GREAT TRUST CONDEMNS POLICE BRUTAL MURDER OF MARK DUGGAN - YOUTH OF AFRICAN ANCESTRY, APPLICATION OF SELECTIVE, SIMPLISTIC AND PAROCHIAL CRIMINOLOGY AND ADVOCATES FOR A COMPREHENSIVE CAUSE AND EFFECT APPROACH TO THE UK UNRESTS
The GREAT Trust urges a fundamental shift from classical orthodox uncreative responses to societal discontent and crises management to a reflective cause and effect approach in the light of the UK unrests of August 2011 and cautions against selective simplistic and parochial criminology, in the aftermath of the police brutal murder of 29 year old Mark Duggan – a minority ethnic youth of African ancestry from Tottenham, London. The classical sweeping outright condemnations of the unrests that grasped parts of the UK, risk the fate of previous unrests which rather than find permanent long term panaceas, drove underground their undercurrents, only to resurface again. GREAT urges new paradigms to perennial problems of society in the UK and across the globe, because the repetitive nature of societal blights not excluding police-shooting instigated and racially-motivated unrests, questions the purpose-unfitness of governance, government, policies, strategies, interventions as well as their corresponding foundational political, socio-economic ideologies and philosophies and positions them very vulnerable to potential charges of misrule, mis-leadership and panacea inertia.
Dr Koku Adomdza, President of the GREAT Trust, remarks that “The proof of authority interventions is the degree of ability to manifest enduring justice, stability and peace, and prevention of future eruptions of similar unrests. The fact must not be forgotten that the August 2011 UK unrests were triggered by police shooting of a civilian from the minority ethnic African Caribbean community. As a pioneering victims-led race equality think and doing tank, GREAT Trust condemns all forms of violence, be it direct or indirect, overt or covert, disguised or crude.
“Similarly, GREAT condemns the abuse of human rights of any shape, form, kind or type, not the least the brutal murder of Mark Duggan, a precipitating factor to the unrests. In the interests of enduring peace and stability, it is crucial that the authorities adopt a consistent, comprehensive, unambiguous, transparent, ethical, human rights, cause and effect approach to crises manage the unrests and their aftermath. It is observable that an overly parochial, criminological, short-termist, repressive approach might backfire in the long-term, as it would suppress the fundamental causes of the unrests, only to re-emerge in the near future.
“GREAT is alarmed that UK policing still leaves much to be desired even after decades of several race relations and equality legislation, and in particular after several years of the McPherson Report into the racist and thuggish murder of late Stephen Lawrence, a young African Caribbean student, in which the UK police was described as institutionally racist. The cold-blooded murder of Mark Duggan sends chills down the spine of UK race relations and police – community dynamics with high risk of undermining previous positive achievements.
“We are concerned that it appears not much has been learnt from the brutal murder by UK police of late Charles De Menezes, the Latin American man in the high-tension aftermath of the September 2011 terrorist attacks on London’s transport system.
“Equally, we are disconcerted that after the widespread unrests of 1981 and the 2003, the authorities remain ill-equipped to adopt a workable preventative approach to socio-economic discontent, which have all culminated in the unrests of August 2011.
“After the April 1981 Brixton Riots, Lord Scarman's inquiry into what he called the worst outbreak of disorder in the UK in the 20th century also blamed "racial disadvantage that is a fact of British life", criticised the government and the police. The local community was already aggravated by "Operation Swamp" - during which large numbers of black youths were stopped and searched - and the confrontation quickly escalated spontaneously.
“In 1985 Brixton, Cherry Groce was left paralyzed from the waist down when she was shot by police looking for her son in connection with a robbery. Protesters armed with bricks and wooden sticks fought with the police after news of Ms Groce's shooting reached the South London community. Inspector Douglas Lovelock, who shot Mrs Groce, was cleared of criminal charges in 1987.
“In 2001, racial unrests flared across Oldham, Burnley, Bradford and other cities as result of heightened ethnic antagonism.
“In 2005, undercurrents of economic marginalization, poverty and alleged rape of a teenage female of African ancestry were cited as factors that heightened tensions between Birmingham’s African Caribbean and Asian communities, culminated in the murder of Isiah Young-Sam, a city council IT analyst returning home from the cinema. The following is a brief timeline scan of race-related unrests in the UK up until August 2011.
“It is discernible that in most UK socio-economic unrests, a significant proportion of disaffected, marginalized, disempowered, voiceless and oftentimes over-stigmatized and criminalized youth, who felt let-down by, with little confidence in the status quo, had unfortunately resorted to other legitimate means of protests.
“The repetitive nature of these unrests exposes the danger of living under the illusion that modern democracy is the be-and-end-all of societal governance, law and order, justice, peace and stability or that it offers the best forms of citizenship engagement. The global economic recession, failure to fix its fundamental causes, scandals of moral decadence in high legislative circles, unwillingness to protect the vulnerable and eagerness to stigmatize and dehumanize the marginalized and the disconnect between key societal constituencies within modern democracies, have created a democratic deficit and a creeping suggestion of democratic dictatorship, often tainted with an air of dismissive arrogance towards public stakeholder disaffection. Together, these factors create an atmosphere of quiet instability, indirect violence, assault on fundamental human rights and require a fundamental interrogation of the efficacy of contemporary realities of limited democratic dispensations, rule of law, separation of powers, social justice and a hunger for a new era of ‘enhanced democracy’ which is human rights driven, ethically-inspired and economic justice centred.”
The August 2011 unrests that spread across some of the deprived regions of Britain are indicative of authority failure in the raft of knee-jerk policy, strategic, operational and critically, resource allocation propositions in dealing with perennial legitimate concerns of aggrieved marginalized citizens. That the August 2011 unrests came not long after the students riots against the introduction of undesirable university tuition fees amidst an unprecedented global economic recession, says much about leadership sensitivity, consideration, competence or incompetence in listening and engaging with key strategic stake-holding communities in society – in both cases the youth, future leaders, who are directly affected by policies of contemporary ruling elite.
For sustainable peace and stability to prevail, GREAT strongly counsels for a more sophisticated understanding of violence, both direct and indirect, and cautions against the entrenched but ineffective selective, simplistic and parochial criminological approach for a robustly ethical cause and effect preventative model to societal unrests. One of the ways out of this morass is to adopt an inclusive, all-encompassing, consistent moral framework of governance, government, policing, racism, afrophobia, genuine community engagement and economic justice.
Importantly, the macro-environmental context of the August 2011 unrests should not be underestimated. The failure to find workable solutions to the ongoing economic recession, utilization of public funds to bail-out failed financial institutions, the continued unchecked culture of fat-cat bonuses by failed institutions, the Westminster expenses scandal and heightened public cynicism about politics and politicians, consequential intolerable vulnerability inflicted upon swathes of innocent citizens through record unemployment levels, homelessness, family breakdowns and the ruthlessly orthodox, uncreative and un-innovative neo-conservative and neo-liberal economic policies of drastic public expenditure reduction, bare-bone cutbacks on citizenship social welfare and the commercialization of the same, and an atmosphere of authority non-engagement with and stigmatization of critical societal constituencies, have all culminated in discontent of heightened tensions and proportions in the UK.
Not to be discounted is the equally pertinent factor of citizen concern, anxieties and mistrust that have developed as a result of the allocation of vast amount of public resources in the UN/NATO/Arab League invasion of Libya to discontinue human rights violations, while launching a savage assault on necessary societal welfare provision within the UK amidst skyrocketing rising cost of living, hand in glove with posing a blind eye to similar grotesque human rights abuses in countries like the Persian Gulf Countries of Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. There is a lack of consistency in dealing with discontent within the UK and abroad and the citing of national peculiarities have now become hackneyed that no longer washes with the public imagination.
Against this backdrop, it is significant that the August 2011 UK unrests are dealt with sensitively and in a sophisticated manner that adequately reflects the complexities, sensibilities, sensitivities and resolves existing contradictions between the upholding of human rights within the UK and abroad.
The overly simplistic and parochial criminalization of participants in the August 2011 unrests stands to contradict to a large extent the recognition, arming and support for Libyan rebels and the over-emphasis of the inflexible blind nation-state peculiarities of internal criminology vis-a-vis human rights, at the discount of palpable similarities, is dangerous and only fuels public perception, suspicion and distrust in governance by government, at a time that the credibility of legislative institutions is at an all-time low in the UK.
Finally, but not the least, GREAT calls for a fresh understanding of violence, criminality and their underlying causes, within the realities of the 21st Century. For many victims of the global economic disorder and recession, deprivation, poverty, unemployment, stigmatization, social exclusion, void equal opportunities and the continued dictatorship of capital etc are all forms of violence inasmuch as they violate their fundamental human rights. To them, the governance arrangements that enable the infliction of violence – as in rights violation - on them including incompetence to guarantee full employment, necessary for the fulfilment of collective fundamental human rights, while lawmakers remain relatively largely unaffected, are equally culpable, abrogates the duty of citizenship care and suggestive of criminality. To those disenfranchised sections of the UK society including disaffected youth, the absence of socio-economic justice is avoidable cruel violation of their fundamental human and citizenship rights as well as dehumanizing, un-dignified, painful lived experiences.
Further, GREAT calls for a consistently credible response to criminality and violence, because an inconsistent approach sews the seeds of instability and public disorder. It took significant planning and application of degrees of criminality to unleash the violence of harsh economic recession of unprecedented proportions. Yet not many participants in the savagery of the economic recession have been brought to justice the same way as those of the August 2011 unrests. Herein locates a fundamental contradiction in approaches to stability and public order. In the light of high incident tax evasion, white-colour crime, golden handshakes, unchecked corporate bonuses for failed institutions, at the auspices of ineffective governance and government, also undermine the rationale and orthodox approach to flex muscles at the expression of discontent, instead of a roots and branch approach. In keeping with this trajectory, GREAT urges the respective authorities to explore the opportunities that the unrests bring i.e. a cause, effects, creative and preventative approach at criminology, policing, violence, afrophobia, law, order and human rights including economic justice. The key precipitating factor of the August 2011 unrests is the cold-blooded brutal murder of Mark Duggan - a youth of African ancestry and this serious incident requires full public enquiry to ascertain the facts and necessary actions carefully considered and taken. Cold-blooded racist murders and consequential unrests are costly phenomena in all senses, and the smartest position of the ruling elite is to prevent them through the transparent promotion of inclusive social and economic justice.
GREAT counsels that for enduring peace and stability to be attained and prevail, the resort to any other forms of intervention besides a holistically creative and innovative approach is bound to fail as before, drive underground the underlying causes of the August 2011 UK unrests and set in motion yet another ticking time-bomb to explode in the future. Responsibly, this avoidable prospect must be prevented and the power to do so lies in the hands of UK’s ruling elite via ethical crises management simultaneous with toughness on routing out the deep-rooted structural, systemic and procedural causes of the unrests. This is the way to sustainable and inclusive economic justice, social cohesion, stability, peace, law and order.
Notes to Editors
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The Global Race Equality Action Trust – GREAT Trust is the first victims-led global race equality and anti-supremacist progressive think and doing tank that advocates through cognate Centres of Excellence for new innovative and creative platforms, schools of thought, approaches, models and paradigms to race equality and human rights issues and make racism history in the 21st Century. While GREAT salutes the selfless contributions of genuine race equality and human rights champions from all walks of life who often operate in difficult circumstances, GREAT considers the untold human misery that engulfs the majority citizens of the contemporary world as an indictment of the inadequacies outmoded status quo equalities frameworks.
Resistance to progressive change, fear of power and wealth-sharing, lack of vision and responsible leadership have blighted the necessary transformation required to consolidate the sacrifices and gains of yesteryears, prevent the necessary advancement of the race equality, human rights and citizenship agenda, and above all threaten to roll back the successes of the past.
The GREAT Trust signals and communicates the fierce urgency of time and hope to traverse this inertia. We call on all people over the world to stand up and fight for their fundamental human rights, reject the old approaches that have so abysmally failed to withstand the test of time and cowered in the phase of adversity, organise together on a new platform to effect progressive change and make the world a better, fairer, more equitable place.
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