I am usually very cautious about comparing incidents in this country with those in totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. I work with dissidents from countries like Burma who have experienced the very worst possible violations of human rights. I have met people who have endured the barbarity of North Korea's gulags. I have looked into the eyes of women from Darfur as they told their experience of being gang-raped. For those reasons, I do not usually like to compare human rights issues in Britain to the violations of basic human rights in other parts of the world. Indeed, I am a critic of the Human Rights Act because I believe it demeans and undermines basic human rights.
However, the arrest of Damian Green has caused me to reconsider that rule. The fact of his arrest, and the way it was conducted, would be no surprise in Burma, China, Cuba or Zimbabwe, but should never, ever happen in Britain. Unless there is something I and most other people have completely missed, how on earth is it that a democratically elected senior opposition spokesman and Member of Parliament can be treated in the way he has been? How is it that his homes can be raided, his correspondence - including personal love letters with his wife - searched, and his emails suspended? What crime has he committed?
If there is any wrongdoing here, it is by the person who leaked the information from the Home Office, not the recipient of the information. But even there, unless it relates to the Official Secrets Act, I fail to see why this is a police - ie a criminal - matter. It may well be a serious disciplinary matter within the civil service, resulting in the sacking of the person involved in leaking, but how it has gone from that to the arrest of a senior MP who, upon receiving the information, simply did his duty by revealing it in the public interest is beyond me.
I thought previously that the use of the term 'Stalinist' in the British context was far-fetched. Now, it seems to have become a reality - and the Government, the Speaker of the House of Commons, and the police have a lot of explaining to do. Confidence in our democratic institutions has steadily been eroded under this government - and now it has taken a severe knock. Unless the government and the police act fast to restore confidence in our democracy, our own freedom - and with it our ability to speak for people in other countries who suffer such violations of freedom - will be severely undermined.
