The report published by CAMPACC (Campaign Against Criminalising Communities) marks twenty years of the Terrorism Act 2000, which has been supplemented by many more ‘counter-terror’ laws.  They have profoundly changed the criminal justice system in many unjust ways, in particular by

• Extending draconian police powers
• Legitimising widespread punishment without fair trial
• Introducing secret evidence
• Criminalising a wide range of non-violent activities
• Criminalising national liberation organisations
• Placing migrant and Muslim communities under surveillance
• Enhancing unaccountable executive powers of punishment without trial
• Securitising all aspects of life

Counter-terrorism powers have become so embedded and normalised that they are rarely questioned.  Their injustices protect and extend many oppressive roles of the British state – its foreign wars, its support for state terrorism, its support for oppressive regimes, its politics of fear, its domestic  counter extremism policy, its special emergency powers, its attack on previous norms of criminal justice, its growing apparatus of surveillance, and the criminalisation of communities.

The terrorism and counter-terrorism (TACT) regime is vast.  This short report can only highlight some injustices and collective resistance to them.

The report can be found here

* Photo: Mark Thomas