Arbitrary Detention Quotes

Police in China can do whatever they want; after 81 days in arbitrary detention you clearly realise that they don't have to obey their own laws. In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want - not only you, your whole family and all people like you.

In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a full and fair trial.'

There is nothing more foreign to a civilised and democratic system than preventive detention.

Contrary to what certain governments say, human rights are universal. Arbitrary detention, torture and discrimination hurt the human dignity of anybody, whatever his or her country of origin, religion, descent, or any other ground.

As long as my record stands in federal court, any American citizen can be held in prison or concentration camps without a trial or a hearing.

Manufacturing evidence to justify arbitrary, politically motivated detentions is a common tool of the illegitimate former Maduro regime.

Iran has a dismal record on human rights.

What made Guantanamo such a travesty - and what still makes it such - is that it is a system of indefinite detention whereby human beings are put in cages for years and years without ever being charged with a crime.

If it is not totalitarian to arrest a man and detain him, when you cannot charge him with any offence against any written law --- if that is not what we have always cried out against in Fascist states -- then what is it?

The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.

In the eyes of the world, Malaysia has become a pariah state, a state where anyone can be hauled up and questioned by the police, detained, and charged through abusing laws of the country.

I was arrested in September 2011 and detained for nine months before I was found guilty in June 2012 under Ethiopia's overly broad Anti-Terrorism Proclamation, which ostensibly covers the 'planning, preparation, conspiracy, incitement and attempt' of terrorist acts.

Dictatorships do cut down on rape, and pillage, not to mention sexual harassment, by the simple expedient of sending people to labour camps for life or cutting off their hands without a trial.

They would pull people off the streets, anybody with warm blood who could say yes or no or move arms and legs.

People should not be imprisoned without having the ability to challenge the legality of that imprisonment.

We have over a hundred political detainees, men against whom we are unable to prove anything in a court of law. Nearly 50 of them are men who gave us a great deal of anxiety during the years of Confrontation because they were Malay extremists. Your life and this dinner would not be what it is if my colleagues and I had decided to play it according to the rules of the game.

… [Secret detention is] odious to a democratic society

If the police believed that they were planning any form of resistance against the state, then you were just gone. Nobody knew where you were, and you just hoped to see that family member again.

Many countries persecute their own citizens and intern them in prisons or concentration camps. Oppression is becoming more and more a part of the systems.

Judge Afiuni has suffered enough. She has been subject to acts of violence and humiliations to undermine her human dignity. I am convinced that she must be set free.

We were all blocked from western media, outside information. We were captured in a virtual prison cell. People would disappear in the middle of the night - not every day, but sometimes. We hear about it, and we never knew what happened inside the prison camps. I learned about them after I escaped.

If it is not totalitarian to arrest a man and detain him, when you cannot charge him with any offence against any written law – if that is not what we have always cried out against in Fascist states – then what is it?… If we are to survive as a free democracy, then we must be prepared, in principle, to concede to our enemies – even those who do not subscribe to our views – as much constitutional rights as you concede yourself.

A large number of suspects, both men and women, escaped martial law for lack of any shred of evidence against them on which a court-martial could convict. So they began setting them free in groups, according to their birth-place. But half-way, the car-load would be emptied into a ditch.

These are show trials. If the defendant is convicted, he goes to Guantanamo Bay. If he is acquitted, he goes to Guantanamo Bay. If the trial is abandoned, he goes to Guantanamo Bay. I don’t know why they are holding this trial.….

Reports about very innocent people being thrown into detention, where they could be held for years without any representation or charges, is distressing.