Preventive Detention?

"The British settlement in India began through the east india company's domination over all aspects of life after it assumed the revenue collection authority (diwani) of Bengal. The early statutes such as the Regulating Act of 1773 and the Permanent Settlement Act of 1793, though not specifically meant to be statutes for preventive detention, did directly encroach upon the fundamental rights of the local people. The first statutes which contained specific provisions for preventive detention were the East India Company Act 1784 and the East India Company Act 1793. The imposition of martial law through the Bengal State Offences Regulation 1804 remained enforceable for 118 years till it was repealed by another law in 1922. The Foreign Immigrants Regulation 1812 contained provision for detention, though meant for the foreigners, included those who were settled in Bengal for generations. The East India Company promulgated the Bengal Prisoners Regulation, 1818 containing specific provisions for preventive detention. It was truly a preventive detention statute which remained in force till 1947."

[Banglapedia: http://banglapedia.search.com.bd/ ]

.........................................................................

I first heard of the practice of preventive detention in a Columbia University Faculty Human Rights Seminar some decades back when this practice was defended there by an Israeli scholar as a limited, but necessary practice involving a handful of suspected terrorists in Israel who could be held without charges or legal recourse for six months at a time (with renewals) on the grounds that such individuals were known to be terrorists, but that evidence proving same could not be disclosed without putting at risk vital sources of information.

Those of us in attendance at that particular seminar meeting -- Columbia and faculty from other area institutions -- were distressed to hear of this Israeli practice, as it had been a primary source of violations of human rights practiced in Apartheid South Africa. I had no idea at the time that 'preventive detention' was a practice of long standing, as indicated by the above excerpt from the Banglapedia which pops up as the first of some 815,000 Google offerings under this heading.

One grasps why some of the key U.S. Constitutional provisions support in our Bill of Rights due process protections and restrictions on incarceration methods that must presumably have been standard British practices against which the Founding Fathers were inveighing (if not against our institution of slavery and genocide per se).

How short (or dumbed down) our American memories are that we in turn have reverted to preventive detention of presumed (but unproved) 'terrorists' as a current American practice which we seem bent on spreading around the world with "renderings" here, there, and elsewhere -- not to be disclosed for security reasons per the recent Washington Post report of CIA imprisonments in secret locations -- nations that might be endangered by such disclosures!

Could it be that preventive detention goes hand in hand with imperial impositions upon resistant populations? Certainly such was the case in India while the East India Company was extracting goods and services therefrom, in South Africa under Apartheid, and, yes, in Israel, in the face of occupied Palestinians -- and now in Iraq, which the U.S. chose to invade with hardly innocent motivations, given our hot pursuit of oil and the revenues to be garnered therefrom by such as Cheney's Halliburton enterprises?

Dirty hands, perhaps, is the metaphor that best captures this practice. One must cover up stained things in such circumstances -- not necessarily to protect vital security matters so much as to hide damning disclosures of abuses that might call for war crime prosecutions -- or future Truth and Reconciliation Commissions?

What secrets lie hidden in these prisons? Only public trials can disclose them -- who is guilty and who is innocent.

When preventive detention is put forth as an excuse for a war on terrorists, the burden of proof lies equally upon those jailed -- and their jailers. One must remain skeptical when 'justifications' are offered for fundamental violations of the most basic of human rights -- which so many good people have given their lives to secure.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
--

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights

http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/

http://www.bloggernews.net/blognews.asp