‘Britain risks following Nazi lead on human rights’
A UN special rapporteur says the United Kingdom risks following the lead of Nazi Germany by its possible withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Professor François Crépeau, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, said: “We have to remember the 1930s and how the rights of the Jews were restricted in Germany and then the rights of the whole German people. I mean, countries that go down the path of reducing the rights of one category of people usually don’t stop there.”
"If you reduce the human rights protection, you reduce it for everyone. If you have a government that says, 'well, there is too much human rights in this country, let’s reduce it’, at one point you might think it will reduce the rights of one category of persons, but it has a tendency to spill over," the senior UN representative told the Sunday Times.
Crépeau’s comments come after the UK’s ruling Tories threatened to withdraw from the ECHR if necessary to regain the power to extradite foreign criminals.
The ECHR was introduced after the Second World War to try to prevent repeats of the kind of repression seen in Nazi Germany.
Now Human Rights Lawyer Saghir Hussain believes the UN special rapporteur’s views are “a warning and wakeup call to the rest of us.”
“The prospect of scrapping the ECHR is another example of the increasing curtailment of liberties and rights of vulnerable minority groups in the UK. This has now been well documented, including in Cage’s ‘From Cradle to Grave’ report, which vividly illustrates how every facet of the lives of British religious minorities is increasingly policed. As the UN rapporteur said the first step to a Nazi style police state begins by taking away the rights of vulnerable minorities, such as migrants and then gradually the rest of the population,” Hussain told Press TV in a written interview.
“In my opinion however a more accurate comparison is that of the East German Stasi State. Which I fear we could potentially find ourselves sleepwalking into, if we do not campaign to uphold the rule of law, due process and civil liberties for all.”
The UK’s possible withdrawal from the ECHR is seen as the most extreme option as part of plans to replace the Human Rights Act, which enshrines the convention in UK law, with a British Bill of Rights.
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