Civil liberties are being eroded in the West, providing pretext for Middle East governments to crackdown on public expression, writes Nader Fergany* Liberal democracy is riddled with potential flaws and inconsistencies. One of the most apparent is that "democratic" arrangements can live side by side with fundamental violations of liberty in its broadest sense and the degradation of human dignity. For example, widespread abject poverty can exist in the context of democracy as a political system. A more pernicious and, perhaps, more perplexing phenomenon is the coexistence of democratic arrangements with the rampant violation of freedom in its narrower sense, understood as political and civil liberties. This paradox is manifested in the world today, not only in developing countries new to the exercise of freedom and democracy (and in which freely elected governments might restrict the freedoms of other sectors of society such as the judiciary, the media or organs of civil society), but also in countries in the industrialised West long-steeped in the democratic tradition. This oddity has led some commentators to urge the conceptual differentiation between democracy and freedom, thus enabling a juxtaposition that would throw into relief not only a "surplus" of the former versus a "deficit" in the latter, but also how "democracy" might be actively exploited to legitimise the restriction of freedom. If freedom permits democracy, the reverse does not necessarily hold true. The US is currently experiencing a grave attrition on a long-established body of general rights and freedoms. The significance of this to the Arab world stems from the fact that the US is frequently cited as the paragon of democracy and freedom, to be emulated by all. More importantly, the US, under the Bush administration and the rise to influence of American neo-conservatives, has set into motion a drive to impose US-style democracy on the rest of the world; at gunpoint if necessary. This drive has identified as its prime target the Arab world, as part of the so-called war against "terrorism", the definition of which the neo-conservatives have stretched to include legitimate resistance to foreign occupation. Under the neo-conservative administration in Washington, the US appears to be striving towards a mode of government we had once thought restricted to the Third World. The powers of the executive have expanded exponentially at the expense of the powers of the legislature and judiciary, jettisoning in the process many long-established civil and political liberties in that reputed bastion of freedom. The three most important landmarks in the attrition on freedom in the US are the "Anti Terrorism" act of 1996, the Patriot Act of 2001 and Patriot II, which the ultra- conservatives, led by the US attorney-general, are aiming to push through Congress today. These laws have targeted, specifically, those very constitutional provisions that sought to curb executive powers in areas pertaining to the invasion of privacy and the violation of due process. The anti-terrorist law struck out at the principle, established in the aftermath of McCarthyist hysteria, that membership in a group the government deems "hostile" is not, per se, a criminal act. Now, under the anti-terrorist act, furnishing any "material" aid to such groups is a criminal offence. Theoretically, this could extend to donations to an orphanage or hospital in occupied Palestine if the US government places the agency sponsoring those institutions on its terrorist blacklist. Had this law existed at an earlier date it would have criminalised material aid to the African National Union Party following the detention of Mandela. Under Patriot I, the US executive acquired extraordinary powers for tapping into private telephone and e-mail correspondence, searching public databases and other surveillance activities. Under this law, too, immigrants, even legal ones, can be placed under administrative preventive detention without charges being brought and without access to legal counsel. But the Bush administration wanted a heavier hand to wield against both immigrants and citizens. Towards this end it dreamt up the category of "enemy combatant" to legitimise any number of flagrant violations of human rights and due process. The detainees of Delta Camp in Guantanamo Bay offer a convenient test case. Not long ago, US officials announced that those detainees would be prosecuted before military tribunals that would have the right to sentence defendants to death, the rulings not be subject to appeal. Under the executive act establishing those "courts", their jurisdiction could extend to permanent US residents. But well before that, on mainland America, immigrants found themselves on perilous ground. In the few months following 11 September more than 1,000 foreigners in the US were detained, most of them Muslim, and some for several months before they were allowed access to a lawyer or permitted to appear before a judge. Only a few had charges brought against them, and many were deported from the country. Evidence suggests that such practices persist. In addition, cases involving foreigners have been increasingly referred to immigration courts, whose rulings are not so easily brought under judicial review. More ominously, the US Justice Department has invoked a long dormant law requiring immigrant foreigners to register with the police. It has applied this measure to immigrant males from 25 nations, all but one of which are Arab or Muslim. Some 3,000 of these registered immigrants, as reported by the Economist in 2003, have been deported from the US on grounds of minor infractions of the law. In addition to further augmenting the executive's powers of surveillance, preventive detention and secrecy in investigations, Patriot II would give authorities the right to maintain DNA databases of people suspected of supporting a group on Washington's terrorist list and the right to strip US citizens of their nationality, subjecting them to the same terms of detention or deportation as currently applies to non-naturalised immigrants, again, merely on the grounds of suspicion of supporting a "terrorist" group. It need hardly be added that Patriot II and its predecessors do not make it easy for Congress or the courts to take issue with the government on who or what group it decides to brand as terrorist. The current administration in Washington, in short, has claimed the unchecked right to toss individuals -- even US citizens -- into jail, perhaps for life, without charge, often without access to legal counsel and without prospect of a fair trial. How low the American model of freedom has sunk. Yet this is the model they want us to emulate. It is coming by force if need be. Thanks, but no thanks. We've already had more than enough of it. Did the Americans learn it from us? Why not let us develop a new model for freedom and liberty; one that Americans might look up to? Sadly, the restriction of civil liberties in the West, and in the US in particular, has encouraged many other governments -- Arab governments among them -- to promulgate new laws curbing civil and political freedoms. Indeed, perhaps the most dire indirect consequence of the American-led war on terrorism is that a number of Arab governments have seized upon the opportunity to devise a deliberately loose definition of terrorism in order tighten the noose on political freedoms and civil liberties. This trend has found its institutionalised expression in the Arab Charter for the Fight against Terrorism, which has come under attack by Arab and international human rights organisations for facilitating censorship, restricting access to the Internet and banning the publication or dissemination of material that could ostensibly encourage terrorism. Nor are there any provisions in the charter that explicitly prohibit arbitrary detention or torture, that invoke due process or provide means to object to violations of due process, or that protect privacy, as no reference is made to the need of a court warrant to put individuals or groups under surveillance. Under this climate so inimical to freedom some Arab governments have gone so far as to clamp down on expressions of popular support for the Palestinian resistance, subjecting pro-Palestinian activists to harassment and violently suppressing mass protest demonstrations. In one Arab country, this country, the clash between security forces and demonstrators resulted in the death of one university student and the critical injury of 10 others. Similarly, the cause of freedom in the Arab world has become yet another casualty of the US-British invasion of Iraq. The conflict between popular sentiment and official positions on this issue, against a backdrop of the already existing suppression of free expression, erupted into demonstrations that security forces met with a full onslaught of tear gas, rubber bullets and other violent and degrading exercises of force. By the time the smoke had cleared, five protestors had died in two Arab countries and, in Egypt, two members of the People's Assembly were arrested in spite of their parliamentary immunity. * The writer is director of Al-Mishkat Centre for Research, and the lead author of the Arab Human Development Report.
