The CIA seems to be still using British territories to fly terror suspects to secret prisons in countries notorious for using torture, The Mail on Sunday revealed on Sunday, June 10. Quoting eyewitness, the British paper said a plane linked to the CIA’s infamous rendition program landed at the Royal Air Force station of Mildenhall in the county of Suffolk last week. It substantiated the report with a photo taken by spotters of the CASA-212 Aviocar plane as it prepared to land. Flights records show that the plane was given landing rights by the Ministry of Defense although there was no record of passenger lists or details of the flight purpose. No sooner had the plane landed in the British military base than it was secured by four US security men armed with M16 assault rifles, according to eyewitnesses.
Category Archives: State Oppression
Australia’s neo-conservatives target books on Islam
“The Howard government recently outdid its Western masters in the war on terror, announcing that it would begin banning and restricting materials that it deemed to be promoting ‘terrorism’….
“The threat to reinstate the old practice of confiscating reading materials has come true. In one recent case, Australian customs seized several titles that had been sent by a Malaysian publisher to a Muslim bookseller in downtown Sydney.
“Among them is one titled A Young Muslim’s Guide to the Modern World by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a US-based Iranian-born academic who is not even remotely political in most of his works, as well as another book on everyday Muslim do’s and dont’s which has become almost a household name among Muslims: Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s The Lawful and Prohibited in Islam.
“Although the books have since been returned, probably after the Australian authorities realised how silly they had been to confiscate them at the first place, it shows just how strongly panic alarms can be set off by anything that sounds Islamic….”
MCB commends UCU stand on spying
The Muslim Council of Britain welcomes the decision taken by the University and College Union (UCU) to reject government guidelines on how to supposedly tackle extremism on British campuses.
“Of course, if people come to know of violent acts being plotted then they have a clear civic duty to share that information with the police without delay. However, our universities must remain institutions which facilitate and encourage rigorous intellectual inquiry and discourse. The role of lecturers must be to facilitate and encourage critical thinking, not to stifle it or abort the process,” said Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Secretary-General of the MCB.
It is ironic that some of the politicians who now recommend these measures were themselves victims of intelligence spying because of their political views when they were students in the 1970s. Just as intellectual freedom was priceless then, it should remain so today.
The MCB fully supports the UCU’s stand that there is no corroborative evidence of British universities being used as ‘hotbeds of Islamic extremism.’ Hence the directive to target Muslim students would only give rise to greater discontent, alienation and discord.
“Whatever the challenges that beset our society we should not resort to the dangerous ways of intellectual censure and religious witch-hunt,” added Dr Abdul Bari.
‘I took a picture of Tower Bridge and was arrested for terrorism’
Government ministers and police chiefs are demanding new powers to allow the police to stop and search people in the streets if they suspect them of terrorism. These powers echo the notorious “sus laws” of the 1970s.
Then the laws created an atmosphere of fear as police targeted young black men. Those laws were abandoned after widespread rioting in the early 1980s.
A glimpse of what these new laws would mean was shown last week when two foreign students were arrested for “terrorism” after taking snapshots of Tower Bridge.
Academics refuse to spy on Muslim students
Academics refuse to spy on Muslim students
By Daniel Coysh
Morning Star, 31 May 2007
UCU delegates unanimously rejected government demands yesterday that university staff snoop on students suspected of “extremism.”
The repressive plans were universally condemned by the UCU inaugural congress in Bournemouth, which enthusiastically backed a motion calling on members to “resist attempts by government to engage colleges and universities in activities which amount to increased surveillance of Muslim or other minority students and to the use of members of staff for such witch-hunts.”
The massive vote endorsed the position initially adopted by the union at the end of 2006, when the plans were first mooted.
UCU general secretary Sally Hunt commented: “Delegates have made it clear that they will oppose government attempts to restrict academic freedom or free speech on campus. Lecturers want to teach students. If they wanted to police them they would have joined the force.”
In November, the government warned of what it described as the serious threat posed by radical Muslims and issued guidance to colleges and universities calling on them to monitor student activity.
But Ms Hunt added: “Lecturers have a pivotal role in building trust. These proposals, if implemented, would make that all but impossible. Universities must remain safe spaces for lecturers and students to discuss and debate all sorts of ideas, including those that some people may consider challenging, offensive and even extreme. The last thing we need is people too frightened to discuss an issue because they fear some quasi-secret service will turn them in.”
Lecturers oppose witch hunt against Muslim students – Torygraph not happy
Academics are threatening to derail a Government drive to root out Islamic extremists on university campuses.
The University and College Union, will ask its 120,000 members to refuse to take part in the Government-led “witch hunt”. It insists that Muslims are being “demonised” because of new guidance that asks staff to look out for students falling under the influence of radical preachers.
The Department for Education and Skills has warned university staff to log suspicious behaviour amid fears that campuses are being infiltrated by fanatics recruiting for so-called jihad. In a 20-page report published in December, ministers warned of “serious, but not widespread, Islamic extremist activity in higher education institutions”.
It asks lecturers to vet Islamic preachers who have been invited to campuses, ensure that “hate literature” is not distributed among students and report suspicious behaviour to police.
But at the UCU annual conference in Bournemouth, lecturers will warn of a “recent rise” in racism and its “apparent promotion by Government policies”. Academics at the union’s London Metropolitan University branch will say that “increasingly restrictive measures and the xenophobic language surrounding them” has led to an increase in racist attacks on Muslims.
“Islamophobia and the attempts at increased surveillance on Muslim communities are not only encouraging racist and xenophobic tendencies in Britain but are also leading to measures that threaten civil liberties,” they will warn. A motion to the conference will condemn Government attempts to use “members of staff for such witch hunts”.
See also BBC News, 30 May 2007
New sus laws against Muslims? Even the Sun is against it
Government plans for new police powers to stop and question people were greeted with a barrage of criticism yesterday, after it emerged that senior police officers had neither requested the change nor been consulted. The Home Office confirmed that the power would be included in a counterterrorism bill to be announced in early June. But the vehemence and breadth of criticism led Home Office ministers to signal a willingness to compromise after the idea was also attacked by MPs, civil liberties and Muslim groups as unnecessary and harmful.
The new powers, contained in a leaked letter from the counter-terrorism minister, Tony McNulty, to Tony Blair, would make it an offence punishable with a £5,000 fine for a person to withhold their identity or refuse to answer questions. Azad Ali, chair of the Muslim Safety Forum which works to improve police and community relations, said: “This looks like the old sus laws, and will further alienate people and exaserbate the sense people have that the community is being victimised. There are enough powers for the police to do their job.”
“… the seemingly random questioning of young Asians, backed by the threat of £5,000 fines, will drive a dangerous wedge between them and the authorities. It could therefore sabotage a key weapon in our war on terror: Intelligence from within the Muslim community. In a few extreme cases, the disaffection it will breed could even drive youths into the clutches of the brainwashing extremists looking to recruit suicide bombers. The principle that police must have reasonable suspicion to question anyone must be upheld. Most UK Muslims detest the bombers. It would be disastrous if a new law threatened the unity of all Britain’s communities against terror.”
See also Melanie Phillips, who has no objection to targeting Muslims but complains that the government is proposing to “crack down on the entire population”.
Blair: shackled in war on terror
Writing in the Sunday Times, Tony Blair calls for further attacks on the civil liberties of Muslims who are suspected of involvement in terrorism:
“Over the past five or six years, we have decided as a country that except in the most limited of ways, the threat to our public safety does not justify changing radically the legal basis on which we confront this extremism. Their right to traditional civil liberties comes first. I believe this is a dangerous misjudgment.”
As for the argument that his government has stoked up Muslim anger by invading Afghanistan and Iraq, Blair claims he can’t understand why there should be the slightest resentment at such actions:
“We remove two utterly brutal and dictatorial regimes; we replace them with a United Nations-supervised democratic process and the Muslims in both countries get the chance to vote, which incidentally they take in very large numbers. And the only reason it is difficult still is because other Muslims are using terrorism to try to destroy the fledgling democracy and, in doing so, are killing fellow Muslims.”
Meanwhile, over at the Independent on Sunday, shadow Home Secretary David Davis promotes the Tories’ Cameroonian tactic of criticising Blair’s attacks on civil liberties from an apparently libertarian standpoint while at the same time advocating some even harsher measures against Muslim communities. Thus Davis complains that “these powers are not properly used against the real threats. Extremist groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir are not banned”.
Reid prepares to throw out human rights
Reid prepares to throw out human rights
By Louise Nousratpour
Morning Star, 25 May 2007
Home Secretary John Reid was lambasted by peace campaigners yesterday for proposing an opt-out of international human rights treaties to let the government impose tougher anti-terror measures.
It was the first time that the government has indicated its intention to “derogate” from the European Convention on Human Rights so that it can put terror suspects under conditions which breach their human rights.
Answering an emergency Commons question on three terror suspects who have gone missing while under control orders, Mr Reid said that he will introduce a new counter-terrorism Bill to Parliament before stepping down in June.
Both Mr Reid and outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair used the opportunity to attack Parliament for voting down plans to extend detention without trial to 90 days. A compromise last year resulted in upping the limit to 28 days.
A spokesman for Mr Blair arrogantly declared: “What this is down to is Parliament not backing us in the first place in terms of the length of additional period we wanted and in limiting the effectiveness of control orders.”
Campaigners attacked the “outrageous” plans to opt out of the international treaty and condemned politicians, police and the media for treating the terror suspects – Lamine Adam, his brother Ibrahim and Cerie Bullivant – as convicts.
Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German pointed out: “These men have not been charged with anything. They are suspects and being a suspect is not the same as being convicted. They should be charged if there is any evidence against them or released immediately.”
Ms German stressed that the “much bigger question is the rise in terrorism which has been linked to this government’s foreign policies. If Britain and the US had not invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, we would not have threats of terrorism,” she argued.
“Reid wants to usher in more repressive laws rather than own up to the government’s role in all this. To defeat terrorism, the government must back justice for Palestine, withdraw all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and change its foreign policy. That is what we will be demanding from Gordon Brown when we demonstrate at his election conference in Manchester on June 24,” Ms German added.
Absorption or exodus: The future legacy of British anti-terror laws
“‘We will kill every f***ing one of you Muslims’. One could be forgiven for believing this to be an excerpt from a BNP Party Political Broadcast. It is not. In fact, it is the horrifying taunt hurled by armed police officers with guns drawn at 34-year old London Underground worker ‘Abdul Rahman’ as he knelt before them cringing in fear for his life. Moments earlier, ‘Abdul Rahman’ had been pushed to the ground by 3 armed officers who subjected him to physical and verbal abuse, having intercepted him on his journey home from work. It was about half past four on a bright summer afternoon in full view of on-lookers.”
Fahad Ansari writes: BLINK, 22 May 2007