Repeated attempts were ten made to cloud tne issues at the heart of the community
There was a refusal to acknowledge that Mohammed Abdul Kahar was shot by the police. Yet the suggestion that an unarmed man subject to a raid by highly trained armed police in the early hours was shot by anyone else seems difficult to countenance.
And the police and government as usual relied on false logic and unsubstantiated propositions: you are either for or against terrorism; if you are against it you have to support the police; the police may occasionally make mistakes but this is a small price to pay and they can be trusted.
The community was united against terrorism. Respect has clearly indicated its support for that view. But your posinon on that does nor automalically determine support for or co-operation with everything the police does.
Many people view police and state action in recent bycals as massively mercasing the threat of terrorism - not just due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but through a string of repressive and counterproductive policies.
The state and the police have demonstrated time and again that they cannot be trusted. Thousands of 'stop and searches' of Muslims and hundreds of arrests have only led to a handful of convictions - suggesume a comolete v ous proportionate and racist targeting.
British involvement in CIA rendition flights has been described by the European Council's recent report as "intentional or grossly negligent collusion".
It follows complicity with Guantanamo Bay, denounced by the UN at the highest levels. De Menezes was executed either in the knowledge that he was innocent or, at the very least, without any reasonable grounds to believe he wasn't.
All these policies involved the same MIS, police anti-terleaders" to provide them with political cover. rorist section and other state forces that would be intimately linked to the decision making behind the Forest Gate raid.
Why should the community trust them not to make mistakes, not to lie, not to run roughshod over the rights of the innocent. not to terrorise neighbourhoods unnecessarily, and not to engage in Islamophobic harassment?
Similar issues arose, a week later, when the Dewsbury house of internationally renowned Islamic scholar Maulana Yakub Qasmi was raided. His vocal opposition to terrorism is a matter of record.
Local businessman Tahir Zaman described his family as "very very very respected", stating the were shocked Canc angry. Local Labour MP Shahid Malik accepted the standing of the family but added, "people have to accept the police are acting in good faith and have a job to do". 300 members of the local community clearly didn't think so, as they protested outside ine nouse.
The comment that the public would have to get used to this sort of incident suggests that, for the state, neither trust nor the credibility of the "threat" really enter into the equation. tanks at Heathrow Airport in be 90! the run up to the mammoth million in March 2003, it is impossible to exclude the posmunity radically opposed to broad opposition is built. the "war on terror".
Newham Respect - with three councillors and fresh from winning thousands of votes in the recent borough election and tens of thousands of across East London responded promptly to the Forest Gate raids with a statement and a public meeting.
A demonstration was called by Stop Concal backed by the Muslim Council of Britain, the Muslim association of Britain and Newham Respect.
Respect member Yvonne Ridley called for a boycott by the community of the police, later clarifying that she was not talking about day to day relations but more organised liaison.
MP George Galloway also made clear on Question Time that there had been no consultation inside Respect on Ridley's intervention, which did not represent the view of the organisation.
Al any rale measures such as a boycott of police consultative bodies is nothing new. A similar stance was taken by the black community, backed by many left Labour councils in the 1980s.
For too long the police have used "community leaders" to provide them with political cover Regrettably the Metropolitan Police Authority and Ken Livingstone's uncritical backing for police chief Ian Blair over the Menezes shooting and other have shown where this can lead
And the affair raises questions over the recent extension of police powers to detain suspects from the present 14 days, to 28.
Liberal Democrats and As with the mobilisation of latter - Labour still wants it to Tories both supported the
This type of raid followed anti-war mobilisation of two by the lengthy detention of people without charge in circumstances where there may sibility as a motive that this is be no evidence against them state muscle-flexing in a com- may become the norm unless