ABSTRACT
In the post-9/11 period, 'human rights' became a focus of sustained discursive struggle, enmeshed in highly controversial, mediatised legal conflicts between British State and figures whom the tabloids labelled 'radical Muslim clerics'. Between 2004 and 2012, Abu Hamza, imprisoned in the UK in 2007 for inciting violence and racial hatred, fought extradition in European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on grounds that he would face inhuman or degrading treatment on terrorism charges in US. International human rights law, and particularly ECHR, were demonised as weakening the State's capacity for achieving policy aims and maintaining security. Policy action bearing serious implications for human rights, international refugee law and EU law seems aimed primarily at controlling inward flows of refugees across Europe. The chapter suggests four interrelated discursive strategies delegitimising human rights commonly at work in the representation of asylum seekers and refugees: It's not us, it's them!; It's not them, it's them!; It's not them, it's us!; It's them or us!.
