The Human Rights Act for years had enabled plenty of British to express their opinions with tolerance from the public and the government. These activities, including protests, which sometimes break down into violence, had contributed to the well-being and better understanding between authorities, businesses and individuals.
However, the Conservative Party wants to abolish the Human Rights Act. Our first reaction would be “Why would they want to do that? Now we don’t have anything to protect ourselves when we want to express ourselves.” But the case in point is that plenty of infectious ideas have spread to the point it is fuelling wars elsewhere.
I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of Islamic State. These Jihadists have brought dreadful news. They have even taken to social media and the Internet to spread their activities, namely preaching and ‘acting on’ the Islamic belief the right way, the archaic way. Somehow, these have fed into the minds of the most faithful of Muslims, of which is plentiful in our country.
I have nothing against belief, but preachers and people who spread word of the ideas of violence being a part of religion is counter-productive to the goal of religion, which is to spread peace and harmony between all life.
But the act of balancing the law is difficult in itself. The government has to understand that when they remove the HRA, even common civilians would be involved. The paradox is if they refuse to remove it, then Jihadists have free reign to place their posts online and influence Muslims to feel Islam the right way is to force everyone to believe in it.
It would also seem to perverse our current surveillance and privacy laws because the government must have no control over what is not performed publicly if they undermine the HRA. The Terrorist Act itself could have been useful, if only proper authorities had not abused their positions.
But the inevitable truth is that we need to take one thing for another. Remove HRA, live a little less private and we keep our nation safe. Refuse to remove the HRA and we have all the privacy we could get. These criminals get it too, and we wouldn’t know if our neighbour was planning to blow up something in Manchester that has a lot of people to prove a point.
So, we’re at a Mexican standoff where it’s a lose-lose situation. But I’d choose the lesser evil.
I’d say that we could place some restrictions on The Human Rights Act, namely instigating violence. People must refuse the removal of the HRA but instead persuade the government to add a sub-clause that mentions instigating criminal actions through influence, religion or otherwise, is criminally offensive and is subject to the full force of the law.
In this way, we could single out individuals who use belief, ideals, objectives and political statements to instigate violence against other people.
Isn’t this how Hitler got started with WWII or are we forgetting all about this already?