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RIGHTS: 'Too Innocent to Try, too Guilty to Fly'
By Jan Lammers
posted in: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48991
BRUSSELS, Oct 25 (IPS) - Getting blacklisted as belonging to a terrorist
organisation is a punitive sanction, even though governments may say
it is only an administrative measure, according to the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) and the European Centre for Constitutional and
Human Rights (ECCHR).
More often than not, blacklisted persons only come to know they are
suspected of affiliation with a terrorist organisation because they cannot
withdraw money from their bank accounts any more. Others discover it
after getting barred from boarding a plane. Since the 9/11 attacks, the
number of people on such suspect lists has risen sharply, ACLU and ECCHR
lawyers said at a conference on terrorism lists organised by the ECCHR in
Brussels earlier this week.
"Not even knowing you are on the list and not getting to defend yourself
before getting listed are two of the largest problems involved‚" said Belgian
lawyer Jan Fermon at the conference. "And once someone is on a blacklist,
it is almost impossible to get his or her name removed from it," said Fermon,
who has represented several people on the European Union terrorism list.
To get someone off the suspects list of an international organisation such
as the UN or EU, all members need to be unanimous, lawyers said at the
ECCHR conference.
Administrators say listing is not arbitrary. "Getting put on the list is equally
hard," said Gilles de Kerchove, the EU counterterrorism coordinator. "All
members have to agree with that as well." De Kerchove said inclusion on
the EU terrorism list is only an administrative measure.
But administrative procedures throw up other issues. Most international
organisations do not read most submissions, Mark Muller of the Bar Human
Rights Committee said at the conference. Each nation's representative just
accepts other countries' entries so that their country's names are not
challenged by the other members, Muller said.
De Kerchove acknowledged that this is an important problem to tackle.
Without access to their accounts, suspects have to live on donations from
friends, and cannot benefit from health insurance when they get sick.
"Exclusion from social and economic life cannot be called merely administrative,
it goes against basic human and constitutional rights in the EU," Fermon told IPS.
Because a lot of listed people do not know why they are on a blacklist, they
cannot defend themselves in court. Suspects have to prove they have no
links with terrorism, but do not get access to any evidence that led to the
accusations.
Such documents, provided they exist, are usually labelled secret for reasons
of national security. Fermon said this issue had come up in cases before the
European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. Canadian lawyers Barbara Jackman
and Amir Attaran said they had confronted a similar problem in their country.
Many people on the EU blacklist are refugees, seeking political asylum from
persecution in their homelands. Philippine dissident Jose Maria Sison, living
in the Netherlands since 1998, was blacklisted, and had to leave housing
provided by the government.
Families of blacklisted persons are allowed to stay on, but they are prevented
from living with them. This leads the blacklisted to be stigmatised. Their
children and spouses can suffer public humiliation, putting stress on their
relations and daily life, and this happened in the case of Sison, Fermon said.
Fermon and his team won the Sison case earlier this year, but the EU is
considering appealing against the verdict.
Hundreds of thousands of names appear on blacklists around the world,
including many on the 'no-fly list' of the U.S. Relatively few are prosecuted,
as there is often no evidence linking them to acts of terrorism. The need
for due process may protect them from lawsuits, but it apparently is not a
requirement for designating them suspected terrorists.
"They are too innocent to try, but too guilty to fly," Amir Attaran told the
conference.
Several of these people are listed because they are linked to broader
organisations. "This way, a dentist in a hospital in Gaza can be considered
a terrorist if the hospital is funded by Hamas," Barbara Jackman told IPS.
"Although, after lengthy processes, people like this have been exempted
when they were considered members of terrorist organisations but clearly
only performed peaceful tasks, it is more an exception than a rule," says
Jackman.
Fermon says that if an organisation opposes a government, that government
itself has to be evaluated. Many listed as suspected terrorists, he said, are
members of groups that fought, whether politically or through armed
struggle, a dictatorial regime that does not respect human rights. Such
regimes can have ties with Western nations, and persuade those
governments to blacklist these opponents.
Muller says there is a high number of people on blacklists around the world
who have only participated in a legitimate struggle. "It is essential that there
is differentiation between members of struggles with a social or political goal
and, for instance, jihadist groups," he told IPS. (END/2009)
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