UK spawns terror at home and abroad
Keith Vaz, the Leicester East member in the House of Commons, must
have been sour at the answer he received from the Home Department to his
question about the use of Police for the recent visit of President
Mahinda Rajapaksa to the UK.
His questions to the Secretary of State for the Home Department was:
How many (a) Police and (b) Police community support officers were
deployed for the recent visit of the President of Sri Lanka; and what
the cost to the Police service was of policing the visit?
Tamil voters
Nick Herbert's reply was: "The Home Office does not hold this
information but we understand from the Police that approximately 800
officers were deployed across the Metropolitan Police area for the
visit". A very reliable grapevine tells us that Keith Vaz had made
arrangements with his pro-LTTE Tamil supporters, to distribute leaflets
to present and would be Tamil voters in his electorate that at least
that 2,000 Policemen and other community support officers had been used
for this work, and a cost of several million Pounds.
But here is a question that no one, not even Keith Vaz or his
possible guru David Milliband raised in the House of Commons when Police
was used in much larger numbers in May 2009.
Both of them were on the Government benches at the time, and there
are many who believe that the event concerned made many a Labour MP lose
one's seat or had one's majority pruned down sharply. It was the cost to
the Metropolitan Police in men and money at the time of the extended
protests by pro-LTTE Tamils and hired, bought, cajoled or fooled fellow
travellers at the time when the terrorism of the LTTE was being finally
snuffed out in Sri Lanka; and the world made safe from the absence of
the most ruthless terrorist organization, as the US State Department
described it.
Police resources
This is how the cost of this exercise in abusing the hospitality of
the UK and the British people was described in the London Evening
Standardon May 19, 2009, the day the LTTE was defeated with the death of
Velupillai Prabhakaran. The lead news by Justin Davenport and Amar Singh
said: "Tamil protests cost the Met almost eight million Pounds".
The story said: "Demonstrations by pro-Tamil supporters have cost the
country's largest Police force almost Sterling Pounds 8 million. Met
Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said the protests, which have
been going on for 43 days, meant the force was "extraordinarily
stretched". "We have to provide such a level of resources that it is
reducing policing on the streets of London," he said. He suggested
government intervention was needed to create "some kind of exit
strategy".
Demonstrations by pro-Tamil supporters in London. Pic.
courtesy: London Evening Standard |
Speaking to the Home Affairs Committee, Sir Paul said the cost of
policing the Tamil demonstrations "just short of Sterling Pounds 8
million" was more than the cost of policing the G20 protests, which came
to Sterling Pounds 7.2 million.
About half of the total, Sterling Pounds 3.72 million, was for
additional policing costs, including overtime. Sir Paul added: "Whatever
the rights and wrongs of any demonstration, it has to be said that
policing that demonstration is a huge drain."
UK politics
Commander Bob Broadhurst added that one problem faced by police was
the lack of a spokesperson for the demonstrators and another was their
"ability to mobilize hundreds, and yesterday thousands, in a very short
space of time, which overwhelms police resources."
"When that happens they tend to put their women, children and babies
at the forefront, which makes it difficult for us to use force."
Despite Keith Vaz, David Milliband and others who spend more of their
time in UK politics looking after the interests of the asylum won,
refugee status obtained, somehow smuggled-in pro-LTTE Tamils immigrants
in urban centres of the UK, there is clearly a larger issue that is now
facing the British public. It is the ever-present danger of the abuse of
the democratic right of freedom of assembly, protest and demonstration
to threaten the very fabric of UK society.
As illustration I quote from the outgoing president of the Oxford
Union, James Kingston's letter (Dec 1, 10) to President Mahinda
Rajapaksa, explaining why the invitation to address the Union could not
be carried out as planned.
"While the Union maintains a deep commitment to the principles of
free speech and debate, we also have a responsibility to those who live
and work in the city of Oxford. The disruption and danger that residents
and citizens would face is by far too great to justify hosting the
speech. This is to say nothing of our members who, similarly, could be
directly placed in danger should the expected protests turn violent.
Keith Vaz's question, in attempting to show how much it costs the
British taxpayer to protect a visiting Head of State and his delegation
(in this instance disliked by his pro-LTTE voters), may possibly give
him and the Labour Party some political mileage at a time of cost
cutting by the ConDem coalition.
But the problem facing the British public is the much larger issue of
how safe the United Kingdom could be, if it has elements with well-known
criminal backgrounds, committed to terrorism as a political tool, have
used it in Sri Lanka, India and the UK too, are skilled at extortion and
adept in the use of violence, being free to use all their tactics of
threat, coercion, duress and even murder and mayhem to achieve their
ends.
This is not a problem that the British High Commission in Colombo can
address by any statement about the UK Government's non involvement in
what happened vis-a-vis the visit of President of Sri Lanka. Rather, it
exposes the policy the High Commission has carried out in the issue of
visas to anyone who claimed to be threatened by the State in Sri Lanka,
and helped make well-known terrorists, citizens in the UK.
It is the result of the UK giving shelter and citizenship to the
theoretician of LTTE terror Anton Balasingham, and also to his wife
Adele, who played a key role in organizing the women suicide killer
cadres of the LTTE, one of who was involved in the assassination of
Rajiv Gandhi.
It is the time for reckoning in the United Kingdom; the time to
examine its own commitment to democracy and freedom, as opposed to
giving continued succour to and spawning the forces of terror at home
and abroad. |