Ihsan

Suspect Communities

Suspect Communities:
The Real ‘War on Terror’ in Europe

Saturday 21 May 2005 - Conference

Libeskind Building, London Metropolitan University, 166-222 Holloway Road, London N7 8DB

The 'war on terror' promotes a culture of suspicion against migrant and Muslim communities. They are made insecure in the name of national security. New laws include: bans on organisations and on any 'association' with them; special detention powers; and everyday police activity such as stop-and-search.

As a basis for these measures, new laws have redefined ‘terrorism’ more broadly to include normal political activities and resistance against oppressive regimes abroad. The European Union has encouraged and even adopted such measures, to be implemented by member states.

In response to these threats, our conference aims:

1) to analyse how 'anti-terror' and 'security' measures treat communities as 'terrorist suspects';
2) to share experiences among lawyers, human rights activists and targeted communities;
3) to find ways of working together more effectively to resist the various intended and unintended consequences on communities throughout Europe.

The day will be divided into a series of six workshops, three running simultaneously in the morning and three in the afternoon. The workshops will be convened by leading experts and human rights activists, including; Adnan Siddiqui (Stop Political Terror), Bill Bowring (LondonMet, HRSJ), Fabio Marcelli (National Co-ordinator of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers - Italy), Francis Webber (Barrister - Two Garden Court Chambers), Geoffrey Bindman (Bindman & Partners), Ghayasuddin Siddiqui (Muslim Parliament), Harmit Atwal (Institute of Race Relations), Hikmet Tabak (former director of MED-TV), Imran Hussain (Stephen Lawrence’s solicitor), James Welch (Legal Director, Liberty), Julen Arzuaga (The International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples), Liz Fekete (Institute of Race Relations), Mark Muller (Chairman, Kurdish Human Rights Project), Mary Hickman (LondonMet, ISET), Masoud Zabeti (Anglo-Iranian Lawyers), Martin Mubanga (ex-Guantanamo detainee from UK), Öykü Didem Aydin (Turkish Lawyer), Paddy Hillyard (Queen’s University Belfast, author of ‘Suspect Communities: People Experience of the Prevention of Terrorism Acts in Britain’), Tony Bunyan (Statewatch), Vainer Burani (Swiss Lawyer) and Wolfgang Kaleck (German Lawyer, Chairman of Republican Attorney and Lawyer Association), amongst others!

Workshop 1 - Terrorist Lists
Workshop 2 - Detention
Workshop 3 - Policing
Workshop 4 - Intelligence Agencies
Workshop 5 - Migration and Asylum
Workshop 6 - Post Cold War Global Politics

The event is co-sponsored by the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and Human Rights (EALDH), London Metropolitan University’s Human Rights & Social Justice Research Institute and the Institute for the Study of European Transformations, the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC), and the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain.

The event is also supported by The Green Party, Stop Political Terror, Voices, Justice and Peace in East London, Peace in Kurdistan Campaign, Kurdish Federation UK, Sutton for Peace and Justice, Voices Refugee Forum, CARF, UK Zimbabwean Community Campaign to Defend Asylum Seekers, Front for Rights and Freedom, Wolfe Tone Society, NO2ID, National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC).

Places for the conference are extremely limited. For further information and to reserve your ticket, please contact:
Ian Waller - Email: i.waller@londonmet.ac.uk
or Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7133 5095

Ticket prices vary between £70 for professionals, £40 for academics and £20 for activists, and are at the discretion of the conference organisers.

posted by Julaybib at 4/27/2005 01:02:00 PM