An estimated 6,000 refugees pack the “Jungle,” a refugee camp in pas-de-Calais for those trying to enter Britain. The camp has been active for years, and the growing refugee crisis and worsening conditions at the camp have fueled growing humanitarian efforts among private British citizens, with routine crossings into Calais to deliver aid to the refugees.
The British government has taken a dim view of the aid to Calais refugees, with some officials arguing even basic humanitarian assistance only encourages more people to queue up along the channel waiting for an admittance that may never come. Kent police are said now to be turning to anti-terrorism laws to crack down on those aid deliveries.
Several volunteers, including some associated with groups like London2Calais, have reported that they were held in multi-hour detention by the police, who cite Section 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000 as allowing them to detain people without reasonable suspicion in border areas.
The Kent Police gave the detainees written notice that they “do not have the right to remain silent” and are not under criminal investigation, but that they are being held to decide if they are terrorists or not. So far, everyone has been released after being hassled for a few hours, and police insist that the summary detentions are “normal procedure.”
Telling someone they do not have the right to remain is flatly a torture threat. I.e., how will you be coercing my non-silence when I'm remaining-so? Further, if it's not a criminal investigation so much as a question of whether to slap a label on me forgive me for reading thoughtcrime / rumor-mongering into whatever 'investigation' that does imply.
Miranda rights are not valid in the UK.
You have the right to a lawyer though. But this seems to be "extra-judicial" detention and harrassment by uniformed jerk, a nice practice of socialistic outfits of the nationalistic bend.
I believe you, glad you said so. I'm thinking more i.t.o. common sense/universal human rights, not even specifically Miranda/5th amendment. I could be told for example that failing to share certain information, in those circumstances, could result in me being deported. That'd be a specific consequence and a reasonable prerogative of the host gov't. But flatly being told that 'you have no right to remain silent,' I'll assert, is reasonably interpreted as a threat to coerce information–even to the point where it'd be reasonable to preempt their retaliation for silence. We do live in a world of 'Western' State Terrorism, after all. Those people (suspected terrorists) really oughta be careful with the intent signaled by their framing of the matter.
E.g., what would you be thinking if ISIS told you you-had-no-right to remain anything at all? Standing, sitting, silent, smoking, … And those losers don't even bomb you from 20-some-thousand feet, nor, so far as I know, kidnap people to torture them on the other side of the world!