Friday, December 19, 2008

Amnesty International to India: Please keep doing a pathetic job of fighting terror

Arthur Herman observed shortly after the Mumbai attack:
. . . India’s record on counterterrorism is abysmal, almost deliberately so. The government in New Delhi steadfastly maintains a wall of separation between law-enforcement agencies like the one that used to separate the FBI and CIA before the Patriot Act, and keeps counterterrorist units underfunded and undermanned . . . India has no preventive detention laws; no laws to protect the identity of anti-terrorist witnesses; and no laws to allow domestic wiretapping without court order.
Herman announces the death, as he puts it, of "certain illusions about the war on terror, and how to deal with terrorists." As I observed before, those illusions are alive and well. From Gulf News:
Amnesty International on Friday called on India's president not to approve an anti-terror bill made after the deadly attacks in Mumbai.

The London-based group said the bill violates international human rights treaties.

It will also double the number of days police can detain suspects before filing charges, from 90 days to 180, as well as boost their powers to conduct searches.

Both houses of India's Parliament have approved the bill after the attacks on India's Mumbai by suspected Islamic terrorists that killed 164 people last month.

No comments: