Eurorepression worst since you know when.

[mattd]

In Britain we can feel proud that we are leading the way in the race to the
bottom of the civil liberties barrel. On Monday the Anti-Terrorism, Crime
and Security Act became law - two days later eight people became the lucky
winners in the 'we've decided you're a terrorist so were locking you up
without trial' Christmas draw.

This hotch-potch of a bill includes not just internment (see SchNEWS 331),
but a whole host of civil liberty busting BLAH. As Raif Smyth from the
Coalition Against the Terror Act said "The truth is, the mandarins at the
Home Office have used the Bill as a Trojan horse to get into law all the
dodgy proposals at the bottom of their filing cabinets." In Europe, heads
of state are pushing ahead with an "anti-terrorism roadmap" with plans to
add two new databases on the Schengen Information System (SIS - see SchNEWS
312). SIS already holds files on nearly one and a half million people. One
of the new databases would cover public order and protests and lead to,
"Barring potentially dangerous persons from participating in certain
events." Such as anti capitalist protests outside international summits by
any chance? "Targetted" suspects would be tagged with an "alert" on the SIS
computer, barring them from entering the country where a protest or event
was taking place.

In the Czech Republic, a new law permits the prosecution of people
expressing sympathy for the attacks on New York, or even of those
sympathising with the sympathisers! Already one Czech journalist, Tomas
Pecina, a reporter for the Prague-based investigative journal Britske
Listy, has been arrested and charged for criticising the use of the law, on
the grounds that this makes him, too, a supporter of terrorism. Meanwhile
in Turkey, that well known human rights haven, just publishing a book by
Noam Chomsky could land Fatih Tas with a fine or spell in prison, under the
country's anti-terrorism laws. Chomsky apparently overstepped the mark when
he wrote in 'US Interventions': "the Kurds have been oppressed throughout
history... but that changed (in 1984) tens of thousands of people were
killed, two or three million had to migrate, 3,500 villages were
destroyed... an intense ethnic clean-up." So while it's ok for the Turkish
state to carry out attacking the Kurds, it's terrorism and "separatist
propaganda" to talk about it.