Commissioned and published by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd, the report by Professor Stuart Weir, Director of Democratic Audit at the University of Essex, Dr Andrew Blick and Tufyal Choudhury, is an investigation into the human rights and community consequences of the government’s counter terrorism legislation and practice.
The main conclusion is: “The key to successfully combating terrorism lies in winning the trust and cooperation of the Muslim communities in the UK. However, the government’s counter terrorism legislation and rhetorical stance are between them creating serious losses in human rights and criminal justice protections…they are having a disproportionate effect on the Muslim communities in the UK and so are prejudicing the ability of the government and security forces to gain the very trust and cooperation from individuals in those communities that they require to combat terrorism.”
The Trust has a longstanding interest in constitutional affairs and democracy and we hope this report will make a major contribution to the ongoing debate about how government should respond to the terrorist threat.
The report and briefing summary follow on from the briefing and scoping report, The Rules of the Game: the government’s counter terrorism laws and strategy which were published in late 2005. |
