Human rights work made more difficult by EU plans to search for terrorists on the internet

Plans of the EU to place certain expressions on the internet under the focus of investigations have induced the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) to issue a strong protest on Wednesday. „If expressions like ‚bombs‘, ‚genocide‘ or ‚terrorism‘ can trigger off police activity the work of international human rights organisations will be made impossible“, criticised the GfbV General Secretary, Tilman Zülch. It is the task of the GfbV to provide information on the internet on severe crimes against humanity — as at the present time on the genocide in South Sudan, in East Timor, Bosnia-Herzegovina or Iraqi Kurdistan. If this information is no longer available to the general public the military regimes and dictatorships will be able all the more easily to present their violations of human rights in a favourable light.

The EU Commissioner for Justice, Franco Fattin1, intends according to a report in the „Göttinger Tageblatt“ of today Wednesday to close websites containing „dangerous information“. Requests also for certain search expressions like „genocide“ or „bombs“ are to be blocked by internet search engines. These measures can be part of a packet on the search for terrorists on the internet which Fattini intends to present at the beginning of November.