Brighton & Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign is pleased to announce its affiliation to ‘Together Against Prevent’, a broad coalition of organisations opposed to the government’s ‘Prevent’ programme.
We strongly support the following founding statement of ‘Together Against Prevent’, and we encourage organisations and institutions concerned about the threat to civil liberties posed by ‘Prevent’ to join us by affiliating as well.
- We recognise and condemn the damage that Prevent’s “spot the potential terrorist” approach has made primarily in stigmatising and criminalising entire Muslim communities, but also to a growing number of political activists and campaigners labelled with ill-defined terms like “non-violent extremist” or “domestic extremist”.
- We view Prevent as a policy that is based on insufficient evidence to support the flawed assumption that ‘extremist’ ideology opposed to subjective ‘British values’ is the single most important cause of terrorism. We therefore support closer collaboration between different campaigning, religious and community organisations to call on the government to end its Prevent strategy.
- We support and encourage more political debate in schools, colleges and universities and reject attempts to close down and censor dissenting voices. We welcome open discussion with all young people about potentially radical ideas and call on all educational institutions to vigorously defend the right to free academic inquiry on issues considered ‘controversial’.
- We pledge to take no Prevent funds and support non-cooperation, wherever possible, with local Prevent programmes.