THE PRESS MONDAY, APRIL 6, 1987. Terrorism and the law

Press, 6 April 1987, Page 20

THE PRESS MONDAY, APRIL 6, 1987. Terrorism and the law

The International Terrorism (Emergency Powers) Bill is before Parliament’s Justice and Law Reform Committee. The intentions of the proposed laws are admirable. In practice they would almost certainly fail to achieve their objects. In part, this is because the provisions of the law have been made too detailed and specific; in part, it is because the bill attempts to control activities that are beyond the reach of any New Zealand administration.

Newspapers, radio, and televison have cause for concern in the bill’s attempts to define procedures for censorship during a terrorist incident, and for prolonged censorship on reports of such incidents, perhaps for years afterwards. Freedom of information is an important consideration in New Zealand, as in any other democracy. It is by no means absolutely paramount. Restraints are readily accepted now by the community, on such grounds as ensuring a fair trial for an accused person. When lives might be at stake in a terrorist incident, media representatives themselves would generally concede that they must accept restraints.

A voluntary code of restraint, agreed between the police and the media, is already acknowledged and applied. It has worked well on such occasions as the kidnapping of a girl in Oamaru. The provisions proposed in the bill include a fairly elaborate series of moves by police and members of the Cabinet to impose a ban on information. It is a clumsy system that would take time and invite challenges. Worse than that, even when it secured information against publication in New Zealand, there is no way in which it could be used to stifle publication or broadcasting of reports outside New Zealand that might be of assistance to terrorists at the time, or in a later emergency. This bill is intended to deal with events that have international implications. Publication abroad of details of terrorists’ demands, and of responses by security services, might well be much more important to the terrorists than any publicity in New Zealand.

A more general criticism must be that the bill refers to “international terrorism.” A moment’s reflection on events during the 1981 Springbok rugby tour demonstrates the problems of definition. Violence against people and property at that time was intended to influence events in New Zealand, to force the cancellation of a series of rugby matches here.

On the self-proclaimed intentions of those concerned, stopping the tour was also regarded as a means to influence political events in South Africa. Would a Government, armed with laws such as those proposed now, have been justified in deeming the more extreme protests to be acts of “international terrorism”? The answer has to be that, at the very least, a Government could have interpreted the event as being international in its purpose of furthering a political aim outside New Zealand. More than this, the correctness of such an interpretation could not have been debated adequately in public except, as is allowed by the bill, in Parliament.

The best course, surely, is to abandon any attempt to distinguish between “international terrorism” and the home-grown variety. New Zealand has groups now, with professed

grievances against others in this country, who are not beyond attempting acts of native, terrorism. Some such acts may have already occurred, although they have been treated as ordinary criminal offences.

The Government is committed to the repeal of the Public Safety Conservation Act, 1932, to which it maintains political objections. That act contains the provisions of the new anti-terrorism bill in much simpler and more general form. The well-being of the community, and the work of the police in particularly unpleasant situations, would not necessarily be made easier by the new legislation. As it stands, the new bill confers on the police powers similar to those enjoyed by the Fire Service under the provisions of the Fire Service Act. A chief fire officer, confronted by a serious fire, can do almost anything, and order others to do almost anything, if he believes such actions are necessary to fight the fire. The police, confronted with terrorist threats, deserve equal powers to act swiftly in extraordinary circumstances where lives may be at risk. Such powers should not be limited to occasions when an international connection can be clearly demonstrated. Adroit terrorists would go as far as they could go before disclosing the international element in their action. The bill’s counter to this is to enable the police and the Prime Minister to act upon a reasonable belief that an emergency “may be an international terrorist emergency.” The likely response to every serious threat or action would be to presume its international element on the smallest indication.

The draft legislation is defective in many respects. It requires Prime Ministerial authority to exercise emergency powers but, notwithstanding a seven-day limit, no more than a police decision to maintain the powers. The powers to restrict public access, destroy property, and requisition equipment need to be reserved much more rigidly for emergencies. The beginning and end of the menace of fire are pretty obvious; the end of a terrorist threat may be a matter of opinion. The Ministerial rulings on censorship are absolute; the bill enables no court review. The elaborate and specific provisions for censorship, though not the most serious shortcomings of the bill, need not form part of the bill. Other democracies, such as Britain, faced with far greater terrorist threats, have not resorted to such provisions. There is a recognition elsewhere that a voluntary code is adequate for common-sense decisions at the height of a crisis. Otherwise, given the speed and scope of international communications, censorship in one country can seldom achieve its purpose without vast and elaborate measures, including confiscations of printed material at borders, the jamming ,of broadcasts from abroad, and the - obstruction of international communications.

The Government has expressed alarm at the possible uses that might be made of the Public Safety Conservation Act. The possibility for abuse of the censorship provisions in the International Terrorism (Emergency Powers) Bill is at least as great. Because those provisions are not likely to achieve their intention, they should be dropped. For the same reason, they have not been adopted elsewhere.