It’s too early to say whether the police have made another foul-up or whether one brother shot the other.
What is certain, though, is that the BBC has no idea how to abide by their responsibility not to incite unrest. Last night the BBC spoke of the need to consider the concerns of “the community” when making arrests.
Previously, I had sat in disbelief as local residents spoke, not of their shock that their neighbour might have been developing or planning to deploy chemical weapons, but that the police raided their friend’s house.
Clearly the local people should stop thinking of themselves as victims of police-oppression and the BBC should stop telling people that there is some relevance to the race of any fundamentalists involved:
Making sure relations between the police and young people in the area do not break down could be their main task.
Race relations and crime, while they have statistical relevance, should not be part of an impartial broadcast. The apparent victimisation of the only community that has created suicide bombers is laughable.
June 6th, 2006 at 10:38 am
‘The only community that has created suicide bombers’
Are you joking?You have never heard of the kamikaze?
In more recent times suicide bombing techniques were developed by the Tamil Tigers.They are not Muslims.
The threat of suicide bombers to the UK was considered to come from outsiders but it seems ‘the war on terror’ has helped to create home grown groups in the UK. The IRA was a much greater threat and still maybe with groups like the Real IRA.
June 6th, 2006 at 10:58 am
The kamikaze targeted miltary targets.
The Tamil Tigers are, to be fair, a very good parallel, and I concede that. The suicide bombers in England can never be attributed to the war on terror without implying that they are somehow justified.
The Tamils and the British-born suicide bombers are both members of a community which does not consider the island they’re living on as home and both are attacking their hosts.
June 6th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
The Tamils very much consider the island they are living on as home.
Sri Lanka’s written history is exclusively Sinhalese-Buddhist, but since the earliest times the presence of Tamil speaking people in the island is mentioned in the chronicles.
A large number of the South Asians living in Britain were born here and consider it home. Inspite of what people may tell you in the pub, immigration from the sub-continent has been tightly controlled for the last thirty years.
The Japanese of course committed genocide in China. Have you read about the Rape of Nanking(the accounts written by John Rabe) and the germ warfare which was conducted on the civilian population during the second world war?
June 7th, 2006 at 12:45 am
You were in disbelief as the local residents spoke?
June 7th, 2006 at 3:10 am
I know New Labour and the Tories are not strong advocates of civil liberties but the presumption of innocence until proved guilty still exists.
June 7th, 2006 at 7:40 am
Tony, I don’t understand what your last comment is aimed at, but you are wrong anyway. Labour are gradually removing that presumption.
Your assumption that I am some sort of bigot is troubling. Of course most South Asian-origin people living in England consider England their home, but those suicide bombers and many other extremist Muslim clerics have equated England to a hotel which is run by infidels.
If you consider a place to be ‘home’ you don’t attack it. I would suggest that virtually all immigrants and first-generation immigrants of virtually all origins consider England their home, but those who attack its very bases: freedom, democracy, peaceful protest; are often the same people who don’t.
June 7th, 2006 at 9:05 am
‘first generation immigrants’.If someone is born in a country that person is hardly an immigrant! But this is the point, if various groups feel they are second class citizens then the danger is they will be drawn to extremism. Look at what has happened in Northern Ireland.
At the moment there is only a very tiny minority of fanatics, but the policies aimed at eliminating them,’ the war on terror’, may well create the conditions where they thrive.
June 8th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
Someone born in this country to two immigrant parents is still part of the immigrant community, unless they are extremely well integrated.
If I as an English man moved to China with an English woman and had children, would you call them ‘Chinese’?
Most people wouldn’t, they would at best be called Chinese of English descent, but more likely probably just labeled English, or British..
This whole idea of adopting the identity of a particular people just because you were born over the line of a map is pure blank slatist fantasy.
June 9th, 2006 at 3:41 am
Not so many Englishmen living in China in modern times because of the communist regime. Of course it has opened up in recent years.
I do know Professor Tom Scovel, an American, who was born and raised in China by his missionary parents.He speaks fluent Mandarin,and was without doubt influenced by chinese culture while growing up in China.
Up until 1981 if someone was born in Britain they became a British subject as was a foreign woman who married a British man.
Many immigrants to this country came from parts of the world that were parts of the British Empire( remember that little Englanders)
so they speak English and may even have afternoon tea!
Many of those who are born of South Asian immigrant parents only speak English or only know a little of their parents language.
Dave and Gavin seem to know seem to know little of other cultures.