Document Details | We have reached a fork in the road

Details for We have reached a fork in the road
Property	Value
Name	We have reached a fork in the road
Description	'Rendition: we have reached a fork in the road' - Tyrie Andrew Tyrie, Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition has written to the Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett. Mr Tyrie said: ‘The Government repudiate torture, but they are not able to condemn rendition. I am asking them to condemn rendition just as they have condemned Guantanamo Bay. Alternatively, if the government believes that Britain’s safety can be enhanced by the practice of Extraordinary Rendition, they should legalize it. I don’t think the British people would accept that. I can’t either. But the Government cannot carry on like this, refusing to repudiate rendition or justify it, as the US administration does. They have reached a fork in the road. I believe that torture is always repugnant. The practice of Extraordinary Rendition is wholly unacceptable and it should end. Furthermore, rendition makes Britain and the West less secure. This is first because rendition and torture corrode the West’s strongest tool in suppressing terrorism: the sense that we stand for a better set of values than those who are attacking us and those who may be misled into offering terrorists a measure of support. Secondly, it undermines international law, respect for which the West has a strong interest in buttressing. Thirdly, it alienates those groups, particularly the moderate Muslims, on whose support we most depend, particularly for information. Those who feel at greatest risk of finding themselves at the wrong end of such practices are watching these issues carefully. They can see that we undermine the very values that we are seeking to promote. The apparent alienation evident in opinion polls[1] is probably related to it. It is now common ground between politicians, police, the security services and the army, that heavy handed tactics in Northern Ireland in the early seventies tended to inflame extremism and serve to recruit terrorists more than it deterred it. A similar problem applies to the suppression of extremist Muslim fundamentalist terrorism. ENDS
Filename	press release 6th november.doc
Filesize	33.5 kB
Filetype	doc (Mime Type: application/msword)
Creator	MPadmin
Created On:	11/06/2006 18:05
Viewers	Everybody
Maintained by	Editor
Hits	2828 Hits
Last updated on	08/29/2008 09:27
Homepage
CRC Checksum
MD5 Checksum