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Sowing the seeds of a future police state
• THANKS to Mr Thomas Andrews who wrote to the New Journal about his concern at the victimisation of Muslims (I fear we live in a police state, February 22).
One Muslim terrorist suspect, released without charge recently after several days under arrest, voiced the view that: “We do live in a police state as far as Muslims are concerned.”
He was exaggerating.
If Britain had really been a police state he would have been languishing inside prison, rather than freely giving interviews outside.
But I nevertheless share Mr Andrews’ concerns, for it seems to me that the present Labour government, while not operating a police state, is all too intent on building the apparatus that will make a police state all the more likely in future.
That is why I am concerned not only about so-called anti-terrorist legislation being sought to extend police powers ever more widely, but also about issues such as the retention of individuals’ DNA on a police database without their consent, and even when they have not been charged with any crime.
There are already around 140,000 people on the National DNA database who have never been charged with any crime.
I am similarly suspicious of road pricing arrangements that would employ sophisticated technology to follow everyone’s use of their car, so that the authorities (and anyone working for them) would be able to track an individual’s movements wherever they went.
At present, because of the international situation and this Labour government’s disastrous foreign policy, it is Muslims (and especially young male Muslims) who bear the brunt of Labour’s authoritarianism. In one way or another we all belong to minorities and if we let the government ride roughshod over individual liberties and our rights to privacy, any one of us could become the victim in future years.
I am grateful that Mr Andrews and others are standing up for Muslim citizens now.
Cllr Faruque Ansari
(Lib Dem) Town Hall
Judd Street
WC1
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