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“If you get a good place to stand, you make fun of the cobra” – African proverb, Tshi
Greetings, today the British government silently passed a new law designed to terrorise residents within the UK. On Monday 16th February 2009, under section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act 2008, it became illegal to photograph police officers if the pictures could be proved useful to terrorists.
Today over 400 photographers protested outside the Metropolitan Police Force Head quarters, some wearing signs “I’m a photographer, not a terrorist”. The law will carry a maximum ten year prison sentence for anyone prosecuted and convicted of "illiciting, publishing or communicating information on members of the armed forces, intelligence services and police officers which is likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism".
A story like this would traditionally been front page of the New Nation newspaper, sadly with its demise many of us risk being caught unaware of how new draconian laws can be passed and used to mask the abuse and wrongful arrests of concerned Africans that use their camera’s to record evidence in objection to the flagrant human right abuses our innocent children face by police officers on a daily basis.
The so called war on terror has been repeatedly used by the British government to justify all manners of human right abuses. From stealing DNA of innocent people, CCTV surveillance recordings in private dwellings, arresting, detaining, beating and murdering people in custody, creating databases that record emails, phone conversations and text messages to tracking the every move of innocent individuals through the GPS units in their mobile phones. The point of terrorism is, of course, to create terror, and the war on terror has been used by the British and American state to put entire populations in a constant state of fear of attack from Africans and other non-europeans.
The police forces up and down the country no longer maintain the pretence they are the public servants of the people and revel in their bully boy status as the internal army of the state.
Stories like this make me really miss not having a weekly newspaper to cover our backs. This weekend on the community station, Galaxy FM, the Voice newspaper was rightly savaged by callers for failing to have a spine and address the real issues that effect our community. I know why I have issues with the Voice, after being personally disappointed when it took the stance of being the only newspaper in the country not to cover my arrest in Westminster Abbey in 2007. However to hear so many members of our community come out in open hostility to what is our only remaining tabloid was quite a shock even for me.
In particular it was revealed how disgraceful it was that our brother Eddie Nestor courageously managed to find time within the narrow constraints of his BBC show to give space to cover the atrocious story of the police abuse and murder of Sean Rigg whilst the Voice, Choice FM and Dotun Adebayo who hosts a weekly show claiming to look "at all the latest London news from a black perspective examining the issues which matter most to these communities" remained silent or totally apathetic to the concerns of his family. Nonetheless, I am personally asking the Voice to step up to the plate and cover this story, our people need to know.
The Ligali organisation does not yet have the resources to write about and cover every relevant story we receive or hear about. To do this we need your help, either through volunteering or making donations. We have also been informed that Henry Bonsu now presents a weekday breakfast show on Colourful Radio (http://www.iamcolourful.com/radio/presenter/breakfast/) from 8am, Geoff Schumann also does the same on Bang Radio, from 7am. To keep informed of what’s going on in our community you will need to switch off to the toxic rhetoric of Nick Ferrari on LBC or the puerile ramblings of Vanessa Feltz on BBC London and listen to voices that live the life that we do. I’m still going to film the Police if I see them doing a Rodney King and abusing our people with impunity, but I’m not looking to keep getting arrested and I need us to pull together as a community and discuss strategies to make this work.
Yesterday, the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said a police survey that requires about 50% of police force officers in England and Wales to account for their actions will be scrapped to free up time. Asked about the annual survey, Smith said: "I think that's wrong. I don't think we should expect the police to fill in the sort of time sheets that we have previously. That's why one of the things I will be saying today is that we are ending that, as of now." With less monitoring of police despite the publication of a new report by the Runnymede Trust revealing the Police to still be institutionally racist means we as Africans are more vulnerable to police abuse and brutality than ever before. Please read the stories at the links below and join our discussion on Nyansapo - The Pan African Drum this week.
Please be careful out there. May the Ancestors guide and protect us. Ase.
Toyin Agbetu is a writer, film director, poet, and founder of Ligali, the pan African human rights based organisation.
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