the Disillusioned kid
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Sunday, May 25, 2008

Don't let them deport my friend!

I've known Hich for years and now the bastards want to deport him to Algeria...

If you know Hich and/or can help in any way, get int touch with the campaign.

Website: http://freehichamyezza.wordpress.com
Email: staffandstudents@googlemail.com
Phone: 07948590262

The press release does a pretty good job of summing up what's going on...

From a group of Nottingham residents, concerned student and academics at the University of Nottingham.
For immediate use, 24/05/08 SATURDAY

Notts Uni detainee innocent but still facing deportation

Hicham Yezza, a popular, respected and valued former PhD student and current employee of the University of Nottingham faces deportation to Algeria on Sunday 1st June. This follows his unjust arrest under the Terrorism Act 2000 on Wednesday 14th May alongside Rizwaan Sabir and their release without charge six days later.

It has subsequently become clear that these arrests, which the police had claimed related to so-called “radical materials” involved an Al Qaeda manual downloaded by Sabir as part of his research into political Islam and emailed to Yezza for printing because Sabir couldn’t afford to get it printed himself.

There has been a vocal response from lecturers and students. A petition is being circulated, letters have been sent by academics across the world and a demo is being planned for Wednesday. 28th May. This has clearly been deeply embarrassing to a government currently advocating an expansion of anti-terror powers.

On his release Hicham was re-arrested under immigration legislation and, due to confusion over his visa documentation, charged with offences relating to his immigration status. He sought legal advice and representation over these matters whilst in custody. On Friday 23rd May, he was suddenly served with a deportation notice and moved to an immigration detention centre. The deportation is being urgently appealed.

Hicham has been resident in the U.K. for 13 years, during which time he has studied for both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Nottingham. He is an active member of debating societies, a prominent member of an arts and theatre group, and has written for, and edited, Ceasefire, the Nottingham Student Peace Movement magazine for the last five years.

He is well known and popular on campus amongst the university community and has established himself as a voracious reader and an authority on literature and music. An application for British citizenship was underway, and he had been planning to make his yearly trip to Wales for the Hay Festival when he was suddenly arrested.

The authorities are clearly trying to circumvent the criminal justice system and force Hicham out of the country. Normally they would have to wait for criminal proceedings to finish, but here they have managed to convince the prosecution to drop the charges in an attempt to remove him a quick, covert manner. The desire for justice is clearly not the driving force behind this, as Hicham was happy to stand trial and prove his innocence.

Hicham had a large social network and many of his friends are mobilising to prevent his deportation. Matthew Butcher, 20, a student at the University of Nottingham and member of the 2008-9 Students Union Executive, said, “This is an abhorrent abuse of due process, pursued by a government currently seeking to expand anti-terror powers. Following the debacle of the initial ‘terror’ arrests they now want to brush the whole affair under the carpet by deporting Hicham.”

Supporters have been able to talk with Hicham and he said, “The Home Office operates with a Gestapo mentality. They have no respect for human dignity and human life. They treat foreign nationals as disposable goods - the recklessness and the cavalier approach they have belongs to a totalitarian state. I thank everyone for their support - it’s been extremely heartening and humbling. I’m grateful to everyone who has come to my aid and stood with me in solidarity, from students to Members of Parliament. I think this really reflects the spirit of the generous, inclusive Britain we know - and not the faceless, brutal, draconian tactics of the Home Office.”

[ENDS]

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Friday, May 02, 2008

Nottingham Celebrates Mayday with Moazzam Begg

In recent years Mayday in Nottingham has once again become a major celebration with the march from the Brewhouse Yard already something of a tradition. As successful as these demonstrations have been, they have taken place on the nearest weekend to May 1st, with little happening on the day itself. This year, the Mayday Organising Committee (an off-shoot of the Nottingham Refugee Campaign Group) felt that something should be done to mark the day itself and decided to organise a rally addressed by a local asylum seeker and former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg.

The event had originally been intended to take place in the International Community Centre (ICC) on Mansfield Road, but Moazzam Begg is a well-known name and a major draw, so it was felt necessary to move to the New Mechanics on North Sherwood Street. This was probably a wise decision as something like 70-80 people turned up on the day.

Before Moazzam spoke, the meeting was adressed by Amdani Juma, a local asylum seeker, familiar to anybody whose been involved in refugee issues in Nottingham. A refugee from Burundi where he was a pro-democracy activist, for which he was tortured, Amdani came to the UK in 2003 and was granted humanitarian protection. Since finding himself in Nottingham he has busied himself campaigning on refugee issues, raising awareness about AIDS, involving himself in various fora around the city and even became a member of Home Office run National Refugee Integration Forum. Despite all this, his application for Indefinite Leave to Remain was rejected by the Home Office and his appeal against this decision unsuccessful.

Amdani recounted his earliest celebration of Mayday as a child of eight in Burundi. At his instigation a one minute silence was held to remember workers across the world who had died in the struggle for a better world. His talk was wide ranging, but he stressed that he was proud to be an asylum seeker, because it meant that he was a survivor. He described his life as being like living more than one life, with his current struggle for Indefinite Leave to Remain being his fifth life. He also used the talk as an opportunity to promote the sponsored walk he is planning to undertake later in the month to raise money for an AIDS charity.

Moazzam Begg began his talk by musing on the word "Mayday," which he noted is French for "help me." An apposite phrase given his own experiences. Moazzam was one of nine British Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay by the US government. Released in 2005 without charge he has yet to receive any compensation or an apology. Since his release he has spoken widely and published a book, Enemy Combatant, in which he recounts his experiences of extra-judicial detention.

His neatly honed talk explored issues of freedom in the shadow of the "War on Terror." He noted that in surveys of "Britishness," the signing of the Magna Carta was often pointed to as a key event. The document enshrined protection against unlawful detention, a principle which was exported across the world, but which is now under attack. He pointed out that shortly after his abduction at gunpoint in front of his wife and children, his family had issued a writ of haebus corpus in the Pakistani courts. While unsuccessful, it demonstrates the idea's power.

He seemed interested in the way such high ideals had been corrupted and noted with irony the motto which had been plastered across the facility at Guantanamo: "Duty bound to protect freedom." It is this bizarre interpretation of freedom, he suggested, which allowed the US to dub the invasion of Iraq "Operation Enduring Freedom," as if freedom were something which had to be endured.

For someone detained for almost three years, Moazzam was surprisingly fair about his captors. he asserted that, while bad, Guantanamo was not the worst prison on earth. Simply the most notorious. He was clear that there were worse establishments, specifically those where people were killed or forced to see others killed. These, he explained, were what interrogators would threaten recalcitrant subjects with and a number of people being detained by the US have found them shipped to the likes of Egypt for a more thorough going-over than Americans had a taste for. In fact, his relaxed view extends so far that he hopes to tour, later this year, with a young American who had been one of his jailers.

Moazzam argued that the treatment of Muslims in the "War on Terror" with compared unfavourably with that of the Irish Catholic population in northern Ireland at the the height of "The Troubles." He pointed out that even at the height of internment, people were only being held without trial for up to three days. Now the government is seeking to give the police power to detain people for up to ninety days. He clearly saw this as a far broader issue. Noting that even former Secretary of State Colin Powell had called for the closure of Guantanamo he stressed that this would not address the problem of other, less prominent, detention centres (Bagram, Diego Garcia and others).

After the speakers, the discussion was opened up to the floor for questions and contributions. There was also an announcement about plans to mobilise against the BNP's Red White and Blue festival. The event is being held between 15-17 August in Denby, Derbyshire with campaigners planning to mobilise on Saturday 16 August from 9am.

All in all, this was an impressive, well attended event. The organisers are to be congratulated and there's something to build on for next year, but first there's the actual Mayday demonstration: 12 noon, Saturday May 5 starting at the Brewhouse Yard. Hopefully I'll see you there.

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Thursday, December 06, 2007

"I am the law!"



This is pretty shocking, even for a bitter, old anarchist like me. What was it N.W.A. used to say?

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Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Nottinghamshire Police shots somebody with 50,000 volts last week. Bizarrely this doesn't seem to have been a particularly controversial move with anybody other than myself. And all I did was write an Indymedia article about it. I bet the Chief Superintendent is quaking in his boots.

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Friday, June 01, 2007

"'[T]errorist' is a word so debased and loaded by political use that, if it has any meaning at all, it is counterproductive. There is no such objective thing as a terrorist. A criminal is a person who has been convicted of a crime. We can examine a person’s records and make an unemotional determination of whether or not they are a criminal. But a terrorist is, in practice, a person who fights for a cause we do not believe in using methods that we do not approve of. Calling someone a terrorist is a value judgement." - Nature

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Friday, May 18, 2007

Are YOU an animal rights extremist? Apparently I am.

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Wednesday, May 02, 2007

First they came for the animal rights activists...

Yesterday, thirty people were arrested for alleged involvement in "extremism" in dawn raids carried out across the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands. Predictably the media are lapping it up, providing extensive quotations from the police, with minimal analysis. This time, however, it isn't Muslims they're after, but animal rights activists. This ought to be worrying and not just for people involved in animal rights activism.

NETCU is the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit established to facilitate the policing of "domestic extremism." Now, in an era of international terrorism and post-7/7 this might not seem so unreasonable, but pay careful attention to the definition of domestic extremism they use:
Domestic extremism is the term used to describe any unlawful or recognisably anti-social act carried out as part of an 'extreme campaign'.

It is often associated with campaigns focused around a single issue, such as animal rights.
Violence, you will note, does not figure here, mere illegality is sufficient. If you think that this is merely me being paranoid, I urge you to consider their definition of a "lock on":
A 'lock on' is when a domestic extremist fastens him/herself onto an object to cause an obstruction or disruption using a padlock in combination with arm tubes to make it difficult for the police to remove the individual, the object or both.

Lock ons usually involve several domestic extremists and can involved the use of multiple arm tubes, barrels, vehicles, clamps, D-locks in combination and at more than one location.
"Domestic extremists" appears to be the new term for what used to be known as "activists" or "campaigners," but those terms presumably lack the required shock value. It should be clear that the term has nothing whatsoever to do with violence. It is, after all, pretty difficult to be violent when you're fastened to somebody or something. (As if to underline the point, the front page of their website utilises a picture of the Clown Army.) It's certainly a definition which incorporates myself. How long then before the police are turning up at my house at 5.30 in the morning, and how long before anybody sees me again?

Going off on a slight tangent for a moment, NETCU have been particularly interested in animal rights activism (although they've been spotted on anti-GM demos). Of course, they claim to be "impartial." Tellingly, however, a perusal of their links page reveals a number of explicitly pro-vivisection organisations, but not a single animal rights group. As NETCU Watch ruefully note, not even the RSPCA merit a mention. Whatever one's opinion on vivisection (I'm sceptical about its value, but not actively involved in opposing it) this ought to raise a number of difficult questions. Personally, I find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that it is essentially a political police force set up to render activism ineffective.

NETCU, of course, is merely one element within the state's repressive arsenal, which has blossomed (if you'll excuse the confused metaphors) under New Labour: surveillance cameras are now ubiquitous; unauthorised protests in Parliament Square are illegal; solidarity with armed resistance groups is a criminal offence; Asbos can ban activists from whole areas; ID cards are on the way; and so on and so forth. Typically, the mainstream media seem happy to toe the line on all this. Stopping things getting any worse is going to be up to us. We'll just have to hope they don't arrest us all before we manage it.

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Friday, April 27, 2007

It's all Greek to me

Earlier this week, riots shook the Greek penal system, as prisoners protested against the beating of one of their number.

The unrest began at Malandrinos prison in central Greece after the alleged beating of a bank robbery suspect by prison guards. Although designed for 260 inmates, the facility currently holds 440 in predictably cramped conditions. The protesting prisoners demanded a reduction of prison overcrowding and reform of Greece's parole system.


Police were called to the prison in central Greece after inmates refused to return to their cells and began throwing burning sheets and clothes from the roof. On Wednesday, a spokeswoman from the Justice Ministry stated that some 200 prisoners remained on the roof, following the breakdown of negotiations with ministry officials. "Police have entered the prison," she claimed, "and are trying to get them off the roof without using violence."

One inmate, described by Associated Press as a "spokesman" said police were "welcome" to take on prisoners. "We will kill for our dignity," convicted murderer Yiannis Palis told Antenna TV. "We will take this all the way." Unlike so much activist rhetoric you can't help feeling that his past form, suggests this promise should be taken seriously.


Although disorder had initially spread to ten other prisons, this had largely died out by late Tuesday. Police utilised stun grenades and tear gas to quash an uprising at a high security facility in Athens after a number of inmates tried to use the unrest to escape. The use of tear gas, appears to have been particularly controversial, as this institution is located in a densely populated area of the city. By Wednesday, authorities had regained control everywhere except Malandrios and another institution on Crete.

There have been a number of solidarity demonstrations in Greece, organised by the country's famously militant anarchist movement. On Wednesday, a group of anarchists, numbering anywhere between 30 and 80, marched through the centre of Athens, attacking shops, a bank, ministers' offices and a police station where they torched twelve police vehicles. Amazingly, despite clashes with the police at Kaningos Square, there were no arrests and the group dispersed into Exarcheia district, apparently a traditional anarchist neighborhood. Further arson attacks were carried out the following evening and into the early hours of the morning, with two cars belonging to the Uruguayan ambassador to Greece being among the targets (no, I don't know why either).

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