Axing Human Rights Act threatens “absolute ban on torture”

Today, in the Queen's Speech, the Government announced plans to consult on the introduction of a ‘British Bill of Rights’ which would replace the Human Rights Act. Survivors Speak OUT (SSO) and Freedom from Torture, the UK’s leading charity against torture, are lining up to warn against backsliding on the absolute ban on torture.

SSO and Freedom from Torture are also two of more than 130 organisations to have signed a pledge of support for the Human Rights Act.

Sonya Sceats, Director of Policy and Advocacy at Freedom from Torture, said:

“The absolute ban on torture is a vital cornerstone of our civil liberties in the UK and we must be vigilant against any sneaky backsliding on it.

Silver-tongued Ministers will say they are leaving the absolute torture ban intact but blocking its application to UK involvement in torture abroad and new barriers making it harder for people to challenge ill treatment in British courts are just two of their devious ideas for watering it down as part of their assault on the Human Rights Act.

Over hundreds of years the UK forged anti-torture laws that paved the way for the absolute prohibition in the European Convention on Human Rights, largely penned by British lawyers. Torturing states will read such proposals as a green light to find similarly crafty ways of undermining the ban. It will only be a matter of time before states like Russia follow suit.

As well as helping prevent abuse here at home, these laws have ensured sanctuary in the UK for survivors of torture and other serious abuses, thereby justifying our global status as a ‘beacon of hope’. In this troubled world, surely this is a time for the UK to affirm, not renounce, these principles.”

Read further comment from Sonya in the Huffington Post.

Kolbassia Haoussou, survivor advocate and co-ordinator of Survivors Speak OUT (SSO), the torture survivor activist network supported by Freedom from Torture, said:

“Human rights are only human rights if they are universal and accessible to all. Torture survivors are not less worthy of these rights because we suffered torture and had to flee our countries.

We came here in the spirit of hope, but anti-asylum seeker rhetoric and proposals by the Government, including replacing the Human Rights Act, suggest that the rights of torture survivors seeking refuge in the UK are about to be whittled away.

Many traumatised torture survivors who fled to this country to find sanctuary and care are now alarmed that future changes could jeopardise their hope of recovery in the UK and put them at risk of being returned to torture and death.”