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British cops murder in London, public turns riot
nn - 07.08.2011 02:11
Na het doodschieten van een 29 jarige vader bij een politieactie heeft het publiek besloten niet langer de excuses af te wachten.
Dit kan er dus ook gebeuren als mensen onder 'vage' omstandigheden sterven bij politieacties en als de politie niet langer begrijpt dat ze ook maar burgers zijn. No Justice, No Peace!
Raphael G. Satter Associated Press
LONDON — The gritty north London neighbourhood of Tottenham exploded in anger Saturday night after a young man was shot to death by police.
Two patrol cars, a building and a double-decker bus were torched as rioters clashed with officers in front of the Tottenham Police Station, where people had gathered to demand “justice” for the death of a 29-year-old killed in an apparent gunfight.
“It’s really bad,” said local resident David Akinsanya, 46. “There are two police cars on fire. I’m feeling unsafe.”
Sirens could be heard across the city as authorities rushed reinforcements to the scene. In Tottenham shop windows were smashed as residents looted the stores, pushing shopping carts full of stolen goods down the street.
Officers in riot gear and on horseback pushed up against the demonstrators. Akinsaya put the number of demonstrators at between 400 and 500. Police said there were about 300 people gathered.
Miles from the tourist hotspots of central London, Tottenham is one of the most deprived areas in all of England, with nearly half of all children living in poverty, according to campaigners. The area is very diverse and home to one of the capital’s biggest black populations.
The area also has a history of racial tension and anti-police feeling.
In 1985 Tottenham was the scene of a deadly riot after a local woman suffered heart failure when her home was raided by the police. The Tottenham riots were among the most violent in the country’s history, with one officer stabbed to death as he tried to protect firefighters and nearly 60 others hospitalized.
 Website: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1035670--riot-hits-london-following-police-shooting-of-father-of-four
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| aanvullingen | | uit dit artikel zijn aanvullingen verplaatst naar de ruispagina | | | | beetje achtergrond | nn - 07.08.2011 02:20
de actie waar de jongen bij is omgekomen was onderdeel van een langdurige operatie rondom vuurwapen bezit onder zwarte jongeren in london.
de politie beweert dat de jongen gewapend was en eerst geschoten zou hebben maar dat is niet heel relevant in het waarom van de rellen.
de emoties zijn namelijk steeds hoger op gelopen in de buurt omdat zwarte jongeren in de buurt het gevoel hebben dat zij elke dag meerdere malen worden staande gehouden en gefouileerd (zg stop and search) uitsluitend omdat ze zwart zijn.
meer info en udates:  http://www.revleft.com/vb/riots-tottenham-police-t159251/index.html
| | The working class strikes back | Class War - 07.08.2011 15:16
The working class strikes back.
| | @ rj | nn - 07.08.2011 16:46
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/tottenha...-you-get-fire/
'There's no excuse for violence.' It's a familiar refrain. Even people who spend their lives campaigning against injustice are susceptible to blindly repeating it at the first whiff of a riot's rising smoke.
But stop to think for a moment before you condemn what's happening in Tottenham.
Violence, after all, bleeds from every pore of the capitalist state: from dire impoverishment and starvation through to police brutality, all the way up to war. But this kind of violence is routinely excused: it's either necessary to 'keep us safe', or it's just the way things are.
The kind of violence that we're told there's 'no excuse' for - the kind the newspapers focus on so angrily and relentlessly - is usually not even actual violence at all. It's setting a police car on fire - or, for that matter, smashing the windows of the Millbank Tower.
Property damage is not violence - it doesn't physically hurt anybody. And it doesn't come out of nowhere: time after time, it is a desperate response to the violence of the police.
Student Kit Withnail wrote about Millbank in Red Pepper: 'I had my head bashed in that day by police who charged us when I had my back to them. I spent the evening in hospital, bleeding from the head and vomiting.' And that was just one of hundreds of terrible stories.
Occasionally a cop grazes their knee or similar at a protest, and it's reported with the utmost seriousness as an 'officer injured'. But it's hardly a fair fight.
In Tottenham, as the media makes 'scenes of looting' its focus, the original act of horrific violence that this is all really about starts to get lost.
This is about a community enraged by the police killing a man named Mark Duggan. The media have been quick to call the 29-year-old a 'gangster', despite the utter lack of evidence for that assertion.
The known facts are that the father-of-four was shot twice in the face on Thursday by a police officer wielding a Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine gun. (Few have rushed to condemn that violence.)
Semone Wilson, Mark's girlfriend, said: 'I spoke to him at about 5pm and he asked me if I'd cook dinner. He said he spotted a police car following him.
'By 6.15 he had been gunned down. I kept phoning and phoning to find out where he was. He wasn't answering.
'I rushed down to where it happened. They let me through the police lines but they wouldn't let me see his body.'
Some witnesses report that Duggan was lying on the ground when he was shot.
Yesterday (Saturday), hundreds gathered to demand justice for Duggan, marching from the Broadwater Farm estate where he lived to Tottenham police station.
They asked for someone to come out and speak to them. A resident told the BBC that a 16-year-old girl approached police to ask questions - and they 'set upon her with batons'.
Then people got really angry. As the fires started, they were chanting a simple demand: 'We want answers'.
They deserve those answers. And those who tell them to be calm and wait for the IPCC inquiry might reflect on the record of that useless organisation.
Because this is not just about Mark Duggan. This is about Smiley Culture. This is about Ian Tomlinson, Jean Charles de Menezes, Harry Stanley and so many hundreds more...
Martin Luther King said 'a riot is the language of the unheard'. The people on the streets of Tottenham are not 'violent' criminals with some burning hatred of Aldi. They are part of a community that has been pushed to the edge by the very real violence of the police.
As one rioter, Jamal, told Channel 4 News: 'We're here to tell the police they can't abuse us, harass us. We won't put up with it. This is just the beginning, this is war, and this is what you get - fire.'
| | aanvullinkje | nn - 08.08.2011 16:22
Volgens Ahmed Marcouch in BNR vanmiddag radio programma is er sprake van
mensen die misbruik van de situatie maken. Hoe kan je dergelijke kritiek tegen spreken ? Hij maakte de vergelijking met de rellen die ontstonden in A'dam West toen er een volgens hem schizo jongen in het politie buro begon te steken en toen is doodgeschoten. Ook zei Ahmed Marcouch dat er sprake is van " Anarchisten " die alles kapot maken. De aanhalingstekens zijn van mij. Hij ging verder niet in op die volgens hem Anarchisten.
Jammer.
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