HUMAN RIGHTS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 264, 20 August 1949, Page 5

HUMAN RIGHTS

MR CHURCHILL’S PLAN Council of Europe Appeal Ifi.Z P A Ooiiyrignt/ (Rec. 10.10 a.m.) PARIS, Aug. 19. Britain’s Nuremberg prosecutor, Sir David Maxweii-fryfe, to-day asked the 12 nations of the Council of Europe to surrender the “sovereign right to suppress liberty and democratic institutions.’’ He was backing a resolution on human rights, put before the Council’s consultative assembly by Mr Winston Churchill. Sir David said'that there must be a binding convention on human rights. “From the world point of, view we cannot let the matter of human rights rest at a declaration of moral principles and pious aspirations,” he declared. An European Movement resolution called upon the European Assembly to get a preliminary convention from •member nations that they would enforce the fundamental freedoms and rights now protected by their own laws. This would be followed by an international convention in which member nations would agree to a European bill of rights and would set up a human rights commission and a human rights court to enforce them. Sir David said that the proposed court would function under a statute modelled on the charter of the Internatipnal Court of Justice at The Hague. The function of the commission would be to act as .a filter to stop the court being flooded by unsuitable petitions. % Collective Security Aim Sir David told the council: “Our plan provides a system of collective security against tyranny arid oppression. We have seen, to our sorrow, in Czechoslovakia, the retrogressive steps by which a Democratic constitution may be overthrown.” He emphasised that the plan involved some voluntary surrender of sovereignty-, but said that he did not think any member state would wish to insist on its sovereign right to suppress liberty and democratic institutions.

Another British delegate, Mr J. Cl. Foster, said: “We.have had totalitarian dictatorships, only too recently in Europe, which have disregarded the right of the ordinary man to look forward to free speech, free religion and freedom from arrest. Concentration camps in the East of Europe are not too far away from us to say that this is simply an academic exercise.” _ Senator (J. Parsico (Italian Socialist Unity Party) urged the need to set up an international court for the punishment, of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He said that for over 3000 years, there scarcely had been 206 years of universal peace. “In the last war 32,000.000 young men lost their lives in battle, 6,000,000 people were put to death in concentration camps and 36,000,000 old people, women and chiidreri perished as a result of air raids. We must do our all to bring this to an end and that is our task.’ ■ ' . Mr Hermod Lannung (Denmark) said that he hoped European Parliaments would soon adopt the practice of passing European legislation along with national legislation. It would be .the job of the European court to enforce European legislation. Mr Anvyn Ungoed-Thomas (Briton) urged that there should be a contact between the Assembly and those in the United Nations who had given much thought to the problem ,ot human rights. Enforceable provisions should be adopted to expel any members of the Council of Europe who violated human rights.