Articles by A G Noorani

The recent report of John Stevens, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service in UK, has exposed the security forces' collusion with renegade militant bodies in Northern Ireland. The report is of extreme relevance to us in India where the security forces have made regular and systematic use of renegade militants in Kashmir and earlier in Punjab.

Since its offensive against terror began, Guantanamo Bay has been used by the US to detain prisoners and suspected terrorists, denying them all the well-established human rights, specifically the right to habeas corpus. African and Asian visitors, especially Muslims, have also complained of similar discrimination by increasingly paranoiac US authorities, haunted by the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. The recent judgment of the English Court of Appeal in response to a petition filed on behalf of a detainee, a British citizen, is but a measured censure of the US treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

The Law of Human Rights by Richard Clayton and Hugh Tomlinson; Oxford University Press, Volumes 1 and 2, pp 1,670 and 285. The Law of Human Rights by Richard Clayton and Hugh Tomlinson; First Annual Updating Supplement; Oxford University Press, pp 288, £ 180 for Vols 1 and 2 and the Supplement; £ 45 for the Supplement for those who bought Vols 1 and 2 last year. Prisoner’s Rights by Colin Gonsalves, Monika Sakhrani and Annie Fernandes; Vidyullata Pandit, Vidhayak Sansad, Vasai and Human Rights Law Network, Mumbai, pp 968.

When the executive refuses to issue the notification announcing the date a particular law passed by the legislature comes into force, the judiciary is well within its powers to intervene. Yet, there have been occasions when the apex court has allowed such wrongs to go unchecked.

The print media, bar sections of the Gujarati press in Ahmedabad, have done the nation proud by its objective coverage of the Gujarat carnage. So have the electronic media. Rattled by the bad press it has been getting, the Narendra Modi government has asked three news agencies in Ahmedabad to put out positive stories to refurbish the government's image and thereafter to act as informers on which newspapers print the planted features and which do not.