Shami Chakrabarti criticises 'Orwellian' political language after Paris attacks

Delivering this year’s Reading Agency lecture in London, the director of Liberty condemns the use of ‘palatable euphemisms’ by political leaders

Shami Chakrabarti warned yesterday that our leaders in the “misjudged misnamed ‘War on Terror’” have fallen into a “language trap that both dignifies the enemy and undermines our own democratic doctrine”.

The director of the human rights campaign group Liberty, giving the annual Reading Agency lecture to a sold-out audience at the British Library in London, said that “phrases such as ‘detainee’, ‘water-boarding’ and ‘extraordinary rendition’ became more palatable euphemisms for ‘prisoner outside the law’, ‘drowning’, ‘kidnap and torture’ in freedom’s name”.

Continue reading...