This is a letter I wrote on the 20th February 2006 to my MP, Neil Gerrard (Labour, Walthamstow) about the appalling detention by Special Branch of the actors in Michael Winterbottom's new film on their return to this country from the Berlin Film Festival. I have only received an automated `out of office' reply (on 24th February).
Dear Neil Gerrard,
I am writing to express my serious concern at the latest abuse of anti-terrorist laws by state functionaries (who refused to identify themselves) with regard to the illegal detention of actors from the film The Road to Guantanamo when returning to this country from the Berlin International Film Festival.
The account by one of the actors, Riz Ahmed, is online. Every aspect of this is wrong and this kind of abuse is clearly only going to grow. Indeed it appears that the government is deliberately enacting legislation (e.g the ludicrous `glorification of terrorism' act which neither defines glorification nor terrorism) which is vague and nebulous so that these kinds of abuses of civil liberties will be even more likely to go unchecked.
I do not believe that these kinds of measures or the abuses they encourage have anything really to do with stopping terrorism. They are really designed to bully and intimidate domestic opponents to the government's criminal foreign policies. I would respectfully urge you to oppose these measures and abuses, and to do anything that you can to discover and publicise who illegally detained these people, and call publically for their disciplining for this appalling behaviour.
Yours sincerely,
Grouchy.
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