Terror Culture
Article published: Wednesday, August 12th 2009
You’ve probably seen the billboards: A bustling town centre under the watchful eye of a CCTV camera – “A bomb won’t go off here because weeks before a shopper reported someone studying the CCTV cameras.” Another shows a wheelie bin with cleaning products poking out with the line, “these chemicals won’t be used in a bomb because a neighbour reported the dumped containers to the Anti-Terrorist Hotline.” How did we come to this? With the security services growing ever more powerful and wars raging overseas, more people are likely to face terror at the hands of the British state than the elusive ‘terrorists’ we’re told lurk on every street corner.
Searching in vain
As terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, Britain hosted the Defence Systems and Equipment International (DSEI) fair in London’s Docklands, offering high-tech weapons to potential buyers from some of the world’s most notoriously oppressive regimes.
Ironically, Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 was used by police officers to search and arrest peaceful protesters outside. These powers have been used to disrupt peaceful protests ever since – most extensively at climate change protest The Camp for Climate Action. In London, the Metropolitan Police have used Section 44 of the Terrorism Act over 150,000 times since October 2007. Only six in every 10,000 were actually arrested, none of them on terror charges.
“Code A guidance” on Section 44 encourages racial profiling, suggesting it is “appropriate for officers to take account of a person’s ethnic origin in selecting persons to be stopped.” Young black and British Asian people are six times more likely to be stopped and searched by police than white people.
Manchester’s past terror raids
The recent arrest of innocent Pakistanis on terror charges is unfortunately nothing new for Manchester. Back in 2004, The Sun’s headline screamed “Man U Suicide Bomb Plot” as police raided a flat above a kebab shop on Upper Brook Street, arresting ten men. They had “apparent links to extremist Islamic organisations”, and were suspected of plotting an attack on Old Trafford. The keen Man Utd fans were found entirely innocent. Most of the men were Iraqi Kurds, the people persecuted by Saddam Hussein’s regime. The behaviour of the police and press ruined the lives of those involved, but no apologies were offered. Hishyar Abid, chairman of the local residents’ association, told press at the time that “Iraqi Kurds have suffered from mass extermination, mass graves, and seen thousands of our villages destroyed. But even in our most desperate of times we never resorted to terrorism against innocent people.”
This February, as the “Viva Palestina” convoy set off to take humanitarian aid from the UK to Gaza, nine volunteers were arrested near Preston under anti-terror legislation. This resulted in an 80% drop in donations to the campaign due to the damaging press coverage. However, the press didn’t bother covering the story when all nine were released without charge. The North West organizer of the Viva Palestina aid convoy said “they are very angry about their treatment at the hands of the police and concerned that, despite being released without charge, the police are still refusing to return donations from the vans, personal belongings and mobile phones. The police have offered no satisfactory reason for these violations.”
And for what?
A long list of restrictions on freedom have been sold to the public on the grounds of preventing terrorism: from imprisonment without trial for 42 days, to increased CCTV camera surveillance, to ID cards. Sir David Pepper, former head of the government’s eavesdropping centre, GCHQ, has called for all internet and phone data to be monitored and retained. But how many ‘real’ terrorists have been thwarted by all these means?
Home Office statistics show that from September 11th, 2001 until the latest date available (March 31st, 2008), 1,471 people have been arrested based on suspicion of terrorism. Sounds like a lot? Only 521 had any charges levelled against them, and only 125 people remained in prison following prosecution, with merely 17 of those actually classified as ‘extremists’.
Jay Baker
More: Features, Manchester
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