Tag: riots

CCR Says: This is Your Victory: End Stop and Frisk Today

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13 August 2013 — Center for Constitutional Rights

[It’s great to know, that every once in awhile, we, that is, we the People, achieve a significant victory over the forces of repression and reaction. And CCR’s legal battle to overturn ‘stop and frisk’ in NYC reminds me that back in 1980, the equivalent law here in the UK was called the “Suss Law” and its use against people of colour by the Met police eventually triggered riots that saw cities burn. The Suss Law was eventually repealed only to be re-instated (conveniently) by the phony ‘war on terror’ and used to stop hundreds of thousands of people, with virtually no ‘terror’ arrests. WB]

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Deaths in Syria: Counting them (politically) correctly — RT

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9 February 2012 — Deaths in Syria: Counting them (politically) correctly — RT

High casualty numbers in Syria are reported daily by the media, even though a blackout makes them unverifiable. Things became murkier after a human rights site, which enjoyed frequent citations, split in two and began giving conflicting reports.

The British-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR) is one of the most widely-quoted sources of Syrian casualty figures. However the group is currently experiencing an ownership row, which has left media outlets wondering how reliable this source is.

Currently there are two sites, each claiming to be the official Observatory. The original one is in Arabic with an English version on Facebook. The splinter site was launched in December, with most posts in English. Both call each other impostors.

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Statewatch News Online, 22 December 2011

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Home page: http://www.statewatch.org/
e-mail: office@statewatch.org

1.    EU: ECJ: Judgment: France’s appeal against the judgment of the General Court removing the PMOI the EU
2.    UK: POLICE OFFICER ON JURY: ECHR: Police officer’s presence on jury made trial unfair
3.    EU: EURO CRISIS: Statewatch Analysis: Draft Agreement on Reinforced Economic Union (REU Treaty) by Steve Peers
4.    UK: AUGUST RIOTS: Policing Large Scale Disorder: Lessons from the disturbances of August 2011
5.    UK: AUGUST RIOTS: HMIC report: The rules of engagement A review of the August 2011 disorders
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Military whistleblower tells of ‘indiscriminate’ Israeli attacks By Donald Macintyre

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16 September 2011 — The Independent

Troops fired tear gas during a curfew in a West Bank village to stop peaceful demonstrations

tear-gas-02.jpg

Palestinian protesters run from tear gas fired by Israeli troops in Nabi Saleh in January 2010 (Reuters)

 

Israeli troops fired tear gas indiscriminately and sometimes dangerously to enforce a daytime curfew inside a West Bank village to stop Palestinians holding a peaceful demonstration on their own land, a military whistleblower has told The Independent.

The soldier’s insight into the methods of troops comes as the Israeli military prepares for demonstrations predicted when the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas submits an application for the recognition of statehood to the UN next week.

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Video: British WWII veteran jailed for recording court hearing

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28 August 2011 — RT

British prisons are full to bursting. Courts are working overtime sending young people to jail for their role in the recent riots in England. If they are sent to Leeds prison, they will be languishing alongside 85-year-old Norman Scarth.

­The senior citizen plied the Arctic Sea during the Second World War, risking his life taking essential supplies to the Soviet Union on the most dangerous journey in the world. Now, he is serving six months in prison on the whim of a British judge. His crime is recording a court hearing. He said he did it because he has hard of hearing, but the judge did not accept it.

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UK: NO TO ‘GENERAL CURFEW’ POWERS

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25 August 2011 — Manifesto Club

In the wake of the riots, home secretary Theresa May proposed broad new police powers ‘to impose a general curfew in a particular area’. Other politicians proposed powers to block social network sites, or to ban face coverings.

As we outlined in a Manifesto Club statement – there is absolutely no need for more police powers. The basic power of arrest for criminal damage and theft was all that was needed: yet this power was woefully applied.

Worse, open-ended powers (as with on-the-spot fines or dispersal orders) tend to be used in a petty way against perfectly innocent people. See our article, ‘Policing the Innocent, Ignoring the Riotous‘.

Statewatch News Online, 24 August 2011: Migrants / UK Riots

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24 August 2011 — Home page: http://www.statewatch.org/ e-mail: office@statewatch.org

  1. Italy/north Africa: Concern over the violation of rights of migrants who were refused entry, expelled, held in detention centres
  2. France: “The law of France must be respected” :
  3. EU: European Commission: Report for 2010 on Regulation on public access to documents
  4. CoE: HR Commissioner, Thomas Hammarberg: Excessive use of pre-trial detention runs against human rights
  5. UK: Long Lartin unit for terror suspects criticised
  6. Spain: Neighbourhood groups’ report on racist identity checks in Madrid
  7. UK: Deaths in detention centres
  8. Statewatch Observatory: UK: Surveillance statistics: 1937 – 2010
  9. EU: Council of the European Union: European Police Chiefs Convention
  10. EU: Council of the European Union: Single permit Directive, Discrimination Directive, Asylum reception conditions, TFTP
  11. EU: Council of the European Union: Directive on the right of access to a lawyer in criminal proceedings
  12. UK: Report by the Children’s Commissioner: Landing in Kent: The experiences of unaccompanied children arriving in the UK

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The state unleashes the Dogs of Media By William Bowles

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17 August 2011 — Strategic Culture Foundation

“At 9.22 the Brixton shopping centre appeared almost calm by comparison to Railton Road. Rubbish was strewn across the main A23 Brixton Road; burglar alarms rang vainly from looted shops; and knots of youths, black and white, drifted along in the almost complete absence of police.” — ‘Eyewitness: Looters moved in as the flames spread’

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Driving People into Rebellion By Stephen Harper

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13 August 2011 — Dissident Voice

Over the last week, politicians and the mainstream media in the UK have been wheeling out their routine condemnations of the ‘mindless violence’ and ‘thuggery’ (a term whose etymology and connotations of black, hip-hop culture are consistent with the widespread tendency to racialize these events) of the rioters in London and other British cities. Note well the double standard: Continue reading →

UK: Tony McKenna, “Order within the Chaos”

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MRZine

A Soviet diplomat visiting the US once expressed incredulity toward the political content of mainstream newspapers there. In the USSR, he explained to his American interlocutors, it is necessary to threaten members of the press with torture in order to make them toe the correct political line. In the United States, however, you effect a similar result without coercion; the editors and journalists here seem to produce your propaganda of their own volition. How on earth do you manage it?

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After London Police Killing, Media Focus on Problem of Police Restraint By Peter Hart

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12 August 2011 — Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

Much of the media coverage of the riots in England dwells on the issue of police restraint.  There is a ‘public backlash against police restraint,’ the Washington Post explained (8/11/11), with some wanting ‘a tougher response to the rash of disturbances that has sullied Britain’s image.’ The problem is the ‘seemingly halting, even timorous, policing,’ according to one New York Times story (8/12/11). Another Times piece added:

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