Arrested on suspicion


Government and right-wing media create climate of fear and prejudice

ON 7 July, while Britain remembered last year’s appalling 7/7
terrorist attack, the right-wing media and government were fabricating
panic and prejudice. As a result, many false arrests were made and
ethnic minorities were intimidated and humiliated.

Rozh and Senan

A Socialist Party (SP) member from Hull was arrested on his way to
London, just because he and his fellow passenger whom he’d met at the
bus stop were speaking in Kurdish and carrying a rucksack.

When the bus stopped in Leicester, the party member, believing it was
a normal stop went to buy some drinks and waited for the bus to move. To
his surprise two army trucks and a police car rushed to the bus stop.
The SP member and his fellow Kurdish passenger were arrested
immediately.

Apparently a passenger informed the police that two people, both
carrying rucksacks, were talking suspiciously. The police were told that
both of them were very nervous and counting all the passengers coming in
and out the bus!

Police questioned and searched them for over two hours. They did not
apologise and made no attempt to warn or talk to the passenger who made
this racist call. However the bus service apologised to customers for
being delayed, saying it was because of a passenger.

The young SP member was clearly upset and felt helpless and
alienated. He wasn’t alone. From 2001 to 2002 there was a 41% increase
in ‘Stop and Search’ against Asians. The figure has rocketed again
since 7/7, even though only 1% of those arrested under the Prevention of
Terrorism Act were convicted.

The cold-blooded killing of Jean Charles de Menezes and the shooting
in Forest Gate weren’t isolated incidents. Any more such incidents will
only help to alienate the already poor and exploited Asian community and
help create ethnic tensions.

In 1981 police intensified their ‘stop and search’ tactic in
Afro-Caribbean communities, responding to ethnic tensions created by
Thatcher’s right-wing government. 44% of those arrested under SUS
(short for suspicion) were Afro-Caribbeans and 77% of those arrested
were black people. In one instance in Brixton 943 were stopped and 118
were arrested. Brixton exploded.

If the intensified use of stop and search against Asians continues,
similar ethnic tensions and riots could unfold. We need to fight to
defend our civil liberties and democratic rights but fighting to change
the system is the best way to counter these right-wing measures.