Victoria Brittain

A nightmare without end

Victoria Brittain — 2007-03-01T06:37:00Z

Shahajan Janjua's story is a glimpse of what the war on terror means for young British Asian men

How does a young man from west London find himself landed in a Kenyan police station, hanging from his wrists, his feet tied to buckets of freezing water? How does he find himself, soon after, being dined by MI5 officers at a Nairobi hotel one moment, then imprisoned underground in the desert the next?

The story of Shahajan Janjua, a British Asian, is a little window into the "war on terror". As with the cases of the three young men from Tipton who ended up in Guantánamo Bay, MI5 officials in this case showed themselves apparently incapable of making a judgment of young British Asian men's likely links to terrorism. So, another has come back from an innocent overseas trip traumatised. Would it have happened if he had been white and middle-class? (...)

- / Guardian

A tale of two breakfasts

Victoria Brittain — 2006-05-11T14:31:00Z

Presidents, prime ministers - how universally they hate to step down from power. Long after most of their people and colleagues wish they would go, they hang on, convinced that the country still needs them. Fraser Grace's play about Zimbabwe in 2001, currently on stage in London, resonates with Britain in 2006. We all have conversations about what on earth Blair is thinking. What's in his head? And we know we don't have a clue. But when it comes to the same conversation about Mugabe, the old African stereotypes come up and we say that he's mad. (...) - / Guardian

Israel, South Africa and the boycott

Victoria Brittain, Ronnie Kasrils — 2005-05-25T12:36:00Z

Academic boycott Will sanctions against Israeli universities help or hinder peace and justice in the Middle East?

Also see This self-defeating campaign of double standards is strangling liberal voices , by David Newman and Benjamin Pogrund.

The racist and colonial policies echo apartheid, and call for a similar response

Last October, 13-year-old Iman al-Hams was shot and wounded by an Israeli army unit in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, despite being identified as a little girl, and wearing a school uniform. Iman was machine-gunned by the unit's commander. She had 17 bullets in her body, and three in her head, a Palestinian doctor told the Guardian. Iman is one of 654 Palestinian children to have been killed in the occupied territories since September 2000. Several were killed as they sat at their desks in class. Three and a half thousand children have been wounded. Over 300 are in Israeli prisons.

In South Africa's state of emergency of the mid-1980s, declared in response to a nationwide campaign of protest, 312 children were killed, over 1,000 wounded, 2,000 children under 16 were detained without trial, thousands more arrested, hundreds fled into exile, and a generation was marked for life. The Rev Desmond Tutu wrote about one child, Johnny, whom he saw after some time in police custody: "I wanted to cry, I was filled with a blazing anger against a system that could do this to a child ... Johnny's case alone ought to be enough to fill any decent person ... with revulsion and indignation." (...) [page 23 | Comment]

- / Guardian

Why are we welcoming this torturer?

Victoria Brittain — 2005-02-24T12:47:00Z

George Bush is this week having an extravagantly orchestrated series of meetings with Europe's leaders, designed to show a united front for the creation of democracy around the world. Tony Blair talks of our "shared values". No one mentions the word that makes this show a mockery: torture.

It is now undeniable that the US administration, at the highest levels, is responsible for the torture that has been routine not only, as seen round the world in iconic photographs, at Abu Ghraib, but at Guantánamo Bay and Bagram. Meanwhile, in prisons in Egypt, Jordan and Syria (and no doubt others we do not know about), Muslim men have been tortured by electric shocks to the genitals, by being kept in water, by being threatened with death - after being flown to those countries by the CIA for that very purpose. (...) [page 24 | Comment]

- / Guardian

Britain is complicit in this horror

Victoria Brittain — 2004-08-04T12:55:00Z

The dossier by the three young men from Tipton reported by the Guardian today, with its graphic images of torture in Guantánamo Bay, reveals the horror of what has been suffered, and is still being suffered in that lawless place, by British citizens and residents, with the complicity of MI5 and the Foreign Office. This is a dossier that highlights the lies and incompetence of MI5 and Foreign Office officials. No minister should ignore it for a day, knowing that four British citizens and two residents are living this hell now. (...) [page 20 | Comment] - / Guardian

Rwanda confounds its critics

Victoria Brittain — 2004-04-15T08:17:35Z

While people across the world have been vowing this month that genocide, as took place in Rwanda 10 years ago, must never be allowed to happen again, two countries in Africa - Ivory Coast and Sudan - stand on the brink of new social and political catastrophes from ethnically manipulated contests for land and power. The entire opposition and rebel members in Ivory Coast's fragile government of national reconciliation have just quit, while in Darfur province in western Sudan tens of thousands of black Sudanese are being killed or forced into exile in Chad by Arab Sudanese militias. (...) [Page 24 | Comment] -