KARACHI, April 10: Terrorism cannot be fought by terrorist activities, says a British expert in law. "If we behave like terrorists in tackling the problem of terrorism, there will be no difference between them and us.
The emphasis should be to find out the root cause of terrorism," said Phil Thomas, Professor of Law and Director of Overseas Recruitment and Academic Director of Law School, Cardiff University, UK.
In his lecture on "9/11 and rule of law, arranged by the British Council and the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Information Technology, on Saturday, Phil Thomas criticized the post-9/11 policies of the US.
He felt that instead of weeding out terrorism, US policies resulted in an increase in terrorist and sabotage activities.
He also criticized the legislation introduced to tackle terrorism as it compromised personal freedom. Public safety was done at the cost of civil liberty.
He spoke of constitutional structure in democratic countries, and said it is based on three pillars - executive, legislative and judiciary, which is what he called "normality stage. All three remain in harmonious balance in normality stage and function within limits."
However, 9/11 terror acts, he observed, changed whole scenario and stage of abnormality overshadowed harmonious balance and created disturbance in the situation, which led to introduction of draconian laws undermining civil liberties.
He said principal function of state is to ensure security of public and integrity of territorial boundaries. The frequent argument presented by the US for introducing anti-terrorism legislation, however, took away individual rights.
He observed that immigrants in western countries are most vulnerable to such kinds of anti-terrorism acts as they are considered to be suspect for every crime, which they did or not. He called for result-oriented legislation, which tackles terrorism.-PPI
