AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 2016/17

that undermined human rights and the very
values that had come under attack.
2016 witnessed a profound paradigm shift:
a move from the view that it is the role of
governments to provide security so that
people can enjoy their rights, to the view that
governments must restrict people’s rights in
order to provide security. The result has been
a dangerous redrawing of the boundaries
between the powers of the state and the
rights of individuals.
One of the most alarming developments
was the effort by states to make it easier to
invoke and prolong a “state of emergency”.
Hungary led the way with the adoption of
legislation providing for sweeping executive
powers in the event of a declared emergency,
including the banning of public assemblies,
severe restrictions on the freedom of
movement and the freezing of assets with no
judicial controls. The Bulgarian Parliament
passed a similar set of measures at first vote
in July. In December, France extended for the
fifth time the state of emergency imposed
following the November 2015 attacks. The
emergency powers were significantly
expanded in the July extension, which
reintroduced house searches without prior
judicial approval (a power dropped from an
earlier extension) and new powers to prohibit
public events on public security grounds,
which were variously used to ban protests.
Figures released by the government in
December 2016 indicated that since
November 2015, 4,292 house searches had
been conducted and 612 people had been
assigned to forced residency, raising concern
that the emergency powers were being used
disproportionately.
Measures once viewed as exceptional were
embedded in ordinary criminal law in several
European states. These included extensions
in the period of pre-charge detention for
terrorism-related suspects in Slovakia and
Poland and a proposal to do the same for all
charges in Belgium. In the Netherlands and
Bulgaria, proposals were put before
Parliament to introduce administrative control
measures to restrict people’s freedom of
movement without prior judicial authorization.
Pioneered in the UK and France, such
controls, in some cases amounting to house
arrest, were imposed on the basis of secret
security files leaving those affected unable to
effectively challenge measures with harmful
effects on their lives and families.
Hundreds of people were prosecuted, in
violation of the right to freedom of expression,
for offences of apologizing for or glorifying
terrorism, especially in France, often for
comments posted on social media, and less
frequently in Spain. A proposed EU Directive
on Combating Terrorism, which was still
pending adoption at the end of the year,
would lead to the proliferation of such laws. A
proposal to prohibit the vague “promoting
terrorism” was put forward in Germany, while
bills setting out similar offences were put
before Parliament in Belgium and the
Netherlands.
Across Europe, states significantly
enhanced their surveillance powers, in
defiance of repeated rulings by the Court of
Justice of the European Union and the
European Court of Human Rights that covert
surveillance and the interception and
retention of communications data would
violate the right to privacy unless based on a
reasonable suspicion of serious criminal
activity and to the extent strictly necessary for
making an effective contribution to
combating such activity. Both courts have
repeatedly stated that national legislation on
surveillance must provide sufficient
guarantees against misuse, including prior
authorization by a court or other independent
authority. The UK introduced perhaps the
most wide-ranging bulk and targeted
surveillance powers with the adoption of the
Investigatory Powers Act in November.
Commonly referred to as the “snooper’s
charter”, it permitted a broad range of
vaguely defined interception, interference
and data retention practices, and imposed
new requirements on private companies to
store communications data. All powers under
the new law – both targeted and mass –
could be authorized by a government
minister after review, in most but not all
cases, by a quasi-judicial body composed of
Amnesty International Report 2016/17 43