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Blair Govt green signal for racial profiling airports
by Mike Lockey

       London: As part of the ongoing so-called war on terror, proposals have been made by the government and transport chiefs in Britain to introduce racial profiling at airports throughout the country. Hardly surprisingly, these ideas have been attacked by MPs and community groups alike, while one of the UK's top cops, Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent Ali Desai, has said that: "What is being suggested is that we should have a new offence in this country called "travelling whilst Asian". What we don't want to do is actually alienate the very communities who are going to help us catch terrorists". The proposals apparently involve a profiling technique that would pick out people from certain ethnic or religious backgrounds for extra security checks. The security services believe that this would be a more effective way of spotting potential terrorists than random searches.

      These, of course, would be the same security services who knew that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Be that as it may, former British police chief John Stevens has waded into the argument stating that: "Airport bottlenecks could be reduced by careful targeting, with young Muslim men a focus". Not unnaturally, quotes like this have incensed many Muslims, including MPs such as Sajjad Khan, who said: "This type of stereotyping will do nothing to improve social and community cohesion at a time when it should be top of the agenda but will instead create yet more divisions within our society. "What is needed is an intelligence led approach by the security and police forces to combat the threat of terrorism and not a blanket approach as is being suggested by this barmy proposal". The general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain agrees, and told Sky News that: "If you treat a community as a problem community, you are not going to get support from them...If the profiling is done on the basis of race and religion, it will be wrong, it is not going to work...It could end up as racism unfortunately". And the general secretary of the Hindu Council UK, Anil Bhanot, is also against the proposals. He was reported in the Asian Times newspaper as saying: "The government's tactics could divide the Asian community. The authorities should be targeting radicals, not the entire Asian community. They should engage with Asian organisations". The Sikh Federation's Jagtar Singh was reported in the same newspaper as saying: "It's a dangerous move to target people according to the colour of their skin". A truism perhaps, but one that seems to have passed a certain section of the British governing classes by, and that, to say the least, is somewhat scary.
-Oct 26,  2006

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