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Issue 247, Friday 27 November 2009 - 10 Dhu al-Hijjah 1430

McCarthyism style surveillance

Over two years ago, when the Government first launched its key aim of ‘Preventing violent extremism’, it was billed as “winning hearts and minds” of Muslims. It was announced as a “new action plan to step-up work with Muslim communities to isolate, prevent and defeat violent extremism.” After initially transforming community cohesion funds, the Home Office extended the Prevent agenda last year with additional funding to include local authorities, schools, community groups and the police.

But behind the charade, the entire premise of Prevent was to treat all Muslims as potential terrorists. It was therefore not surprising that last month the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) found it had been used “to establish one of the most elaborate systems of surveillance ever seen in Britain.” The Guardian also reported from its own investigations that the £140 million programme was gathering intelligence to spy on innocent people. It was further revealed by the head of the Home Office’s Office of Security and Counter-terrorism, Charles Farr, in a leaked private briefing with MPs, that CIA agents were operating in the UK “because of the huge American capability that can be brought to bear on counter-terrorism.”

Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, has since denied that the Prevent strategy is being used as a cover to carry out surveillance on the country’s two million Muslim community, insisting that there are clear guidelines on sharing intelligence. “Prevent is categorically not about spying, and assertions to the contrary damage the good partnership work undertaken at community level,” he said. But given that local authorities have already been found to misuse terrorism legislation to spy on local residents, Johnson went on to insist that any practitioners not following guidelines on surveillance and intelligence-sharing would be investigated. “Where necessary, we will issue a reminder to all local partners that there is a clear legal framework within which they must operate and that any information shared has to be necessary, proportionate and lawful,” he said in a letter to the Guardian.

A separate major concern was the call this month by Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Kim Howells, for “more intrusive surveillance in certain communities, more police officers on the streets, more border officials at harbours and airports, more inspectors of vehicles and vessels entering the country, and a re-examination of arrangements that facilitate the ‘free movement’ of people and products across our frontiers with the rest of the EU.” Howells made the proposal when breaking ranks with the Government over the war in Afghanistan, suggesting that millions of funds could be diverted to expand counter-terrorism measures at home by withdrawing British troops.

The IRR report makes a damning critique, effectively accusing Prevent of constructing Muslims as a “suspect community, fostering social divisions among Muslims themselves and between Muslims and others, encouraging tokenism, facilitating violations of privacy and professional norms of confidentiality, discouraging local democracy and being counter-productive in reducing the risk of political violence.” The Report also highlights that its decision-making lacks transparency and accountability and that its funding is based upon reward of supporting the Government and the programme, while isolating others.

British society is the most spied on in the world, having more CCTV cameras as well as national DNA database than any other country. It has also been revealed that the intelligence services, police and local council, made over half-a-million requests for confidential communications data last year, an average of nearly 1,500 every day.

Muslims have become the main victims who are under surveillance from cradle to grave, with teachers being trained in the latest techniques of espionage and mothers being offered how to spot their children being radicalised on the internet.

There is also the Home Office-funded Channel Project, with police officers working alongside Muslim communities to identify impressionable children, treating some as young as 13 as potential terrorists.

One of the main flaws in the Prevent agenda is that it conflates the issues of community cohesion and community service delivery with issues of intelligence gathering and counter-terrorism. This criticism has been made by New Local Government Network in calling for the scheme to be scrapped, saying it was “too prescriptive from the centre, undermines broader community cohesion objectives and lacks sufficient integration with police and security services at local and national level.”

It seems the Prevent policy is being used to control how and what Muslim communities are thinking and saying. The Government is in addition targeting Islam by targeting madrasahs, mosques and imams under its anti extremism policies.

Such policies, rather than winning hearts and minds, are alienating Muslims and damaging community relations.

Communities Secretary, John Denham, said he wanted a fresh start in the Government’s relationship with Muslims and has reassessed its Prevent strategy. However, as we argued then (The Muslim News Issue 244) the change misses the essential point in that it fails to tackle the underlying causes and will continue with its current Prevent strategy on Muslims.

The Prevent policy, which continues to consider every Muslim as a potential violent extremist, need to be scrapped. Criminalising a whole community is not the answer. We don’t want to go the McCarthy way.