The Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of 1919, popularly known as the Rowlatt Act, was a law, applied during the British India period. It was a legislative council act passed by the Imperial Legislative Council in Delhi on 18 March 1919, indefinitely extending the emergency measures of preventive indefinite detention, imprisonment without trial and judicial review enacted in the Defence of India Act 1915 during the First World War. It was enacted in the light of a perceived threat from revolutionary nationalists of re-engaging in similar conspiracies as had occurred during the war which the Government felt the lapse of the Defence of India Act would enable.
The Internal Security Act 1960 was a preventive detention law in force in Malaysia. The legislation was enacted after the Federation of Malaya gained independence from Britain in 1957. The ISA allows for detention without trial or criminal charges under limited, legally defined circumstances. On 15 September 2011, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak said that this legislation will be repealed and replaced by two new laws. The ISA was replaced and repealed by the Security Offences Act 2012 which has been passed by Parliament and given the royal assent on 18 June 2012. The Act came into force on 31 July 2012.
Preventive detention is an imprisonment that is putatively justified for non-punitive purposes, most often to prevent further criminal acts.
Following Bahrain's independence from the British in 1971, the government of Bahrain embarked on an extended period of political suppression under a 1974 State Security Law shortly after the adoption of the country's first formal Constitution in 1973. Overwhelming objections to state authority resulted in the forced dissolution of the National Assembly by Amir Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa and the suspension of the Constitution until 2001. The State Security Law of 1974 was a law used by the government of Bahrain to crush political unrest from 1974 until 2001. It was during this period that the worst human rights violations and torture were said to have taken place. The State Security Law contained measures permitting the government to arrest and imprison individuals without trial for a period of up to three years for crimes relating to state security. A subsequent Decree to the 1974 Act invoked the establishment of State Security Courts, adding to the conditions conducive to the practice of arbitrary arrest and torture. The deteriorating human rights situation in Bahrain is reported to have reached its height in the mid-1990s when thousands of men, women and children were illegally detained, reports of torture and ill-treatment of detainees were documented, and trials fell short of international standards.
Anti-terrorism legislation are laws with the purpose of fighting terrorism. They usually, if not always, follow specific bombings or assassinations. Anti-terrorism legislation usually includes specific amendments allowing the state to bypass its own legislation when fighting terrorism-related crimes, under alleged grounds of necessity.
The Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) was a controversial law passed by the Indian parliament in 1971 giving the administration of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Indian law enforcement agencies very broad powers – indefinite preventive detention of individuals, search and seizure of property without warrants, and wiretapping – in the quelling of civil and political disorder in India, as well as countering foreign-inspired sabotage, terrorism, subterfuge and threats to national security. The law was amended several times during the subsequently declared national emergency (1975–1977) and used for quelling political dissent. Finally it was repealed in 1977, when Indira Gandhi lost the 1977 Indian general election and the Janata Party came to power.
The Fundamental Rights in India enshrined in part III of the Constitution of India guarantee civil liberties such that all Indians can lead their lives in peace and harmony as citizens of India. These rights are known as "fundamental" as they are the most essential for all-round development i.e., material, intellectual, moral and spiritual and protected by fundamental law of the land i.e. constitution. If the rights provided by Constitution especially the Fundamental rights are violated the Supreme Court and the High Courts can issue writs under Articles 32 and 226 of the Constitution, respectively, directing the State Machinery for enforcement of the fundamental rights.
Detention is the process whereby a state or private citizen lawfully holds a person by removing their freedom or liberty at that time. This can be due to (pending) criminal charges preferred against the individual pursuant to a prosecution or to protect a person or property. Being detained does not always result in being taken to a particular area, either for interrogation or as punishment for a crime. An individual may be detained due a psychiatric disorder, potentially to treat this disorder involuntarily. They may also be detained for to prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis.
Administrative detention is arrest and detention of individuals by the state without trial. A number of jurisdictions claim that it is done for security reasons. Many countries claim to use administrative detention as a means to combat terrorism or rebellion, to control illegal immigration, or to otherwise protect the ruling regime.
The Internal Security Act 1960 (ISA) of Singapore is a statute that grants the executive power to enforce preventive detention, prevent subversion, suppress organized violence against persons and property, and do other things incidental to the internal security of Singapore. The present Act was originally enacted by the Parliament of Malaysia as the Internal Security Act 1960, and extended to Singapore on 16 September 1963 when Singapore was a state of the Federation of Malaysia.
COFEPOSA or the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act is an Act of Parliament passed in 1974 during administration of Indira Gandhi, trying to retain foreign currency and prevent smuggling. It was an economic adjunct to the controversial Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) which was enacted in 1971. Though MISA was repealed in 1978, this law is still in force. COFEPOSA Act 1974 prescribes that the appropriate government shall establish advisory boards to assist the government on matters related to the detention of persons and prepare reports regarding the same. According to this section, the appropriate Government shall form an advisory board to perform the functions mentioned in clauses (4)(a) and (7)(c) of Article 22.
The Defence of India Act 1915, also referred to as the Defence of India Regulations Act, was an emergency criminal law enacted by the Governor-General of India in 1915 with the intention of curtailing the nationalist and revolutionary activities during and in the aftermath of the First World War. It was similar to the British Defence of the Realm Acts, and granted the Executive very wide powers of preventive detention, internment without trial, restriction of writing, speech, and of movement. However, unlike the English law which was limited to persons of hostile associations or origin, the Defence of India act could be applied to any subject of the King, and was used to an overwhelming extent against Indians. The passage of the act was supported unanimously by the non-official Indian members in the Viceroy's legislative council, and was seen as necessary to protect against British India from subversive nationalist violence. The act was first applied during the First Lahore Conspiracy trial in the aftermath of the failed Ghadar Conspiracy of 1915, and was instrumental in crushing the Ghadr movement in Punjab and the Anushilan Samiti in Bengal. However its widespread and indiscriminate use in stifling genuine political discourse made it deeply unpopular, and became increasingly reviled within India. The extension of the law in the form of the Rowlatt Act after the end of World War I was opposed unanimously by the non-official Indian members of the Viceroy's council. It became a flashpoint of political discontent and nationalist agitation, culminating in the Rowlatt Satyagraha. The act was re-enacted during World War II as Defence of India act 1939. Independent India retained the law in a number of amended forms, which have seen use in proclaimed states of national emergency including Sino-Indian War, Bangladesh crisis, The Emergency of 1975 and subsequently the Punjab insurgency.
From 1984 to 1995, the state of Punjab in northern India was engaged in a power struggle between the militant secessionist Khalistan movement and Indian security forces. The Indian government responded to the escalating Punjab insurgency by launching Operation Blue Star in 1984, storming the Harmandir Sahib, or Golden Temple complex in Amritsar—the center of Sikh religious and spiritual life, where some militant groups had retreated. The Operation was controversial and resulted in death of hundreds of civilians, militants and soldiers. After Sikh bodyguards assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, a state wide massacre ensued.
Chng Suan Tze v. Minister for Home Affairs is a seminal case in administrative law decided by the Court of Appeal of Singapore in 1988. The Court decided the appeal in the appellants' favour on a technical ground, but considered obiter dicta the reviewability of government power in preventive detention cases under the Internal Security Act ("ISA"). The case approved the application by the court of an objective test in the review of government discretion under the ISA, stating that all power has legal limits and the rule of law demands that the courts should be able to examine the exercise of discretionary power. This was a landmark shift from the position in the 1971 High Court decision Lee Mau Seng v. Minister of Home Affairs, which had been an authority for the application of a subjective test until it was overruled by Chng Suan Tze.
The Concurrent List or List-III is a list of 52 items given in the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India. It includes the power to be considered by both the union and state government. The legislative section is divided into three lists: Union List, State List and Concurrent List. Unlike the federal governments of the United States, Switzerland or Australia, residual powers remain with the Union Government, as with the Canadian federal government.
The Bengal Regulation III of 1818, officially the Bengal State Prisoners Regulation, III of 1818, was a law for preventive detention enacted by the East India Company in the Presidency of Bengal in 1818. The law empowered the administration to detain an individual indefinitely, on the basis of suspicion of criminal intent, and without having to commit the detainee to trial. Similar laws were enacted in the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay. The act, along with a similar law enacted in 1915 was put to significant implementation during World War I in British India and remained enforced until at least 1927. It was focus of much criticism amongst Indian members of regional Presidency councils because of the arbitrary and rampant use for detaining anybody suspected of nationalist sympathies during and after the war.
Article 13 of the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore, guarantees a prohibition against banishment and the right to freedom of movement.
Aruna Sen v. Government of Bangladesh (1975) 27 DLR (HCD) 122 is a case of the High Court Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. The case concerns unlawful detention under the Special Powers Act, 1974 (SPA). The judgement set a precedent for invalidating most detentions under the SPA.
The Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978 (PSA) is a preventive detention law under which a person is taken into custody to prevent them from acting harmfully against "the security of the state or the maintenance of the public order" in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Whereas PSA applies only to Jammu and Kashmir, it is very similar to the National Security Act that is used by the central and other state governments of India for preventive detention.
A.K. Gopalan v. State of Madras, AIR 1950 SC 27, was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of India in which the Court ruled that Article 21 of the Constitution did not require Indian courts to apply a due process of law standard. In doing so, the Court upheld the validity of the Preventive Detention Act, 1950, with the exception of Section 14, which provided that the grounds of detention communicated to the detainee or any representation made by him against these grounds cannot be disclosed in a court of law.
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