"Terrorism can never be accepted. We must fight it together, with methods that do not compromise our respect for the rule of law and human rights, or are used as an excuse for others to do so"
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Refusing the false choice between safety and principle is the spine of Anna Lindh's line, and it lands with the authority of someone who understood how quickly democracies can panic themselves into self-harm. "Terrorism can never be accepted" is the moral bright line - no throat-clearing, no "root causes" detour. Then she pivots to the real target: not terrorists, but the democratic temptation to meet barbarism with bureaucracy-powered cruelty.
The phrase "fight it together" reads as more than feel-good multilateralism. In the post-9/11 atmosphere and the early "War on Terror" years, coordination meant shared intelligence, extraditions, border regimes, and military coalitions. Lindh is warning that solidarity can become a conveyor belt: once a security apparatus is built across borders, abuses can travel across borders too. Her insistence on "methods that do not compromise" is a preemptive indictment of the standard loopholes - emergency powers, indefinite detention, secret evidence, rendition - that claim legality while hollowing it out.
The sharpest blade is the clause that follows: "or are used as an excuse for others to do so". She's not only policing Sweden's conscience; she's calling out the geopolitical alibi effect. When liberal states bend rights in the name of counterterrorism, authoritarians inherit the language and lose the restraint, branding dissent as terror and repression as "security". Lindh's intent is strategic as much as ethical: the rule of law isn't a nicety you preserve after victory; it's the only thing that keeps the fight from becoming a recruitment poster for the enemy and a permission slip for everyone else.
The phrase "fight it together" reads as more than feel-good multilateralism. In the post-9/11 atmosphere and the early "War on Terror" years, coordination meant shared intelligence, extraditions, border regimes, and military coalitions. Lindh is warning that solidarity can become a conveyor belt: once a security apparatus is built across borders, abuses can travel across borders too. Her insistence on "methods that do not compromise" is a preemptive indictment of the standard loopholes - emergency powers, indefinite detention, secret evidence, rendition - that claim legality while hollowing it out.
The sharpest blade is the clause that follows: "or are used as an excuse for others to do so". She's not only policing Sweden's conscience; she's calling out the geopolitical alibi effect. When liberal states bend rights in the name of counterterrorism, authoritarians inherit the language and lose the restraint, branding dissent as terror and repression as "security". Lindh's intent is strategic as much as ethical: the rule of law isn't a nicety you preserve after victory; it's the only thing that keeps the fight from becoming a recruitment poster for the enemy and a permission slip for everyone else.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
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