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Intensification of policing, civil liberties implicationsThe costs of repressionSecurity for the London Olympics 2012 will be overseen by a Cabinet level Olympic Security Committee chaired by the Home Secretary and comprising senior officers from the UK security forces. The London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG), an interim body responsible for any negotiations before the Olympic Delivery Authority was fully constituted, had a Security Directorate of its own. £25 million has been allocated to in venue security, and a further £200 million to cover "wider security costs" (GamesBids.com, July 16, 2005). Philip Webster in The Times reported on July 6, 2006, that the House of Commons Cabinet sub-committee considering Games preparations has heard that the security budget (quoted here as £190 million) may have to more than double. London already has a surveillance network of 500,000 CCTV cameras. Consultant Mark Bostok of Arup, which undertook a cost benefit analysis of staging the Olympics, has stated that the security costs have not been properly estimated. Athens initial estimate for security was just over £71 million; the city's final security expenditure was just under £1.06 billion (L. Cohn, Business Week, August 15, 2005). Rule 53 and ATCSA 2001Political demonstrations will be banned on the Olympic site and in surrounding areas (IOC Rule 53). Anti-terror powers under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (ATCSA) may be used even more widely to persecute and criminalise dissent, thus attacking the rights of free expression and association. These have already been used against anti-war protesters: in the run up to the US-UK attack on Iraq in March 2003, the police announced a wide stop-and-search zone around Fairford airbase to block protesters; at the DSEI Arms Fair in September 2003, police carried out a stop-and-search operation against those demonstrating. When challenged at the High Court, police argued that they needed no specific reason to target individuals under ATCSA 2001, and the court ruled that this interpretation was consistent with parliament's intention. Thus the law authorises arbitrary police powers. Meanwhile, a new bill, currently under consideration in the Commons, if passed will allow ministers to create new criminal offences punishable with less than two years imprisonment, without a debate in parliament. John Spencer, a Cambridge professor of law, argues that this may be used to "introduce house arrest, give the police stronger powers of arrest and interrogation, [and] set up new courts" (M. Berlins, The Guardian, February 15, 2006). Anti-terrorist policing is already undermining solidarity networks among emigres and refugees (Peirce, 2003), is written into policy statements at a local level and seeks to operate through emigre associations engaged in so called 'partnership working', a form of intimidation (Hackney Safer Communities Partnership, 2004). The UK has acted as a global vanguard of the 'war on terror' since 2001. Anti-terror legislation systematically undermines human rights and civil liberties. It targets migrant and Muslim individuals as well as political activists.
Police in the Olympic boroughs have a continuing history of racist assault, including arbitrary arrest, house raids, stop and search, the planting of drugs, deaths in custody and the shooting of unarmed suspects. ATCSA powers renegotiate the basis of a police state founded as a counter in the war in the north of Ireland; the mass media have recomposed their racism and become embedded in a one dimensional process that stigmatises Muslims (fomerly the Irish) as terrorists. There has been a twelve-fold increase in the number of UK Asians subjected to stop-and-search powers since the July 7 bombings in London (V. Dodd, The Guardian, December 24, 2005); searches had already tripled since the passing of ATCSA in 2001. The Guardian also reports (J. Randerson, January 5, 2006) that 37% of black men have their DNA profiles listed on the police's national database, compared with 13% of Asian men and 9% of white men. Under the promotional gloss of a multi-cultural London, a racist 'state of emergency' is reinventing itself, corrupting the quotidian and denying UN and EU charter guarantees (CAMPACC, 2003).
In Mexico City, shortly before the start of the 1968 Olympics, 300 people (many students) were murdered by security forces at an extra-parliamentary demonstration. In Sydney, new laws gave police extra powers to enforce Rule 53 This essay is part of the Games Monitor briefing papers available for download from our Media Centre page. Submitted by Carolyn Smith on Wed, 27/12/2006 - 15:49. Article | Human Rights | Politics | Security |
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