Is Britain a friendly country?

The Sunday newspapers were not optimistic about the proscription of the LTTE in the UK. The UK 2000 Terrorist Act gives powers to the government to ban international terrorist organisations though the organisations have not resorted to terrorism in the UK. Under the act, as Mr. Lakshman Kadirgamer had said in the interview he had given to news media, the LTTE can be banned in the UK. In other words the LTTE satisfies the criteria given in the act, to be named as a terrorist organisation. However it is not only the legal criteria that come into play in the decision of the UK government in proscribing the LTTE.

There are political criteria, though they are not explicitly stated, that are more important than the legal criteria. In fact even the legal criteria were formulated as a result of a political decision to enable the UK government to ban certain terrorist organisations in that country. Law, however important it may be, subserviently follows politics.

The British government had decided to ban certain terrorist organisation that have become a threat or a nuisance to them. In order to enable them to do so they need a so-called legal instrument, unlike in the days of the kings whose word was the law. The British however would not name the organisations in the Act.

The Act is drafted in very general terms to make it very "objective" and also so that it could be used in the future as well if the situation so demands. However, as it is formulated, the Act alone is not sufficient for the act of banning an organisation, and somebody, person or a body of persons, has to be given the power under the very same Act to name those organisations that have to be banned. It could be called the discretion or whatever of the authority and the subjective factor which cannot be avoided now creeps back into the Act.

It is this subjectivity, which is present (Heidegger would have said that "presence" is the bugbear of western philosophy) from the very beginning and not the so-called objectivity which is present only in the subjective dreams of the individuals trained by legal and other scholars in the western tradition, that the minister Kadirgamer and the Sri Lankan government have to deal with.

Why anti Terrorism Act?

Why did Britain pass the 2000 Terrorist Act? Doesn’t it violate the so-called fundamental or human rights of certain groups of people to associate and engage in certain "democratic" activities?

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http://lankaguardian.blogspot.com/2008/02/is-britain-friendly-country.html