Prevent isn’t making anyone safer. It is demonising Muslims and damaging the fabric of trust in society
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Version 0 of 1. We welcome the call for an independent review into Prevent made by the independent reviewer of the UK’s anti-terrorism laws, David Anderson QC, last week (Report, 3 February). One year ago the Prevent duty became statutory through the Counter-terrorism and Security Act 2015. This imposed a duty on public bodies to have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”. As a wide cross-section of Muslim community activists, academics, lawyers and politicians warned, the duty has in practice charged teachers, doctors and other professionals with monitoring people’s religious and political views. This is undermining the very ethos and relationships of mutual trust and openness that are fundamental to education and our public services while endangering other legal rights and protections. It is eroding civil liberties and deepening discrimination against Muslims. Last year the Metropolitan police reported that hate crimes against Muslims were up 70%. We must recognise that government counter-terrorism policies like Prevent are helping to create this climate of hostility, sowing fear, division, mistrust and prejudice by reinforcing racist stereotypes, stigmatising Muslim communities and in effect encouraging ethnic profiling. Despite the fact that Muslims make up just 5% of the population, data from the National Police Chiefs Council shows that 67% of those referred for suspected “radicalisation” between 2007-2010 were Muslim, the figure was 56% between 2012-13. The reason for these figures is not that there is “a problem within Islam” but is rather due to a refusal to acknowledge the political causes of political violence. Muslims are instead treated as a suspect community. The result is that ill-defined concepts like “radicalisation” and “extremism” are applied in a circular and highly racialised manner. Thus politically engaged Muslim individuals and organisations including Cage, Mend and the IHRC are routinely attacked in the media. But Prevent and the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act have also narrowed the space for political dissent in many forms. Anti-fracking and other environmental activists, those campaigning for Palestinian rights, and even those opposing cuts and austerity have been monitored under what Liberty has referred to as the “biggest spying operation of all times”. Prevent is not making anyone safer. Instead it damages the fabric of trust in our society, silences Muslims and dissent, and institutionalises Islamophobia at a time when the far-right is gaining influence in many parts of Europe. It is the embodiment of the “radicalisation” of our supposedly liberal democratic governments themselves. We would go further than David Anderson and call on the government to take urgent action to repeal this legislation, and for all those working in affected sectors to make clear their opposition to this duty.Jenny Jones Green party member of the London assemblyProf Arun Kundnani New York UniversityDr Douglas Chalmers President, UCU ScotlandShelly Asquith NUS vice president welfareMalia Bouattia NUS black students officerImran Khan Imran Khan & Partners SolicitorsMichael Mansfield QCSir Geoffrey Bindman, QCOmar Barghouti Palestine human rights advocateProfessor Adam Gearey School of Law, Birkbeck CollegeProfessor Andrea Brady School of English and drama, Queen Mary University of LondonProfessor Marie Breen-Smyth University of Massachusetts and visiting professor, The Queen’s University of BelfastAnd 368 others. Full list here |