Britain will publicly list and ban the entry of more than 200 people whose extremist views and “violent messages” are deemed a threat to national security, the home secretary has said.
The plan announced on Tuesday by British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith would group together Muslim extremists, animal rights protesters, anti-abortion activists, neo-Nazis and others who she said “encourage or spread extremism and hatred through preaching violent messages.”
The individuals on the list would only be from abroad.
Smith said publishing the names — roughly 230 — amounts to a toughening of existing exclusion orders that already list and ban certain groups from Britain. Authorities expect to publish the list on the Home Office Web site in the coming months.
US officials say there are fewer than 16,000 names on the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) lists used to screen airline passengers in the US. The names come from a broader watch list that FBI counterterrorism officials say contains about 400,000 people of interest.
The TSA lists, created to combat terrorism after the Sept. 11 attack, have caused problems for some travelers with similar names.
As of Sept. 30, more than 43,500 requests had been filed by people who think they were mistakenly identified as a terrorist, the TSA says.
Authorities hope their new list will amount to “naming and shaming” extremists and will act as notices to keep them out of Britain. But British rights groups complained that the latest Home Office plan would do nothing to shame extremists into moderating their views.
“The threat of terrorism is real and none of us in the Muslim community believe otherwise,” said Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadhan Foundation, a British youth organization. “But to win hearts and minds you engage people instead of naming them and demonizing them.”
Under the government plan, individuals who spread messages of hate or violence could theoretically be named and banned from the UK. Unlike the US, Britain lacks a written Constitution and enshrined freedom of speech rights.
The Home Office currently refuses entry to people in cases where it can supply proof that they are likely to air extremist views that will lead to violence, glorify terrorism or incite religious or racial hatred. Named individuals can appeal exclusion orders from abroad.
Since British Muslim suicide bombers killed 52 London commuters during a rush hour attack in 2005, the British government has tried to embark on a “hearts and minds” campaign but a number of measures have backfired, including a proposal to extend the pre-charge detention time to 42 days and counterterrorism measures that criminalized speech glorifying violence or hatred.
“There’s a fine line between saying you’re going to do something and actually going out and doing it,” Shafiq said. “It’s almost like the government’s attempt to ban some Web sites from abroad. You don’t fight extremism by these methods.”
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