authorities: failure to
prevent a terrorist act may result from a lack of sufficiently targeted information-gathering,
a lack of resources, weaknesses in the way the existing law is applied,
and so on. I respectfully defer to the opinion of Committee on Legal
Affairs and Human Rights as regards the aspects of the draft resolution
related to criminal law measures. I wish nonetheless to emphasise
that governments that “toughen up” the criminal law by increasing
police and surveillance powers, removing safeguards and reducing judicial
oversight may trust their own executive branch to respect human
rights fully in the exercise of such extended powers. But governments
and executives change. Governments should never give themselves
or the executive branch powers that they would not equally trust
others to exercise. For in so doing, they make the population as
a whole vulnerable to abuses of authority – and minority groups
in particular, when there is a perceived threat coming from within
such groups.
12. I welcome the Assembly’s recognition in
Resolution 2045 (2015), as highlighted by the rapporteur for the present report,
that mass surveillance is ineffective. The Assembly has also previously
expressed its concern about the practice of racial profiling sometimes
used by the police (
Resolution 1968
(2014) on tackling racism in the police
). Racial profiling is ineffective for the
same reasons as mass surveillance. Moreover, I wish to stress that
racial profiling is also counterproductive: as has been noted by
the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), “[r]acial
profiling generates a feeling of humiliation and injustice among
certain groups of persons and results in their stigmatisation and
alienation as well as in the deterioration of relations between
these groups and the police, due to loss of trust in the latter”.
Powers
relating to control, surveillance or investigation activities should
only be exercised on the basis of a reasonable suspicion – that
is, a suspicion founded on objective criteria.
The fact is that
many of the terrorists involved in the Paris events were already known
to the police or security forces. Calls for directing resources
away from mass surveillance and towards more targeted surveillance
reflect this. The same should stand true as regards racial profiling.
13. As is the case concerning immediate responses to events that
have already occurred, the political approach to preventing future
terrorist acts is also crucial. Longer-term political responses
must always be designed bearing in mind that sustainable cohesion,
including a sense of shared nationhood, cannot be achieved in societies
in which large parts of the population feel excluded or discriminated
against. Much damage is already being done to the fabric of our
European societies by polemical discourse stigmatising individuals
or groups on the basis of their national or ethnic origins, religion,
skin colour, nationality or perceived “race”. The No Hate Parliamentary
Alliance set up by our Assembly one year ago is an initiative to
promote more effective responses by parliamentarians to hate, and
more importantly to defuse it, by building mutual understanding.
The Alliance now has more than 50 members, has been saluted by the
Secretary-General of the United Nations,
and is constantly growing. Initiatives
like this should be reproduced at national and local levels, strengthened
and intensified.
14. Beyond mere words, the contents of measures adopted with the
aim of preventing terrorism in the longer term also send messages
to the population as a whole about the way in which some parts of
society are presently perceived, as well as the type of society
that leaders are aiming to build.
15. Thus, introducing sanctions such as the deprivation of nationality
of persons with more than one nationality are not only questionable
on legal grounds and ineffective as a dissuasive tool (potential
suicide bombers, for example, are unlikely to be concerned about
whether or not they will retain their nationality after death).
Introducing this type of sanction additionally sets persons with
more than one nationality apart, sending them and the rest of society
the message that they are lesser citizens than persons with only
one nationality, since, to avoid statelessness, the latter must
always remain a citizen of their country even if they commit abominable
criminal offences. Again with reference to the situation in France,
the proposal to introduce this measure is already sending harmful
messages to its Muslim community, of whom a high proportion have
dual citizenship (French and notably Moroccan, Algerian or Tunisian).
Governments should refrain from introducing
such a sanction, since its only guaranteed effect is to alienate
significant proportions of the population.
16. I finally wish to turn to the need to understand the underlying
causes of terrorism and to combat these through a long-term approach.
While, as noted before, there are no excuses for terrorism, the
fact remains that some persons cross the line. It is therefore vital
to understand the triggers to which these persons respond, as disarming
such triggers is one of the most effective means of preventing others
from following the same path. Radicalisation in the sense of holding
(somewhat) extreme views, contesting societal norms, bucking the system,
is common among young people. Many young and less young persons
hold fundamentalist religious views, or views that are perceived
by others as such. But this does not mean that they pose a risk
to society, that they will seek to express those views through violent
means. The vast majority of people holding ultraorthodox or fanatical
religious views are not, and never will be, terrorists. What distinguishes
terrorists from others is that, one way or another, they have arrived
at the conclusion that it is less grave for them to commit violent
acts (including possibly taking human lives) with the aim of spreading
terror than for others to transgress the principles for which the
terrorists stand.
17. Secularism is one of the fundamental bases of democratic societies
and must be vigorously protected. But as the above considerations
highlight, it is not in itself a recipe for preventing terror, including
terror based on religious fanaticism. Dialogue needs to be engaged
at a far more profound level. We need to take this into account
in our long-term responses to terror focusing on prevention. I consider
that more attention needs to be paid in the draft resolution before
us to attacking the causes of terrorism – by which I mean, not justifications (there
are none), but the factors that may increase the risks of individuals
choosing to take this path, the specific triggers to which they
respond, and the means by which they may best be countered.
18. The Assembly placed considerable emphasis on preventive measures
in its
Resolution 2031
(2015), adopted following the
Charlie
Hebdo attacks in January last year. There are pressing
concerns about the lack of adequate checks and balances and the
risks posed to human rights by excessive criminal law responses
to terrorism – which the Assembly must take up. But we must not
allow our current concerns about these matters to obscure the need
for our societies also to work constantly to ensure that all their
members are included and accepted. The Assembly’s detailed proposals
on the efforts needed to prevent terrorism in the long term remain as
pertinent as ever. These include studying and countering the ways
in which prisoners are indoctrinated into terrorism, monitoring
and fighting hate speech on the internet, radicalisation and cyber-jihadism,
promoting education for democratic citizenship, promoting intercultural
dialogue and the living together model, combating marginalisation,
social exclusion, discrimination and segregation, supporting families
in educating their children in a culture of democracy and tolerance,
protecting the safety and the freedom of expression of journalists, writers
and artists and supporting action of the Council of Europe in this
field.
19. In this context, I welcome several relevant reports currently
under preparation by the Assembly: the report under preparation
by the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
on “Preventing the radicalisation of children by fighting the root
causes”, report which has also been referred to the Committee on
Equality and Non-Discrimination for opinion; the current preparation
by the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media of a report
on “Towards a framework of competences for democratic citizenship”;
and the report on “Ending cyberdiscrimination and online hate”,
being drawn up by the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination.
20. Finally, I wish to emphasise that our societies are based
on the fundamental principle of equality of all human beings. Respecting
and applying this principle is more important now than ever. Allowing
prejudice, intolerance and discrimination to creep into the ways
in which States and private actors treat individuals is not only
an injustice, but a recipe for disaster.