Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid

posted by k

Is she mad or am I?

The Home Secretary is supporting a new policy: the police are encouraged to harass and hound persistent offenders and give them "a taste of their own medicine." The police have been practising already. Persistent offenders are repeatedly stopped and searched and the police visit their homes again and again.

I expect the police find this very satisfying. I can see that it may amuse members of the public. But surely the Home Secretary is supposed to address questions of "crime and the causes of crime". That needs more than a joke and a headline.

I suppose there's no point in suggesting that the Home Secretary should protect human rights and civil liberties. She's not very keen on those.

But surely the Rt. Hon. Jacqui Smith can see that encouraging police to harass individuals, even if they have ASBOs or criminal records, opens the way to all kinds of abuse. Police officers are human beings. They, like all of us, have prejudices and, in selecting victims for harassment, may act on those prejudices. This may happen unintentionally. Even if victims are chosen at random, by drawing names from a policeman's helmet, there's a good chance that the police will be suspected of prejudice.

I suspect that the people selected for police harassment will be young, male and working-class. This is what the press releases suggest. Middle-class offenders who fiddle expenses, tax or insurance claims, thus raising the cost of living for the rest of us, are unlikely to be harrassed. I don't suppose the Bullingdon Club, which includes David Cameron and Boris Johnson among its former members, will be expected to endure such treatment.

But the idea of "giving them a taste of their own medicine" is surely crazy. The police will annoy people who annoy others - presumably in addition to any sentence passed by the courts. (Bypassing legal processes is another dangerous habit of this government.) So where will it end?

Will we see police burgling the homes or burglars or taking to the roads on a mission to knock down careless drivers? Will they defraud fraudsters, rape rapists and kill killers, on the Home Secretary's advice?

The police force should behave better than the rest of the population. Officers should not take part in this silly, offensive game of tit-for-tat.

Meanwhile, Bullingdon Old Boy Boris Johnson is attempting to demonstrate how authoritarian he can be. He's banning the consumption of alcohol on tubes and buses. I travel a lot on tubes and buses and it's never seemed much of a problem. Mind you, I once drank alcohol on the tube. I was given a free sample of Beaujolais Nouveau at Waterloo Station and carried it with me onto my underground train. I don't think it made me behave badly. Boris is also suggesting Saturday schools where young people would be compelled to drill and learn manners. I wonder how many Bullingdon members were in the Officers Training Corps of their public schools.

Save Jahongir Sidikov - no deportations to Uzbekistan

The report below is not the work of a left-leaning group or pressur group. It is the opening of the most recent official report by the United States government.

No-one should be deported to Uzbekistan. The British government should end its attempts to deport Jahongir Sidikov.

U.S.A: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - Uzbekistan 2006

Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state: The government's human rights record, already poor, continued to worsen during the year. Citizens did not have the right in practice to change their government through peaceful and democratic means. Security forces routinely tortured, beat, and otherwise mistreated detainees under interrogation to obtain confessions or incriminating information. In several cases, authorities subjected human rights activists and other critics of the regime to forced psychiatric treatment. Human rights activists and journalists who criticized the government were subject to harassment, arbitrary arrest, politically motivated prosecution, and physical attack. The government generally did not take steps to investigate or punish the most egregious cases of abuse, although many officials were prosecuted for corruption. Prison conditions remained very poor and outside monitors did not have full access to places of detention. In many cases those arrested were held incommunicado for extended periods without access to family or attorneys. The government tightly controlled the mass media and treated criticism of the regime as a crime. The government did not observe citizens' right to free assembly or association; police regularly detained citizens to prevent public demonstrations and authorities sought to control all nongovernmental organization (NGO) activity, forcing many local and international NGOs to close. The government restricted religious activity, treating virtually all religious observance outside state sanctioned structures as a crime.

If you have access to a fax machine, please fax the Rt. Hon. Jacqui Smith, Secretary for State at the Home Office, asking her to intervene to stop the deportation of Jahongir Sidikov and including these references:

Home Office ref. - S2185191

Port ref. - BGT/188094

DMS ref. - 67823

Fax Rt. Hon. Jacqui Smith at 020 7035 3262 (00 44 20 7035 3262 if you are faxing from outside UK)

You can draw on the facts given in the post "Jahongir Sidikov's story" which also includes a sample letter to send to your MP or anyone else who might be able to help.

When writing to members of the government and/or Labour Party, it may be worth mentioning Gordon Brown's intervention to stop the deportation of a Burmese dissident. There are similar risks to Jahongir.

There's a list of some of the bloggers and others supporting Jahongir here.