Marcus Morgan | ukwatch.net

Report on Abuse of Refugees and Asylum Seekers

JamieSW — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:01:23 +0000

The British government has been implicated in the abuse of refugees and asylum seekers, according to a report published this month by a group of human rights campaigners and medical legal experts.

The report, Outsourcing Abuse: the use and misuse of state-sanctioned force during the detention and removal of asylum seekers, contains a detailed dossier outlining cases of systematic physical and verbal abuse against refugees and immigrants who face deportation to their country of origin. Most of the alleged assaults took place at the hands of security guards during transit between detention centres, during deportations to airports, or removal from places of residence.

Outsourcing Abuse was a response to a demand by the Home Office to corroborate an earlier dossier, which hit the headlines after the Independent published details in October 2007. Home Office ministers and officials dismissed the claims of abuse as unfounded, saying that many of the alleged victims had not come forward with further information to prove their mistreatment.
The new report contains nearly 300 cases of alleged assault, which took place between January 2004 and June 2008, and draws on a wide range of sources including solicitors, journalists, airline passengers, hospital staff and doctors. Many refugees and asylum seekers were also prepared to recount their ordeals, despite fears of retribution from the Home Office or the private security companies it employs to detain and deport them.

The report states that “Many additional allegations of assault have been reported to us that we simply have not had the resources to consider and therefore have not been included in the dossier. Because of this, coupled with the fact that other victims are fearful of coming forward, we feel our dossier is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Outsourcing Abuse paints a picture where appalling physical and verbal abuse is condoned and accepted, if not actively encouraged. People are routinely kicked and punched, or otherwise injured by excessive use of force, and many are subjected to racist verbal abuse.

Some victims allege they were given injections to sedate them or forced to take pills. Others tell how they were denied access to emergency hospital facilities after sustaining injuries.

Typical of the 48 case studies contained in the dossier are:

A 19-year-old Congolese man who claims that in 2007 he was thrown to the ground and kicked in the face, whilst being transferred to a segregation unit. An independent doctor advised care for head injury and noted abrasions to the forehead, bruising and swelling around the face.
A Malawian man in the same year who alleges that he was pinned to the floor by Detention Custody Officers (DCOs) and “kicked all over his body, including his head”, at Dungavel detention centre.
A Sudanese woman whose escorts repeatedly jabbed her in the eye and assaulted her after the pilot refused to fly.
An Armenian man was left with a punctured lung after escorts stamped on him in the back of a van and then left in an immigration holding bay without medical support for hours.
A Cameroonian man who claims he was detained without sufficient food or water and denied medication for treatment of hepatitis C. When, because of his illness, he refused to co-operate with efforts to move him on board a Kenya Airways flight for deportation he said, “They started beating me, kicking me all over. They put me on the floor and continued to kick me everywhere. I was agonising of pain. I thought that they will kill me.”

The report comments that,

“Usually removals are stopped when the pilot refuses to proceed, which may be because the detainee is screaming and / or because there is a physical struggle with escort staff occurring and the pilot considers it will be unsafe to fly.”

A total of 78 charter flights were arranged between February 2006 and March 2007, 60 of which were flights to Eastern Europe and 14 to Afghanistan. It is not known how many airlines are contracted out by the government for deportees, or what the budget is for this policy, though it is likely to be in the millions.

Many of those affected by this process are small children and babies, who may be separated from their parents for days or weeks. John Wilkes, chief executive of the Scottish Refugee Council, said,

“The UK government has signed up to protect the rights of children under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, but shamefully except for children in the asylum and immigration system.”

Many refugees and asylum seekers are suffering mental health problems as a result of the abuse they are subjected to. The report reveals that 85 percent have chronic depressive symptoms and 65 percent contemplate suicide. In 2007 there were 1,517 immigration detainees on “suicide-watch”.

Many of the abused immigrants were of uncertain legal status when they were detained or deported. In some cases the state “pre-empted” the legal process altogether by intervening before they had access to legal representation—clearly breaching the Geneva Conventions and International law.

The situation is so bad that the former Chief Inspector of Prisons, David Ramsbotham was forced to caution the government in the introduction to Outsourcing Abuse.

He states,

“Of course there will always be cases that are less than genuine, and they must be dealt with accordingly. But every case must be investigated and, in line with the law of the land, individuals regarded as innocent until proved guilty. That applies to those whose cases are outlined in this dossier. If the Home Office, Ministers and officials alike, is sensible it will pay due attention to the dossier, which is not written in an emotive way, but contains constructive advice that should not simply be rejected.”

Ramsbotham’s exceedingly modest appeal is likely to fall on deaf ears.

Requests for further information under the Freedom of Information Act regarding forced removals on charter flights, as well as the government’s contract with the private security firms, have been rejected by the Home Office on the grounds of “commercial secrecy”. The same secrecy surrounds the detention centres used to hold asylum-seekers pending the outcome of their application. Seven out of 10 in the UK are managed by private companies on behalf of the Home Office.

Labour’s immigration minister, Liam Byrne, boasted in May, “We now remove an immigration offender every eight minutes—but my target is to remove more, and remove them faster.”

The government announced in August 2007 that it intended to “fast-track” the deportation procedure and in May this year announced a 60 percent increase in the number of detentions. Despite a 72 percent fall in asylum applications between 2002 and 2007, there has been a 106 percent increase in the number of applicants detained.

In Europe, in the name of combating “illegal immigration”, a Return Directive is being set up across the continent to send undocumented workers to neighbouring countries without any administrative formalities. This legislation will allow states to hold immigrants for up to 18-months and impose a five-year ban on their return to the EU. According to a representative of the European Association for the Defence of Human Rights, the Directive will establish detention as a “norm”.

The website Inter-Movement Committee for Evacuees commented on the new directive, “Retention has been slipping little by little into the logic of internment, transforming these centres into camps.”

Police powers increased by new London mayor

tim — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:24:18 +0000

The new Conservative mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has announced sweeping measures to ramp up police powers. After a series of highly publicised knifings in central London last month, the mayor called for a policy of “zero tolerance” and “immediate operational response.” This announcement neatly dovetailed with the launch of a £3 million public relations campaign funded by the Home Office.

The measures introduced include an extension of the existing “stop and search” procedures, the introduction of metal detectors at Underground tube stations across 10 London boroughs and scanning of suspects with hand-held devices.

“Operation Blunt” was launched barely days after the attacks with 4,277 stop and searches around the capital over two weeks. Young people are being singled out for particular attention under the new initiative, with police taking their pictures even if they are found to be innocent of any crime.

Since the beginning of 2007, 68 people aged under 25 have been killed in London, including 13 teenagers. But the new policing measures have been enforced with little attention to the actual levels of violent crime that have been recorded in recent years. There was in fact a sharp fall in knife crime in 2007 and overall knife crime has fallen by 19 percent since 2004.

The increases in violent crime that have been recorded this year have been amongst the young—from teenagers up to people in their early twenties. But civil rights campaigners in the capital have urged caution instead of this knee-jerk and heavy-handed response to the recent incidents. They have called attention to the fact that historically the use of “stop and search” has discriminated against black minorities and, more recently, Asian and Middle-Eastern ethnic minorities. Government figures suggest black people are six times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people, while Asians are almost twice as likely.

Peter Herbert, a barrister and a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, was also critical of the plan.

“It will undoubtedly lead to more stop and search, and more racist stop and searches where people are stopped on the basis of their appearance or ethnicity,” he said. “The MPA was not consulted and it should have been. It is another example of policy being manufactured on the hoof for political expediency.”

The Newham Monitoring Project, a group that works against racial discrimination, police misconduct and on civil rights issues, gave a cautionary statement on the mayor’s response:

“If Boris Johnson wishes to address gun and knife crime, he needs to first carefully examine why current police powers, which are some of the toughest in Europe, are failing to deal with this issue effectively. If the police do not have to apply reasonable suspicion, what grounds will they use to determine who they stop and search? Selecting individuals based on appearance and ethnicity is fundamentally flawed, will criminalise and alienate communities and is ultimately likely to fail like the hated Sus laws that were abolished in the 1980s.”

Under the “Sus” laws police were able to stop and search based on suspicion alone, using the precedent of sections of a Vagrancy Act of 1982, making it illegal to “loiter in a public place” with “intent” to “commit an arrestable offence.”

The police singled out young people in the impoverished areas of the city, stoking tensions between youth—particularly poor black youth—and the police in the early 1980s.

In 1981, police launched “Operation Swamp,” involving stop and searches across large swathes of the poorest working class regions. This was a major factor in provoking the Brixton riots in London, and those in St. Pauls, Bristol and Toxteth, Liverpool.

Under pressure from the public backlash, the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act introduced new rules for stop and search. Officers would now require “reasonable suspicion” that an offence had been committed.

Stop and search powers were again curtailed in 1999, after a public inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence found the police guilty of “institutional racism” and negligence in the case.

After the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001, the powers were again extended under Section 44 of the Anti-Terrorism Act. Under the previous laws, people stopped for the purpose of a search must have the reason explained to them if they request this from the police. The police are then obligated to explain “reasonable grounds for suspicion”—for example, a recent violent crime in the area or the person stopped matching the description of a suspect.

Under Section 44, the exception to this rule is in cases associated with terrorism, in which case the police have no obligation to give a reason for the stop. In other words, the “clause of exception” gives the police powers to stop, search and detain anyone arbitrarily. Similar powers to detain arbitrarily have been given under Section 60 of the Public Order Act.

The official “Stop and Search” web site produced by the Home Office states that these powers “help to deter terrorist activity by creating a hostile environment for would-be terrorists—ensuring it is not easy for them to carry or use explosives.”

It then explains how this “hostile environment” is created: “Police can search anybody anywhere under this law, and they do not need reasonable suspicion to do so. It is under this law that police conduct random searches in train and tube stations.”

The extremely low efficiency of the stop and search laws in combating street crime is revealed by official statistics: In 2004-05, when 100 people were stopped each day, only 455 arrests were made out of 35,776 searches.

In line with Johnson’s ratcheting up of police powers, the opposition Conservative leader David Cameron called on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to scrap forms officers must fill in when they stop someone. This would effectively enable police to carry out a far greater number of stops with even less accountability for their actions.

Cameron’s call to cut “red tape” reflected views expressed in the Flanagan report, published the following week. Ronnie Flanagan, the chief inspector of constabulary in England and Wales, said police were afraid to use their own judgment because of bureaucracy and form filling.

The Conservatives were competing with Labour in backing Flanagan’s report. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith responded with an official letter of endorsement, urging immediate action to cut down on “needless bureaucracy” and extend police powers to stop and search.

Johnson has also held a highly publicised meeting with the billionaire mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, in early May, announcing a “new partnership” between the two capitals.

Bloomberg has presided over a city that has experienced an unprecedented disparity of earnings between workers and a parasitic financial aristocracy on Wall Street. His administration has made drastic cuts in social services, including health and education, while increasing police powers.

In Britain, over the last decade policing has seen major increases in funding, rising by 39 percent to £5 billion. The overall police workforce has increased by 25 percent in the same period.

London Olympics terror threat used to vastly increase surveillance powers

tim — Sat, 03 May 2008 08:53:47 +0000

The threat of terrorism at the 2012 London Olympics is being hyped up in order to justify a vast increase in the surveillance powers of the British state.

According to a memo leaked to the Daily Telegraph, Home Office officials are planning to expand the police DNA database to identify suspects and use greater powers to track individuals through advanced closed circuit television (CCTV) technology and the Oyster card used by millions of people on London’s bus and rail network.

The memo discusses different means the government could use to persuade the British public to accept these measures. It asks, “To what extent should the expectation of liberty be eroded by legitimate intrusions in the interests of security of the wider public?” and concludes, “Increasing [public] support could be possible through the piloting of certain approaches in high-profile ways such as the London Olympics.”

To that end, ministers, police chiefs and officials have stepped up their demands for more security measures, utilising the Games. Last month, Lord Dear, the former Scotland Yard head of operations, made a public announcement expressing his doubts over present police capabilities to deal with the event. He said that the police force is too short of manpower to deal with the extra security needed and likened it to a “Sixties car in the 21st century,” adding, “If the model is flawed now, it will certainly be flawed in four years’ time.”

“It’s fairly obvious to anyone that major terrorist groups will not be particularly interested in attacking the Beijing Olympics,” Dear said. “But in four years’ time they will have the London Olympics as a target and we need to be best positioned to counter that well in time.”

Dear’s announcement was made despite the fact that there are a record 140,000 police officers in service and the Olympics security budget has risen sharply by £238 million in the last few months. At the end of last year, Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell released figures that showed that the initial security budget of £200 million in 2005 had spiralled to more than £1 billion.

Dear’s comments reflect those of the most senior officers in the police. The head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ian Blair, has also expressed concern over existing security arrangements and outlined a plan for them to be beefed up in readiness for the games. He has also said that special security and training will be required for athletes and the 200 heads of state expected for the opening ceremony. These proposals will inevitably involve extending the budget still further.

As well as increasing the number of police, the proposed scheme involves an elaborate and sophisticated security system spanning the whole of London. According to a BBC report last month, the Metropolitan Police Service wants to pool its 10,000 existing cameras with the thousands of traffic and congestion cameras already in operation across the city.

This would give the police control over a vast network of up to half a million CCTV cameras, making it the largest of its kind in the world. The network would then be controlled by a central £100 million bomb-proof command bunker operated jointly by the military, police and intelligence services brought together under the umbrella of the Olympic Security Directorate.

The Olympic security coordinator, Assistant Police Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, has made several statements over the last few weeks that indicate just how huge the increase in surveillance will be. Speaking at an international security conference in Abu Dhabi, Ghaffur outlined new ticketing technology to be used on the London transport system to track the movements of every individual, as well as “second-generation” computer technology that can track individuals through face recognition. The computers can use identity-recognition techniques to compare video against a database of digital faces.

A pilot scheme involving 750,000 mugshots has already been completed. Using the facial-mapping software connected to the CCTV cameras, an alert will flash up as soon as a known person appears on the screen. He added, “We will have the most secure and transparent ticketing system. Tracking technology is being developed—a spectator will be tracked from the venue to his or her home with these tickets.”

Other measures outlined by Ghaffur include dividing London into three security zones, three extra helicopters to carry out close surveillance, an increase in the automatic vehicle number plate recognition system, and checks using biometric fingerprints on the 50,000 workforce being used to build the venues.

Currently, the police can only check fingerprints and photographs from suspects after they have been arrested. Under these new powers, the police will be able to carry out these checks instantly with hand-held devices that are connected to the security database. Peter Neyroud, the chief executive of the National Policing Improvement Agency, said, “We are trying to get a really disciplined understanding of how to use these tools before the Olympics. That is a really important time scale for us.”

As well as increasing the size of the British police force to 9,000 for the major Olympic events, there are also proposals to draft in extra manpower from private security firms and foreign armed police. Scotland Yard has called for these measures on the basis that too few British police have firearms training to cope with the events, and the costs of training them are prohibitive. The contracted armed police will be used to guard dignitaries, athletes, the main Olympic Park and other sports venues.

Ian Blair told a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority, “The principle must be that we don’t want armed foreign police, but there’s a ‘but’—and the ‘but’ is twofold. One, you may not be able to get any foreign police unless they are armed, because they won’t feel easy being unarmed in public scenarios like that. Two, do we actually have, in this case, sufficient capacity to have enough armed officers to do the job?”

All of these extra resources will mean that the security budget for the games will mushroom in the next four years. Denis Oswald, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee’s London 2012 coordination commission, has admitted that it is “impossible to predict” how much money will need to be spent when the games are still four years away. He said, “It’s a very difficult area but if we want to have occasions like the Olympic Games, where hundreds of thousands of people meet, then you have to make sure they are safe, otherwise you just give up and the terrorists will win.”

This refusal to draw up a fixed budget on the basis of a terrorist threat that is “impossible to measure” amounts to a blank cheque that Londoners and the British people will ultimately have to pay. More importantly, the machinery is being created that is necessary to impose a highly integrated police/military apparatus in Britain’s capital city, under the pretext of keeping the country safe from terrorism.

Labour Government Gags “Extraordinary Renditions” Whistleblower

Ellie Keen — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 01:16:37 +0000

Last Friday, the Labour government took out a high court injunction to prevent a former member of the British Special Air Services, Ben Griffin, from revealing further details about the government’s involvement in “extraordinary rendition”

The US administration coined the term to cover the practice of sending arrested terrorist suspects to dozens of detention facilities where torture is often carried out. Ever since reports of rendition and torture began to surface after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001, the British government has adamantly denied any knowledge or collaboration with these activities.

In his last public address before the gagging order came into force, Griffin told an antiwar rally, “I will be continuing to collect evidence and opinion on British involvement in extraordinary rendition, torture, secret detentions, extra-judicial detention, use of evidence gained through torture, breaches of the Geneva Conventions, breaches of International Law and failure to abide by our obligations as per UN Convention Against Torture. I am carrying on regardless.”

He called for former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his successor Gordon Brown to face trial for breaking international law.

Griffin served in the army for eight years, including a three-month tour in Baghdad working on secret joint operations with US Special Forces. He quit in 2005 because he believed the war was illegal and aimed at seizing control of the natural resources in the region.

He is strongly opposed to the tactics being employed by US occupation forces, including indiscriminate detention of people, a trigger-happy mentality among soldiers and routine torture of prisoners that is advocated through the chain of command. Although he had not witnessed torture first-hand, Griffin said, “I have no doubt in my mind that non-combatants I personally detained were handed over to the Americans and subsequently tortured.”

The secret joint US-UK task force within which he was posted was “responsible for the detention of hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

He added: “British soldiers are intimately involved in the actions of this task force. Jack Straw, Margaret Beckett, David Miliband, Geoff Hoon, Des Browne, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown—in their respective positions over the last five years they must know that British soldiers have been operating within this joint US/UK task force. They must have been briefed on the actions of this unit.”

The gagging order was placed under the Official Secrets Act, which has been used repeatedly since the war began to silence critics of the occupations within the civil service and armed forces on grounds of “national security.” If he makes further disclosures relating to renditions that implicate government ministers in war crimes, he could face a jail sentence.

The Foreign Office refused to comment on the allegations on the grounds that statements are never released on the activities of Special Forces soldiers.

When allegations about the government’s involvement in extraordinary rendition first surfaced in December 2005, Blair told the press, “I have absolutely no evidence to suggest that anything illegal has been happening here at all, and I am not going to start ordering inquiries into this, that and the next thing, when I have got no evidence to show whether this is right or not. And I honestly, it is like all this stuff about camps in Europe or something, I don’t know, I have never heard of such a thing, I can’t tell you whether such a thing exists.”

And again, in March 2007, Blair assured an intelligence and security committee that “he was satisfied that the US had at no time since 9/11 rendered an individual through the UK or through our Overseas Territories.”

This position became increasingly untenable as leaks from individuals within the armed forces, such as those from Griffin and former United States Army General Barry McCaffrey, as well as numerous civil servants, conflicted with official government denials.

Responding to allegations that Britain was co-operating with renditions to the UK protectorate of Diego Garcia, an Indian ocean island that is leased to the US as an air base for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, then-Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in September 2003, “The United States Government have explicitly assured us that there have never been any prisoners in detention on any US vessels moored in Diego Garcia waters. The British Government are satisfied that this is correct.”

In December 2006, McCaffrey revealed that he knew of renditions to the base. He said of suspected terrorists, “They’re behind bars, they’re dead, they’re apprehended. We’ve got them on Diego Garcia, in Bagram Airfield, in Guantanamo.”

According to a report from the civil rights group Statewatch, “Diego Garcia has been the subject of repeated, credible and concurrent claims that the island has played a major role in the US system of renditions and secret detention.”

The mounting evidence culminated in the government being forced to make limited admissions, whilst attempting to distance itself as far as possible from the US practice of renditions and torture. A carefully worded statement to parliament on February 21 by Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that Britain had recently been made aware of two US extraordinary rendition flights, which had stopped at Diego Garcia in 2002 to refuel.

Miliband said, “Contrary to earlier explicit assurances that Diego Garcia had not been used for rendition flights, recent US investigations have now revealed two occasions, both in 2002, when this had in fact occurred. An error in the earlier US records search meant that these cases did not come to light.”

He went on to spell out that the US and UK policy on counter-terrorism will continue as before: “Our counter-terrorism relationship with the United States is vital to UK security. I am absolutely clear that there must and will continue to be the strongest possible intelligence and counter-terrorism relationship with the US, consistent with UK law and our international obligations.”

It was Miliband’s evasions and denials about UK involvement in rendition that prompted Griffin to issue a statement a few days later. He pointed out that the government always talks about rendition as purely the process of flying detainees to a foreign country in the hope of deflecting attention away from the British Army’s vital role in the first stages of the process in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said the Diego Garcia admission “pales into insignificance in light of the fact that it has been British soldiers detaining the victims of extraordinary rendition in the first place.”

“Since the invasion of Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001 UKSF [United Kingdom Special Forces] has operated within a joint US/UK Task Force. This Task Force has been responsible for the detention of hundreds if not thousands of individuals in Afghanistan and Iraq. Individuals detained by British soldiers within this Task Force have ended up in Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, Bagram Theatre Internment Facility, Balad Special Forces Base, Camp Nama BIAP and Abu Ghraib Prison.”

“Whilst the government has stated its desire that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp be closed, it has remained silent over these other secretive prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. These secretive prisons are part of a global network in which individuals face torture and are held indefinitely without charge. All of this is in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions, International Law and the UN Convention Against Torture.”

Griffin detailed human rights abuses at Camp Nama at Baghdad International Airport in 2004, where individuals captured by the US/UK Task Force were detained and torture was carried out that was “systematic and sanctioned through the chain of command.” He also relates a story he was told by two soldiers that torture was carried out using partial asphyxiation and cattle prods.

Numerous human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, which has obtained damning firsthand evidence about abuses in secret detention facilities, have corroborated Griffin’s statements on abuse of detainees. Witnesses relate that the use of torture, including prolonged sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme temperatures, beatings and humiliating treatment were widespread and sanctioned by commanding officers. Soldiers who objected to the treatment of prisoners were lectured on the exceptional circumstances of the “war on terror.”

The latest gagging order follows a series of similar cases where the government has forcibly silenced critics of its “war on terror” policy. Civil servant David Keogh and political researcher Leo O’Connor were jailed last year—for six months and three months, respectively—after being convicted of leaking a secret government memo from 2003, alleged to contain minutes of a meeting between then-Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush in which the latter reportedly advocated bombing Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar.

The growing body of evidence exposing the crimes of detention without trial and a global network of prison camps has also implicated countries other than the UK and US. Statewatch obtained a document in 2005 that confirmed the European Union (EU) had agreed to rendition flights in CIA planes as part of a wider programme of joint security operations with the Bush administration in 2003.

In a recent report from the European Parliament on the alleged use of European countries for the illegal transport and detention of prisoners by the CIA, the EU Rapporteur Claudio Fava said, “Many governments co-operated passively or actively (with the CIA). They knew.”

According to the report, more than 1,000 CIA-operated flights used European airspace between 2001 and 2005. It also states that detention facilities may be located at US military bases in Europe and that some EU members turned a blind eye to flights operated by the CIA being used for extraordinary rendition or the illegal transportation of detainees.

The report mentions 21 well-documented cases of extraordinary rendition in which rendition victims were transferred through a European country or were residents in a European state at the time of their kidnapping. The national governments specifically criticised for their unwillingness to co-operate with investigations were those of Austria, Italy, Poland, Portugal and the UK.

Amnesty International has previously reported on more than 1,000 flights linked to the CIA, many of which used European airspace.

President George W. Bush stated in September 2006 that “alternative procedures” were necessary to deal with the new threat of global terrorism. Thanks to the courage and conviction of those like Ben Griffin, we now know more of the substance that lies behind those ominous words.

The global network of CIA “black sites” that have been established under the pretext of the “war on terror” are being used to suppress growing opposition to the imperialist aims of the United States to control the natural resources of the Middle East and Central Asia. According to the US Congress, up to 14,000 people may have been victims of rendition and secret detention since 2001.

Declining Hygiene and C. Difficile Deaths

Tim Holmes — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 19:50:37 +0000

A report by the government-funded Healthcare Commission has revealed that 90 people died from an outbreak of the infection Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) in three hospitals in the southeast of the country between 2004 and 2006.

The annual health check also revealed that one in four National Health Service (NHS) Trusts, government-appointed bodies tasked with managing hospitals, failed to meet basic standards of infection and hygiene control across England. The report concludes that the hospitals with the worst outbreaks were mismanaged by the local trust.

C. difficile is the most significant cause of pseudomembranous colitis, an infection of the colon.

The commission also found that 20 hospital trusts across the country had even higher rates of infection. Failures especially highlighted were dirty equipment and wards, with nurses too rushed to wash hands and patients left to lie in their own excrement. There were also concerns of misprescribing antibiotics to patients with high risk of C. difficile infection, which often results from the eradication of the normal microorganisms in the digestive tract due to the use of antibiotics. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and Kent Police are investigating the Tunbridge Wells and Maidstone NHS Trusts for possible criminal negligence.

After the chairman of the NHS Trust in the area resigned over the crisis, a new case of infection, this time a norovirus outbreak (the major cause of gastroenteritis), was reported at a Maidstone hospital criticised in the report. A ward was isolated after 16 patients showed symptoms of the virus. A nurse told reporters that cleaners at the hospital did not “have the time, the manpower, even the morale.” Healthcare campaigners told reporters they knew of another four trusts in the UK that had had norovirus outbreaks in the previous fortnight.

According to a front page story in the local press, one nurse who was admitted to the Kent & Sussex Hospital described her shock at the appalling conditions: “I couldn’t believe the conditions were so terrible, there were faeces on the floor beside my bed for two days, the facilities for hand washing were terrible, rubbish bins containing contaminated towels would be taken across the ward.” After leaving the hospital, she became ill again soon afterwards, but refused to go back because the conditions were so bad.

Another report gave an account of a patient’s experience of flooding in a ward with a defective shower. When he asked why maintenance was not brought in, he was told, “there were so many levels of management, to get something done took ages.”

A son and daughter of a mother admitted for surgery in 2004 spoke to the press when they heard about the latest outbreak. “Our first reaction to the hospital was that it was like going back to the 1950s, but without the cleanliness,” they said. “We wanted our mother out of there and home as quickly as possible.”

The author of this article also attended the Kent & Sussex Hospital for a two-day stay after an accident in 2003. One of the wards was in isolation due to an infection at the time, and I was asked to leave as soon as I could walk so as to minimise the risk of the infection spreading.

Karen Jennings, head of the health workers’ union Unison, complained: “Responsibility is being diverted away from parliament and we are losing any sense of collective responsibility or equity in the NHS. The superbug phenomenon can be attributed to the contracting-out process—hospitals had 50 percent more cleaners in 1982 than in 2007.”

The report notes constant pressure to meet targets in relation to an outbreak of C. difficile in 2006: “[M]any staff told us that senior managers were still reluctant to implement major infection control measures, such as closing wards or using buffer beds to separate infected patients from others on a ward. They said this was because of the shortage of beds and the need to meet targets.”

The report also revealed that “The vast majority of nurses and other clinical staff interviewed considered that poor care was in large part due to having inadequate staffing levels.”

Despite the seriousness of the findings, and the explicit criticism of the NHS Trust, only the board chairman has resigned. The former chief executive of the trust left the board days before the report was released, with a severance deal believed to be worth between £250,000 and £400,000.

After this deal came to light in the press, the health secretary suspended the pay-out, but this could well be reversed. Although the government has the power to remove or discipline individuals under Section 66 of the NHS Service Act, so far they have been content with the single resignation and some reshuffling of the trust leadership.

In an attempt to deflect attention from impossible financial targets and understaffing imposed by the government, the health minister, Lord Darzi, told MPs that the problem was “a leadership issue.” But however culpable are individuals within the Trust, the real responsibility lies with the policy makers in the government.

James Lee, the former chairman of the Trust, made a report to the health secretary that called for a “root and branch review of all aspects of nursing” in an attempt to limit the damage of public confidence in the Trust and deflect it on to healthcare workers. But in his resignation letter, Lee pointed to financial constraints as a major contributing factor to the outbreak: “We had to be concerned about finance because this trust has been struggling with a state that is pretty close to bankruptcy....When I took over five years ago I felt it would be a wonderful experience because of all the money the Government was pouring in. Instead it’s been five years of sheer hell. It has just been a question of cutting costs.”

The Trust’s position as bureaucratic intermediary between government officials and health workers leaves it unable to satisfy either side, as Lee’s complaints reveal. On the one hand, the government, far from pouring money in, is determined to push ahead with plans to cut costs, inevitably leading to more privatisation of key services such as cleaning. On the other, health workers are being pushed to fulfill targets that cannot be reached with diminishing resources.

The principle of socialised healthcare—free and universal regardless of status—has already been seriously undermined by the emergence of a two-tier health system in Britain. Through instruments such as the PFI initiatives, a higher level of service through private healthcare is only available to the few who can afford it, while socialised healthcare is being steadily eroded. The majority are left with healthcare that is being deprived of essential resources needed to continue providing a decent level of service. In addition, servicing the debt to private investors has become one of the major drains on hospital finances.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised C. difficile and the “superbug” MRSA, which affects particularly people with open wounds and weakened immune systems, would be tackled by “a deep clean of hospitals and the creation of new isolation wards.” These measures, even if enacted, will have negligible effect in the long term, and simply provide a temporary cover for a deepening crisis brought on by the Labour Party.

The C. difficile outbreak, whilst very serious in itself, is just the latest in a series of similar cases that have broken out with increasing regularity. The constant pressure to cut costs and force workers to cover for inadequate staffing levels is ultimately responsible for these new deaths.

Across the country, there have been reports of poor cleaning and lapses in basic hygiene, overcrowded wards, and practices likely to increase infection rates, such as “hot-bedding,” where beds are immediately occupied again soon after being vacated.

The scale of the problem cannot be sufficiently explained by isolated oversights of basic hygiene procedures, leadership problems, or the emergence of new and especially virulent superbugs. Rather, these outbreaks are symptomatic of a much wider systemic problem that cannot be understood without a clear appraisal of the political role played by successive governments in relation to the NHS.

The privatisation by stealth first initiated by the Conservative government during the 1980s has continued under the Labour government, anxious to press ahead behind the backs of a public hostile to the process. This has involved harassing hospitals with ever tighter controls and targets, introducing more bureaucratic levers to carry through these measures with multi-tiered management levels (most of which are divorced from a working knowledge of medical practice), and the establishment of PFI hospitals and “independent sector treatment centres”.

PFI hospitals are developed by private firms and then leased out to the NHS, whilst core professionals are retained in the public sector. They have been a means of transferring public services (such as housing, roads and schools) into private ownership and control to enrich a favoured elite. PFI was the brainchild of the Conservative government in 1992, but has since been taken up and extended by Labour in its determination to continue the slashing of social expenditure. Detailed information on the trend of PFI investment is difficult to obtain. The deals are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act due to “commercial confidentiality.”

This month, the government announced that the largest US healthcare corporation, UnitedHealth, along with other corporations that preside over the private US health service, one of the most inequitable in the world, will be introduced into Britain in an “advisory” capacity. This is to set them up for management positions and lucrative outsourcing of those illnesses and treatments that can guarantee high profit returns.

The Guardian revealed this month that Tony Blair’s former advisor, Simon Stevens, along with other Labour health secretaries, has taken up a lucrative position in the European department of UnitedHealth. No doubt, these Labourites will be working in an “advisory” capacity on the future of the NHS.

More migrant deaths as Europe tightens border controls

Tim Holmes — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:24:22 +0000

A recent study conducted by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), estimates that up to 3,000 migrants have died attempting to cross from West Africa into Europe.

Most of these deaths were on the perilous sea crossing to the Canary Islands. More than 30,000 migrants arrived on the islands in 2006 from the West African countries of Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Mauritania and Morocco, but the number has dropped this year to about 6,500, due to the ramping up of surveillance and security controls.

Until recently, the most important entry points from Africa into the European Union (EU) were the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the coast of Morocco, a few miles across the sea from mainland Spain. Tightened security controls have now forced people to use more-dangerous routes originating further south. As a result, the main source of migrants leaving the African continent has moved to Senegal. This poverty-stricken country is crowded with thousands of people originating from across north and central Africa and even as far as south Asia, hoping for a life free from poverty and war.

Consequently, there is an ongoing crisis of bodies being washed up on beaches across the Mediterranean shore, stretching all the way from Spain in the west to Italy and Greece in the east. Many have died because they are forced to cross in overcrowded fishing vessels such as the small open craft with only two small outboard motors known as cayucos, suffering exposure, hunger and dehydration or becoming lost in bad weather.

Last month, in one of the worst incidents, at least 10 people drowned when their boat capsized off Gran Canaria. In July, up to 90 Africans drowned near the nearby island of Tenerife. Another incident involved the death of 12 migrants, with survivors saying they threw the bodies of nine men and two children overboard during the voyage.

East of the Canary Islands, in the Mediterranean Sea, migrant workers have attempted to sail across to Malta and the Italian island of Lampedusa from Tunisia and Libya. In August, 21 of them died after their boat capsized south of Malta, and 59 were rescued off the Libyan coast from an overloaded boat without an engine or food. Two pregnant women died during the voyage and were thrown overboard.

In 2006, the EU increased the powers of the Frontex, which coordinates border patrols, surveillance and security controls across the region. According to Frontex’s website, it can call on 21 airplanes, 27 helicopters and 116 boats to round up migrants and forcibly return them to their home countries.

Although it is almost impossible to obtain accurate statistics on the numbers of migrants entering the EU, official data shows that the movement of peoples across frontiers is returning to levels not seen since the first two decades of the last century.

Immigration to the core group of EU15 countries has increased rapidly in recent years, adding nearly 9 million people to their populations. According to official World Bank statistics in 2005, the GDP of the EU is worth more than 16 times that of all the countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined. In Europe, the life expectancy is 80 years, whilst in sub-Saharan Africa, it is only 47 years.

Unemployment is running at the highest levels in North Africa and the Middle East, especially among younger people. Very often, these people are well educated and unable to find suitable work in their home countries.

These trends reveal the collapse of economies brought about by the “restructuring” plans instigated by the International Monetary Fund under the auspices of the imperialist powers during the 1980s and 1990s.

Another factor is growing armed conflict, especially in Africa and the Middle East. A 2007 report by the Population Reference Bureau states that “The number of refugees worldwide, defined by the United Nations as ‘people who have fled persecution in their own countries to seek safety in neighbouring states,’ rose from 8.7 million to 9.9 million during 2006.”

Last month’s report, Millions in flight: the Iraqi refugee crisis, published by Amnesty International, gives an indication of the true scale of this growing crisis, saying, “The humanitarian crisis triggered by the mass exodus of refugees from the on-going and widespread violence in Iraq shows little sign of abating. In fact, recent estimates show this to be the fastest growing displacement crisis in the world with the number of those displaced now having reached 4.2 million—2.2 million internally displaced within Iraq and over 2 million outside the country.”

Although the majority of Iraqi refugees reside in Jordan and Syria, the report states that “The number of Iraqi asylum-seekers in Europe rose to nearly 20,000 in the first half of 2007, equivalent to the number received in the whole of 2006.”

In addition to ratcheting up border patrols, the EU has also passed a raft of new immigration laws tailored to the requirements of European capital that seek to prevent the entry of low-skilled labour, while attracting skilled labour.

This two-sided policy was summed up by Spain’s El País newspaper, which praised Spanish Socialist Workers Party Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero’s clampdown on immigration whilst noting that “migrants have invigorated the Spanish economy to the extent that they have contributed 50 percent of GDP growth since 2001.”

In April of this year, the British Immigration Minister Liam Byrne cynically claimed immigration was “harming the poor.” He proposed a five-tier points-based system, with high-skilled workers given fast-track entry, while lower-scoring workers will only be allowed to work in specific jobs for fixed periods.

Last month, the French prime minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, offered more favourable facilities for Senegalese business people in exchange for repatriation of “unwelcome migrants.” This turn in French policy has led to a recent spate of police crackdowns, rounding up thousands of workers from their workplaces and homes because they are “sans papiers” (without papers). Sarkozy is calling for 25,000 such immigrants to be deported by the end of the year.

Franco Frattini, vice president of the European Commission, told an EU immigration ministers’ meeting in Lisbon last month that a new “mobility” of labour was necessary to compete against “Australia, Canada, the USA and the rising powers in Asia.” He proposed the introduction of an EU “blue card” by which skilled workers could apply for a two-year residency that could be extended.

Across Europe, there is now a determined effort to create a two- and even three-tier workforce, with diminished rights and legal status for those at the bottom end. The objective is to supply European capital with cheap, skilled labour that can more easily be exploited than domestic labour, owing to the diminished legal status of many migrants.

This is then used as a battering ram to further undermine the real wages of all workers, irrespective of national status.

Due to their desperation and general poverty, migrant workers are a “soft target,” subject to new rounds of chauvinistic and xenophobic hate campaigns. In official political circles and the media across Europe, they are blamed for the general lowering of living standards so as to divert attention from their real cause—the big business policies of governments across the continent. That is why the defence of migrant workers must be inseparable from the broader struggles of working people as a whole, to protect their social interests and democratic rights.

Plundering the Public Sector

Alex Doherty — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 12:32:34 +0000

At the heart of the allegations that the Labour government in Britain granted peerages in return for cash is a bigger scandalhow the public sector is being plundered by the government and big business through privatisation and deregulation.

In March it was revealed that several businessmen nominated for peerages in the House of Lords had loaned the Labour Party large sums of money in the run-up to the 2005 general electionthereby bypassing the requirement that political donations of £5,000 ($9,200) or more be officially declared.

Labour officials finally conceded the party had received undeclared loans totalling £14 million ($26 million) from 12 individuals who had lent sums ranging from £250,000 ($462,000) to £2.3 million ($4.3 million). Heads of some of the biggest business interests were involved: Lord Sainsbury, chairman of one of Britains largest supermarket chains, made a donation of £2 million; Dr. Chai Patel, chief executive of a private health company, donated £1.5 million; and Barry Townsley, a stockbroker who sponsors the governments private academy school scheme, lent £1 million.

It also emerged that key officials involved in Labour Party finances were unaware of the loans, knowledge of which was restricted to a small clique including Blair; Labours then general secretary, Matt Carter; and the partys main fundraiser, Lord Levy.

On June 22, 2006 Levy gave evidence to a committee of MPs investigating party political funding. The meeting was held behind closed doors because Metropolitan police chiefs warned that any public discussion could prejudice their own investigations, under a 1925 law that makes it illegal to reward anyone who has given any gift, money or valuable consideration with a title of honour. The law was introduced after Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George was caught selling peerages and honours.

But a seat in the House of Lords is only the icing on the cake for an elite that has seen its wealth and influence increase astronomically as a result of Prime Minister Tony Blairs pro-business policies.

One person whose name emerged in connection with the loans scandal was Rod Aldridge, founder of Capita, one of the UKs largest outsourcing companies. Aldridge resigned his position as company chairman earlier this year in an attempt to deflect attention from allegations that, in return for a £1 million loan, Capita was being given favourable treatment by the government.

There have been suggestions that this loan has resulted in the group being awarded government contracts. This is entirely spurious, Aldridge insisted. He maintained that his loan was a personal decision on my part and he fully expected it to be repaid along with the interest due after that period of time.

Capita has been the recipient of lucrative contracts as a result of the privatisation of public sector services through Public-Private Partnership (PPP) schemes. The company has seen a meteoric rise in its fortunesits annual turnover growing from £112 million in 1997 to £1.4 billion today.

In all, Capita has received £2.6 billion in public funds for contracts, including a £190 million regeneration project for Blackburn council, £280 million for administering the London congestion charge (the fee charged to motorists for entering the Central London area) and £500 million to enforce payment of television licences.

Aldridge naturally advocates reform and modernisation in the public services. In his pamphlet Advancing a New Public Service Ethos, he called for a new code to help overcome the remaining ideological barriers to a plurality of service providers, i.e., to overcome widespread public opposition to the dismantling of social provision of services in the interest of private profit.

Aldridge goes on, It is wrong to suggest that profit and public service are incompatiblethey are not, provided that the public is getting added value and value for money from the engagement of a private sector provider.

Experience proves otherwise. Rail privatisation, for example, has been a disaster, with the government dishing out billions in subsidies. The latest in a long line of scandals involves claims of overcharging by three companies that own the rolling stock on the UKs railways. Contrary to Aldridges claims, since the privatisation carve-up in the 1990s, ticket prices have consistently risen at more than the rate of inflation. The cost of long distance rail tickets has soared in recent years, leaving passengers with the prospect of flying or driving because each is cheaper than taking the train.

As for the governments record on privatising the health service, there is little sign of added value to anyone except stakeholders and corporate managers. Paul Miller, the leader of Britains hospital consultants, said earlier this month that the National Health Service has had its best year ever for losing staff and wasting money on management consultants, who cost an estimated £1 billon last year. Under the Private Finance Initiative, the budget deficit for 2005-06 was £512 milliondouble that of the previous year.

In addition to false claims about the greater efficiency of the private sector and the miracle of the market, the carving up of social infrastructure is justified on the grounds that the state can no longer afford to fund social provisions and the responsibility for this must now lie with individuals or churches, charities and the private sector.

Earlier this year Blair proclaimed that charities and voluntary organisations should play a major role in the provision of public services. These new volunteering charities closely follow similar programmes in the United States, such as AmeriCorps, a youth volunteering programme which at the request of President George W. Bush has expanded its work to include projects directly related to homeland security and faith-based organizations. AmeriCorps is part of Freedom Corps, a White House initiative to foster a culture of citizenship, service and, last but not least, help all Americans answer the Presidents Call to Service.

Aldridge was appointed chairman of the Russell Commission, a £150 million private-sponsored youth volunteering scheme established by Chancellor Gordon Brown. The commission is sponsored by corporations including Tesco, Sky and T Mobile. Also on the list is KPMG, a US accountancy firm that came under scrutiny from a US Senate report in 2003, which found that the company had made $124 million creating tax shelters for its clients.

In return for backing the charity these large private companies are promised publicity and advertising and the chance to play a key role in the governance and decision making of the implementation body, explains the Commission web site.

According to The UK Voluntary Sector Almanac 2006, there has been a charitisation of the public sector, leading to a 40 percent increase in the number of charities to 169,000 since Labour came to power in 1995. It considers that the government is saving £25.4 billion because an estimated 1.1 million full-time UK workers would be needed to replace volunteers. It notes that average incomes for all organisations in the sector were either static or falling and that individual charities have struggled to increase revenues beyond the rate of inflation.

As Chairman of the Confederation of British Industry Public Services Strategy Board, Aldridge is also closely associated with the government initiative to open up the education system to private capital.

Veredus, a Capita subsidiary, is responsible for recruiting senior managers and head teachers to three of Londons academy schools. The government is planning to build 200 such schools, which are funded by entrepreneurs and run independently of the Local Education Authorities, by 2010.

Academy schools have come under criticism for allowing business and religious groups to gain access to education and using it for their own interests. According to a Guardian report last year, Private sponsors give a maximum of £2 million in return for a large degree of control over the schools curriculum, ethos and staffing. Another means by which business can gain control over academy schools is through the nomination of governing board members.

According to an Edinburgh University study, the proportion of children taking General National Vocational Qualifications (i.e., as opposed to academic qualifications) has risen from 13 percent at the predecessor schools to around 52 percent at the academies.

Moreover, at two academies run by the Christian fundamentalist Peter Vardy Foundation, creationism is taught as a valid scientific theory. Blair personally opened one of the Vardy Foundation schools in March 2004, praising its prospectus as one of the best examples of modern social justice that I can think of.

The loans-for-peerages scandal is a product of the demand of capital for an even greater exploitation of labour for the benefit of a financial elite.

A 2005 study by Tulip Financial Research revealed that one percent of the population owned 23 percent of all wealth, while the poorest half owned only six percent. Inequality is even sharper if it is measured in terms of liquid assets (assets easily convertible into cash such as savings, bonds or cash), with the wealthiest one percent owning 62 percent of total liquid assets and the bottom half of the population owning __less than one percent.__

The huge fortunes being amassed by the upper strata are not the result of a corresponding expansion in productive growth, but largely represent a redistribution of existing wealth from the working classes towards the propertied classes.

Whilst the influence and wealth of the privileged elite grows, latest evidence suggests that social mobility has gone into reverse, with children born in the 1970s less socially mobile than those born in the 1950s.

Police Racism

Alex Doherty — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 10:04:10 +0000

On March 27, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), a government watchdog that monitors the British police, published its review into the death in police custody of 37-year-old Christopher Alder.

On April 1, 1998, Alder, a black ex-paratrooper, had been involved in a fight outside a club in Hull during which he received a blow to the head and was knocked to the ground. By the time the ambulance crew arrived, he was confused and suffering from concussion. He was later discharged from the local hospital to the police, who arrested him for breach of the peace.

In 2004, the BBC aired closed-circuit TV footage taped at Hull police station of what had happened to Alder in his dying moments. The video showed officers dragging Alder, unconscious and with his trousers around his ankles, into the custody suite. For 10 minutes he was left face down on the floor, still handcuffed, in his own vomit and blood, gasping and choking to death, whilst officers ignored him. Some made monkey noises and other jibes. At one point an officer is seen throwing one of Alders teeth onto the floor.

There had been sustained attempts by Alders family to uncover the truth of his death, which had been frustrated at every turn. In 2000, the first inquest into his death concluded with a verdict of unlawful killing, but this was overturned in 2001 when a judicial review of the inquest verdict was rejected by the crown court.

Five of the police officers captured on CCTV stood trial in 2002, but the case was abandoned before the officers took the stand on grounds of conflicting medical evidence. Since then no disciplinary or legal action has been taken against the five officers. In 2004, four of the five took early retirement on health grounds, taking lump sums of up to £66,000 each plus a pension.

A court ruling in January added further controversy when Jason Paul, who was involved in the fight with Alder, was awarded £30,000 in damages after he was falsely charged with Alders murder by Humberside police. The jury ruled that more likely than not the instruction to arrest for murder was given to deflect potential criticism of the circumstances of Christopher Alders death.

Although the BBC footage forced the government to order an IPCC review of Alders case, its findings contribute nothing to uncovering the truth. The IPCC report exonerates the police officers. IPCC Chairman Nick Hardwick, said, There is no doubt in my mind that the events leading to and following Mr. Alders death represent very serious failings by many of the individuals and organisations involvedbut the process that followed did not hold any individual responsible for these failings. No individuals have been held responsibleyet all those involved, family and police officers alike, have, to a greater or lesser extent, been punished by the process itself.

Crucial evidencesuch as blood smeared on the inside of the police van and the clothing of the police officers involved, were not made available for forensic scrutiny. It is still not clear what happened to Alder between the time of his arrest and the appearance of his inert body on CCTVwhether he relapsed into unconsciousness due to the earlier blow to his head, or because of further injuries he may have sustained at the hands of the police. A post-mortem was inconclusive as to the cause of death, but indicated the blow to the head was not a cause.

The IPCC concludes that the police officers present in the station were guilty of unwitting racism, but contends this was a systemic failure of the culture within the police as an institution, rather than the responsibility of individuals.

The concept of unwitting racism was first coined by Lord Macpherson during an inquiry into the polices handling of the racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993, which enabled his attackers to escape unpenalised. According to this definition, unwitting racism can arise because of lack of understanding, ignorance or mistaken beliefs. Macpherson stated that Lawrences death had highlighted institutionalised racism within the police force that should be rooted out, but again held no individual officer to account.

The IPCC review into Alders death employs similar blatant sophistry to justify the failure to punish any of the officers whose behaviour contributed to his death. It contends that the monkey noises and jokes picked up on the CCTV footage and the failure to provide care flowed unconsciously from an inflexible police ethos and negative stereotyping that led the police officers to believe that Alder was faking.

Nick Hardwick of the IPCC said of the four officers who dealt with Alder in the custody suite: I believe they were guilty of the most serious neglect of duty [but] I do not believe ... that any of these officers assaulted Mr. Alder.

He added, I cannot say for certain that Mr. Alder would have been treated more appropriately had he been white, but I believe the fact he was black stacked the odds more heavily against him.

The report outlines unresolved discrepancies in the initial interviews given by the officers and yet fails to make the necessary demands to ensure that fresh interviews are undertaken. It notes a dispute arose between the IPCC and the Humberside Police Authority (HPA), with the HPA undermining the IPCCs efforts.

The question then arises: Why did a police investigation working under the direct authority of the home secretary lack sufficient powers to overrule a local police authority and demand interviews with the five officers? This would be the first requirement of a review that was serious about investigating Alders death.

In the final analysis, the IPCC report serves to shield the police and suppress the Alder familys attempts to get a full and public enquiry to find out what really happened. Janet Alder, Christophers sister, stressed just one of the failings of the IPCC investigation to the media. There is 162 hours of police evidence, she said. Weve got six hours. We want the rest of the video to make sure that nothing else has gone on.

The Alder inquiry is only the latest incident in which the IPCC has been used to protect police officers. In response to a Sunday Times story in February, the IPCC conducted an investigation into racist pictures being circulated around the Merseyside police force. The images depicted a black woman in a bikini with a gorillas head super-imposed, entitled Miss Africa, and sets of teeth and eyes on a black background captioned, a Harlem night scene.

The most nauseating image showed a photo of a decapitated black man, his head impaled on a fence with his body lying nearby. Underneath is the caption: Dont run from the police. The photo was taken in 2003 in the US by police in Atlanta, Georgia, after the victim fell or jumped from a bridge to his death whilst attempting to evade arrest.

The images were widely circulated amongst 500 staff via the Merseyside police computer network. Yet those responsible received merely a telling-off in the form of a written warning or a paltry fine. According to a spokeswoman from Merseyside Police, the IPCC had approved the disciplinary action with no further demands.

The IPCC is leading the investigation into the state execution by undercover cops of the young Brazilian worker, Jean Charles de Menezes, in July 2005. After it emerged that police had systematically falsified the events leading up to de Menezes killing, the IPCC was brought in as an impartial body in a damage control exercise. A report drafted on the murder was submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service, but has yet to be released.

Olympic Regeneration?

Alex Doherty — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 13:35:08 +0000

Assurances from the government that the 2012 Olympic Games will help regenerate the socially deprived East End of London fly in the face of reality.

Plans to develop the Lea Valley East London site for the games have already begun, with the serving of one of the largest Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) programmes ever seen in England, affecting residents and up to 300 local businesses. Disputes are ongoing between firms of the Marshgate Lane Estate in Stratford and the London Development Authority (LDA) over inadequate compensation. Without the use of CPOs, the LDA would only have half the land needed to develop the site. Twenty percent more land than the 178 hectares originally intended is now being bought up.

After the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced the success of the London bid last July, Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport said, the games are a chance to transform one of the poorest and most deprived parts of our capital city as well as to unlock sporting talent, both at home and abroad. Behind the expected spin and effusive patriotism, what basis is there for the fulfillment of such grand promises?

Despite a generally relentless pro-Olympics media coverage and the ubiquitous citywide back-the-bid campaign, there remains considerable scepticism from local residents, workers, and experts about any lasting social or economic benefits. If experience of previous games is anything to go by, the event could turn out to be a major liability for Londoners, who will still be paying for years after the games have come and gone.

The 2004 games in Athens initially budgeted for £2.5 billion but ended up costing £9 billion and still counting. Sydneys original bid costs were estimated at £1 billion but ended up closer to £2.3 billion.

Both Sydney and Athens ran more than 100 percent overspends, but the world record for biggest financial debacle goes to Montreal: it went four times over budget and is still paying off a $1.2 billion debt from the games of 1976. The only games that made any kind of return on expenditure was Los Angeles in 1984, and that was in no small part due to facilities already in place, so initial outlay was much lower.

According to government figures, the construction and staging of the London games will cost between £3 billion and £5 billion, but the biggest expense will be on the decayed local infrastructure at a cost of £10 billion. The public sector will cough up the bulk of the cash: some £750 million by a specially devised lottery game, £625 million from a levy on London council taxes and £250 million from the London Development Agency. An additional £225 million will be spent on security measures. As in previous games, the prospect of these figures rising dramatically in the coming years is highly likely. Most of the revenue generated will come from ticket sales, TV deals and sponsorship tie-ups.

The drain on the National Lottery will take a big toll on smaller scale projects all over the country, costing £64 million per annum up to 2012, including existing sports facilities. Charities anticipate significant reductions as corporations redirect money to sponsorship of the games.

Professor Stefan Szymanski of Imperial College said, The IOC insists that the host government completely underwrites the bid for the games, including paying any costs associated with it. That means that British London taxpayers will have to cover the entire cost of the games, however much cost over-run there happens to be. If it comes within budget, perhaps thats not too much of a problem but if it goes over budget theres unlimited liability for the British taxpayer.

Commenting on the temporary nature of the event and the problems of legacy in the area, Stefan added, The difficulty is that the Olympics is rather like spending £3 billion on a bridge that youre only ever going to walk over once.

John Lucas, a professor of Penn State University in the United States and a specialist on the modern Olympics said, Hosting the Olympic Games as an economic development strategy for the host city simply doesnt work in the vast majority of cases. On the other hand, individual entrepreneurs can make a great deal of money at the Olympic Games. Some, in fact, have become millionaires.

Taking a broad and sober look at the recent history of the games, promises of regeneration appear hopelessly unrealistic. Inevitably the public will foot the bill whilst corporations and property developers will rake in bumper profits, all under the approving aegis of the IOC. Early in 2004, IOC vice-president Kim Un-Yong was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail on corruption charges. Thirteen members of the IOC were expelled in the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics bid after investigations into bribe taking.

Under the public-private partnership scheme, developers are invited to participate with the London Development Agency in building and conversion work. Stratford City Developments is planning a £4 billion housing project at Stratford, overlapping the main Olympic campus.

Stuart Lipton, a director of the company was forced to resign over charges of a conflict of interest. As well as working on the board of a private developer, he was a government advisor in the role of chairman of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment.

The claim that the Olympics will aid local business is undermined by the draconian demands of the official sponsors mediated through the diktats of the IOC. The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) is looking to sign ten top tier companies for at least £50 million each in return for being associated with the London Games over the next six years. Demands will then be placed by the sponsors for such privileges as exclusive rights to the use of Olympics imagery.

Although the Lea Valley area is often referred to as a brown field, contaminated site, or near-barren wasteland, it provides a much-needed service as a green open space in an otherwise highly urbanised environment. Its development for the Olympics means the appropriation of common land into private hands, unaccountable to the public. Ironically enough, the popular Sunday League football on Hackney Marshes will be one of the first victims.

Local wildlife in the area will also be adversely affected. Annie Chipchase, an Environmental consultant, said, The Olympic proposals will destroy all the existing habitat, and thus the associated wildlife. Proposals to provide mitigation in terms of translocating species, and providing alternative habitat, are unlikely to be successful. Only legally-protected species will be the focus of such work. The waterways of the Lower Lea provide a unique place for wildlife and people in a dense urban area. Destruction of these habitats for an elite sporting event should not be contemplated.

Tessa Jowell promised 3,600 new affordable homes and 12,000 jobs, but similar projects for regeneration have left a legacy of displaced residents in favour of property speculators and the affluent. Similar projects that promised regeneration of the socially deprived East Endthe Millennium Dome which ended up costing the public £800 million and the Docklands development where the promised trickle-down theory failed to materialisehardly inspire confidence.

Naturally the Olympics offer something crucial that the ill-fated dome lackedsporting excellence and a world-renowned event bound to appeal to a huge audience. But what will become of the Lea Valley when the crowds have gone home?

Gavin Poynter, head of the School of Cultural and Innovation Studies at the University of East London said, The consumption-led services growth model, implicit to Olympic bid strategies, has tended to generate an acceleration of an urban regeneration and development process that has exacerbated income and wealth differentials, potentially creating increased social divisions and tensions rather than reducing them.

The giant sports stadiums are ideal for hosting large scale tournaments, but of very limited use for the local needs of the East London community. The legacy of underused facilities is unlikely to be any different compared to the experiences of Athens or Sydney. Athens was saddled with a site almost as derelict afterwards as it was before. The Sydney games of 2000 failed to sustain interest, with visitor numbers declining for the following three years.

The government has also seized on the opportunity to ratchet up police powers under the guise of protecting citizens. Emphasising the concurrence of the July 7 terrorist bombings last year and the successful outcome of the bid the previous day, Tessa Jowell said in parliament, The events of 7 July will forever be linked to, and help to define the spirit of, the 2012 Olympics in London.

The government is to create an Olympic Security Committee (OSC) to be chaired by the Home Secretary and comprising senior representatives from the UK security forces. The predicted £225 million needed for security is difficult to fathom in a city with a network of 500,000 closed-circuit cameras, giving it the dubious honour of surveillance capital of the world.