Today the UK Supreme Court made a significant ruling on how far back in time the UK’s obligation to investigate unlawful killing goes.
Rights Watch (UK) and The Pat Finucane Centre intervened in the case of Keyu and Others v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs before the Supreme Court (Batang Kali Massacre case) because the “Surpeme Court’s decision about the temporal scope of the Government’s procedural obligation under Article 2 would have a direct bearing on troubles related legacy cases in Northern Ireland.
The case was brought by family members of some of the 24 civilians allegedly murdered by British forces at the Batang Kali rubber plantation (in the former Federation of Malaya) in December 1948. Disappointingly the Court found that the obligation to investigate under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) did not stretch as far back as 1948. Instead the Court found that the ‘critical date’ for the purposes of determining when the convention obligation arose was 1966, the date that the UK Government recognised the right of individual petition to the ECtHR. The Court accepted that cases that occurred prior to 1966 could also enliven the “tate’s procedural obligations, but explicitly ruled out cases that happened more than ten years before the critical date of 1966.
This has real implications for Troubles-related legacy cases in Northern Ireland, with the UK now under an obligation to carry out effective, transparent and independent investigations into troubles related deaths in Northern Ireland since these deaths occurred after 1966.
Yasmine Ahmed, Director of Rights Watch UK states:
“The outcome of this case has considerable implications in Northern Ireland where many of the deaths that occurred during ‘The Troubles’ happened before the UK Government enacted the Human Rights Act in 1998 but after the UK ratified the European Convention on Human Rights (which occurred in 1953) and recognised the right of individual petition (which occurred in 1966). The Court today recognised that the UK Government has an obligation to carry out Article 2 compliant investigations into Troubles-related deaths in Northern Ireland.”
ENDS
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