Tag: Council of Europe

Tories’ repeal of Human Rights Act could spark constitutional crisis

Newly appointed Justice Secretary Michael Gove will push ahead with Conservative plans to repeal the Human Rights Act – a move experts warn could spark a constitutional crisis and blight Britain’s reputation on human rights worldwide.

Conservative Party sources, fresh from last week’s general election victory, told the Guardian the human rights reforms are imminent.

Civil liberty advocates warn the soon-to-be implemented measures would erode the right to life, the right to privacy, the right to a fair trial, the right to protest and the right to freedom from torture and discrimination.

Although the Tories were keen to push ahead with the legal changes during their last term in government, the move was blocked by the party’s ex-coalition partner the Liberal Democrats. But as a majority government, the Conservatives are now poised to push ahead with the reforms.

Central to the Tories’ election manifesto was a pledge to repeal the Human Rights Act (HRA) and significantly curb the power of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Britain. The legal reforms are expected to surface in PM David Cameron’s plans for his first 100 days, which will be outlined in the Queen’s Speech on May 27.

Under these changes, the Conservatives would replace the HRA with a Tory-styled British Bill of Rights. Britain’s Supreme Court would no longer be answerable to the ECHR, with the Strasbourg-based court losing the power to order changes to UK law.

The plans were drawn up in 2014 by then-Secretary of State for Justice Chris Grayling. At the time, Grayling proposed Britain withdraw from the ECHR if the Council of Europe rejects the Conservatives’ British Bill of Rights.

Constitutional crisis

Considerable doubt exists among experts that the Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog responsible for ensuring the Convention is upheld, will accept the Tories’ proposals. As a result, it is widely believed Britain will disengage from the European Convention on Human Rights and undermine Europe’s’ civil liberties framework in the process.

Britain’s withdrawal from the ECHR has been strongly opposed by former Secretary of State for Justice Kenneth Clarke and the UK’s ex-Attorney General Dominic Grieve. Grieve has long condemned the proposal, warning its consequences would be devastating.

In December, he said the government’s threat to potentially abandon the Strasbourg court undermines international law and could fray the constitutional fabric that holds the United Kingdom together. Echoing grieve, analysts warn such a withdrawal would spark a constitutional crisis in the UK.

They suggest the move would be flatly rejected by Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) and would mean the Conservative government has violated Northern Ireland’s 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

War criminals ‘liberated’ Kosovo

According to the European Union Special Investigative Task Force’s (SITF) chief prosecutor, Clint Williamson some KLA senior officials committed crimes against humanity and war crimes following the end of the Kosovo War in 1999.

In a statement made recently, SITF announced its findings on the alleged crimes committed by members of ethnic-Albanian rebel organization Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which sought Kosovo’s separation from Serb territories in the 1990s.

The SITF says it found evidence “that certain elements of the KLA intentionally targeted the minority populations with acts of persecution that included unlawful killings, abductions, enforced disappearances, illegal detentions in camps in Kosovo and Albania, sexual violence, other forms of inhumane treatment, forced displacements of individuals from their homes and communities, and desecration and destruction of churches and other religious sites.”

Williamson underlined that the victims of these crimes were mainly Serbs, Roma and other minorities, but also Kosovo Albanians who were labeled as either collaborators with the Serbs or political opponents of the KLA leadership.

The SITF was set up by the European Union in September 2011 to conduct a full-scale criminal investigation into the allegations contained in the report of Council of Europe Rapporteur Dick Marty, who claimed he had information about former KLA officials harvesting and trafficking human organs.

Many people were mistreated by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the SITF found

“Over the past two and a half years, the SITF has conducted an intense, detailed investigation into the allegations in the Marty Report,” wrote Williamson the statement. “This investigation has involved interviews of hundreds of witnesses in countries throughout Europe and elsewhere. It has involved the review of thousands of pages of documents compiled by numerous organizations and individuals that were engaged in Kosovo during and after the period of our investigative focus.”

He added that the investigation has been a “challenging exercise” but was nevertheless convinced that it has been “the most comprehensive investigation ever done of crimes perpetrated in the period after the war ended in Kosovo in June 1999.”

In its press release, the SITF claims it can file an indictment against KLA individuals once “an appropriate judicial mechanism is established to host a fully independent, impartial and transparent trial that ensures the highest standards of security for witnesses and for criminal proceedings.”

Williamson thanked the European Union, its member states and international partners for their ongoing efforts in setting up a court for the proceedings.

Source: DW

International investigation called after mass graves found in Ukraine

The Russian Foreign Ministry, legislators and members of non-governmental and human rights organizations have demanded an international investigation into mass graves in Ukraine.

Russia’s Public Chamber has adopted a statement with a call to the United Nations, the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to investigate mass graves in Ukraine’s Donetsk Region.

The graves were found on Ukrainian National Guard positions in eastern Ukraine. Forensic experts examined one of them to arrive at the conclusion that the victims had been shot in the head at a point-blank range. Four bodies have been examined so far.

“The discovered graves are evidence of outrageous war crimes and require investigation under international control,” runs the statement read out by the Civic Chamber’s deputy secretary Sergey Ordzhonikidze.

“The Public Chamber is asking the United Nations, the OSCE and other agencies to create an independent panel of inquiry to investigate the affair,” Ordzhonikidze said, adding that “a military tribunal for war crimes in Ukraine must be the end goal.”

On September 23 there were reports local militias discovered several mass graves near the Kommunar coalmine near Donetsk. Earlier the territory was under the control of the Ukrainian army and the National Guard’s battalion Aidar.

The whole territory will be combed. Militias have already found several other graves, which are kept intact for the time being.