‘Lack of facts about terrorism prevention’
INITIATIVE ‘NOT GETTING MESSAGE ACROSS’
A ‘PERPETUAL lack of information’ about the government’s counterterrorism strategy has led to ‘genuine fears’ of persecution among Muslims in Greater Manchester, a report has found.
Although Prevent was said to be ‘working well’ in the region, the report said it was not getting its message across to communities where ‘high levels of distrust and suspicion of statutory agencies exist.’
The independent Preventing Hateful Extremism and Promoting Social Cohesion report was commissioned by the region’s mayor Andy Burnham following the Arena bombing, which left 22 people dead and left dozens seriously injured.
It concluded there should be an effort to move Prevent – which aims to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism – away from the police and law enforcement.
“Most people agreed that the safeguarding principles that underpin Prevent are correct,” the report added.
“However, there is a perpetuating cycle of lack of information available to communities regarding Prevent and circulation of inaccurate information. This leads to fear developing within communities.
“It was strongly felt that the positive work going on across Greater Manchester was not being appropriately disseminated into communities, where high levels of distrust and suspicion of statutory agencies continues to exist.
“It was felt that the lack of information was exploited by those with an anti-Prevent or anti-Islam agenda who maliciously miscommunicated the aims of Prevent or true nature of the issue without evidence to support their claims.
“Organisations and individuals found it difficult to challenge this without statistics to refute the claims.
“This has perpetuated the problem, leading to the creation of suspect communities and fear of persecution communities.”
The report added: “From the people that were involved in the commission’s engagement, there was a strong feeling from the members of the Muslim community that Prevent targets Muslim communities and that this was a genuine fear felt by Greater Manchester Muslims.”
Prevent is one of the four strands of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy. It supports people at risk of joining extremist groups and carrying out terrorist activity.
It has been criticised in the past by MPs and the Muslim Council of Britain, who have said it can make Muslims feel isolated and even more open to turning to radicalisation.
Greater Manchester mayor Mr Burnham said: “If the perception of the Prevent strategy is different from the reality, then that can be exploited by those seeking to undermine any form of counter-terrorism strategy.
“Therefore we accept the need, as identified in the report, to provide more information about Prevent. amongst Muslim Any counter-terrorism strategy needs to be localised, have community buy-in and be seen to be fair to all communities rather than appearing to target one.”
Mr Burnham said the government’s Operation Dovetail pilot to transfer safeguarding responsibilities under Prevent from the police to local authorities would be rolled out.
The commission, chaired by Bury council leader Rishi Shori, also found social and economic inequalities are likely to have a negative impact on social cohesion and could lead to radicalisation.
They found there are marked economic differences between ethnic groups in Manchester and there was a feeling public consultation failed to reach grassroot communities, with engagement usually with ‘representatives of the community’ who were often self-appointed, had their own agenda and do not necessarily represent the communities’ views.
The loss of neighbourhood policing teams has also resulted in a negative impact on cohesion.