RUSUHAN DI KOTA LONDON

utusanonline

August 11, 2011

16,000 polis Britain dikerah

LONDON 10 Ogos – Rusuhan terburuk di Britain dalam tempoh puluhan tahun berlarutan ke hari keempat hari ini apabila gerombolan pemuda mengganas di Manchester dan kawasan perindustrian tengah England tetapi keadaan di London agak tenang selepas 16,000 anggota polis dikerahkan untuk membendung keganasan.

Di Manchester, perusuh memecah masuk dan mencuri barang kedai serta menghalau jurugambar dari tempat kejadian dalam keganasan terburuk di bandar raya ketiga terbesar di Britain itu dalam tempoh 30 tahun.

Kejadian mencuri juga berleluasa di Birmingham buat malam kedua dan dalam insiden paling serius malam tadi, tiga lelaki yang baru keluar dari sebuah masjid terbunuh apabila mereka dirempuh sebuah kereta dalam kes langgar lari di bandar raya tersebut.

Di tempat lain, perusuh membakar bangunan di West Bromwich dan Wolverhampton di tengah England dan sebuah balai polis di Nottingham diserang dengan bom petrol, walaupun tiada kecederaan dilaporkan, sementara kira-kira 200 perusuh membaling objek ke arah polis di Liverpool.

Bagaimanapun di London, tiada lagi gelombang keganasan yang menyebabkan beberapa bahagian ibu kota ini terbakar malam semalam, selepas polis dikerahkan beramai-ramai dan kumpulan penduduk membanjiri jalan untuk mempertahankan komuniti mereka.

Scotland Yard awal hari ini berkata, 768 orang ditangkap di London kerana disyaki melakukan keganasan, mencetuskan kekacauan dan mencuri.

Sebanyak 109 lagi ditangkap di wilayah West Midlands, 108 di Manchester dan Salford, dan 44 di Liverpool dan sekitarnya, manakala di Bristol 19 tangkapan dilakukan kerana pelbagai kesalahan termasuk memiliki topeng ski.

Fokus keganasan malam tadi ialah Manchester, barat laut England, di mana polis terpaksa berundur akibat kemaraan ratusan pemuda yang menutup muka dengan skarf dan topeng ski.

Dua perusuh memecahkan pintu kaca pusat membeli-belah Arndale, gedung membeli-belah utama di Manchester, membolehkan ratusan pemuda masuk dan melarikan pelbagai barangan termasuk pakaian dan kasut.

Polis hanya mampu menjadi pemerhati apabila pencuri mengosongkan sebuah kedai barangan elektrik manakala kumpulan lain bersemuka dan memaki-hamun anggota polis.

Dalam perkembangan yang tidak akan membantu meredakan ketegangan, badan pemantau polis Britain berkata, pihaknya tidak menemui bukti Mark Duggan, lelaki yang ditembak mati oleh polis minggu lepas dalam insiden yang mencetuskan protes dan seterusnya rusuhan di London, telah melepaskan tembakan ke arah polis.

Dalam operasi terancang, anggota polis bersenjata menahan teksi yang dinaiki oleh Duggan, 29, di daerah berbilang etnik Tottenham, utara London, tembakan dilepaskan dan Duggan mati di tempat kejadian.

Keluarga Duggan berkata, hasil siasatan itu menyebabkan mereka berasa amat kesal dan mereka menuntut ‘jawapan’ daripada polis.

Britain's rioters: young, poor and disillusioned

By MEERA SELVA - Associated Press,PAISLEY DODDS - Associated Press |

LONDON (AP) 12th August, 2011 — Each of the young rioters who clogged Britain's courthouses painted a bleak picture of a lost generation: a 15-year-old Ukrainian whose mother died, a 17-year-old who followed his cousin into the mayhem, an 11-year-old arrested for stealing a garbage can.

Britain is bitterly divided on the reasons behind the riots. Some blame the unrest on opportunistic criminality, while others say conflicting economic policies and punishing government spending cuts have deepened inequalities in the country's most deprived areas.

Many of the youths themselves struggle to find any plausible answer, but a widespread sense of alienation emerges from their tales.

"Nobody is doing nothing for us — not the politicians, not the cops, no one," a 19-year-old who lives near Tottenham, the blighted London neighborhood where the riots started. He only gave his nickname, "Freddy," because he took part in the looting and was scared of facing prosecution; he was not among the youths in court.

Britain has one of the highest violent crime rates in the EU. Roughly 18 percent of youths between 16 and 24 are jobless and nearly half of all black youths are out of work.

As the government battles colossal government debt with harsh welfare cuts that promise to make the futures of these youths even bleaker, some experts say it's narrow-minded to believe the riots have only been a random outburst of violence unrelated to the current economic crisis.
"There's a fundamental disconnect with a particular section of young Britain and sections of the political establishment," said Matthew Goodwin, a politics professor at University of Nottingham.

"The argument that this doesn't have anything to do with expenditure cuts or economics doesn't stand up to the evidence. If that's true, then what we have here are hundreds of young, crazed kids simply acting irrationally. I don't think that's the case."
Nearly 1,200 people have been arrested since the riots erupted Saturday, mostly poor youths from a broad section of Britain's many races and ethnicities.

Courts have been running nearly 24 hours a day to hear all the cases since the rioting began. Most cases are heard in a blink of an eye and only give a snapshot of some of the youngsters' lives. Many of the defendants haven't had a chance to talk at length with their attorneys, and most can't be named because they are minors.

An 11-year-old boy from Romford, Essex, was among one of the youngest to appear in court on Wednesday. Wearing a blue Adidas tracksuit, the youngster spoke only to confirm his name, age and date of birth.

The boy pleaded guilty to burglary, after stealing a waste bin worth 50 pounds. A charge of violent disorder was dropped.

Attorneys for some of the defendants said their clients were good kids who have caring families but got caught up in the violence.
Daniel Cavaglieri, one of the lawyers for a 17-year-old who appeared at Highbury Magistrates Court, said the youth was studying mechanics and trying to finish school. He was accused of following his older cousin to loot a clothing shop, and charged with intent to steal.
"His mother is furious he was out and about at that time. She genuinely thought he was at a friend's house," Cavaglieri told the court. "He's going to be grounded."

Another defendant, a 15-year-old immigrant from Ukraine, pleaded not guilty to using or threatening unlawful violence. He already has a criminal record for theft, and police said he threw stones and other missiles in the thick of Tuesday's rioting in London's Hackney area.

Prosecutors said the boy is an only child who lives with his widowed father. He came to Britain from Germany three years ago after leaving Ukraine when his mother died.

It's unclear what role racial tensions have played in the riots, if any.
In Tottenham, most residents are white but blacks from Africa or the Caribbean account for around a quarter of the ethnic mix. It's also home to Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Asian immigrants. The rage has appeared to cut across ethnic lines, with poverty as the main common denominator.
But there's a history of racial tension in many of these neighborhoods, and the riots themselves were triggered by the fatal police shooting of a black man in Tottenham.

In 1985, the neighborhood was home to the Broadwater Farm riot, an event seared in the memories of many of the rioters' parents. Back then, violence exploded area when a black woman died from a stroke during a police search. The area remains a hotbed of ethnic tension: In the past year, police have logged some 100 racist or religion based hate crimes.

Other social problems afflict the places where rioting erupted: high teen pregnancy rates, gun crime and drug trafficking.
Under the Labour-led government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, authorities tried to penalize badly behaved youth with Anti-Social Behavior Orders, or ASBOs. The orders have since become badges of honor for many of Britain's youth.

In 2008, there were more than 1 million reported cases of violent crimes in England and Wales alone. By comparison, there were 331,778 reported incidents in France and some 210,885 incidents in Germany. Violent crime carried out by children and teenagers is also among the highest in Europe.

"There's income inequality, extremely high levels of unemployment between 16 and 24-year-olds and huge parts of this population not in education or training," Goodwin said. "There's a general malaise amongst a particular generation."

Britain's Conservative-led government is implementing painful austerity measures in an attempt to get the country's finances in order. Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged 80 billion pounds ($129 billion) of spending cuts and 30 billion pounds in extra taxes to trim Britain's huge deficit, swollen after the government spent billions bailing out foundering banks.

The plans to cut services from welfare to education sparked violent protests last year, as students took to the streets to demonstrate against the tripling of university fees. The government is also cutting civil service jobs and benefits, raising the state pension age from 65 to 66, hiking the amount public sector employees contribute to pensions and reducing their retirement payouts.

The austerity measures will also slash housing benefit payments used to subsidize rents for the low-paid, threatening to price tens of thousands of poor families out of their homes and force them toward the fringes of the country's capital.

Economists at the Centre for Economic Policy Research say such cuts promise more unrest. Most of Britain's deepest cuts haven't even come yet.

"There's usually something that sparks these things off," said Hans-Joachim Voth, a research fellow at the center. "The question is why is it that in 90 percent of these cases that nothing happens? Why is it that some places just end up like a tinder box?"

Factbox - Recent riots in Britain

(Reuters) 12th August, 2011 - Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron promised Thursday to crack down on street gangs, saying "the fightback has well and truly begun" against those who rioted across Britain.

Several major cities around England have suffered days of violence and looting in some of the worst rioting seen in years.

Here are some details of major rioting in Britain over the past 30 years:

* April 1980 - Bristol

-- The Black and White Caf, which had a reputation as a center for drugs, was raided by police, triggering riots in the St Paul's area of Bristol. Tension between black youths and the police had been growing in the area, with many black youths feeling discriminated against. The cafe was demolished in 2005.

* April 1981 - Brixton, south London

-- Tension between the police and the black community had been high for some time. The stabbing and subsequent death of a black man was blamed on police brutality and sparked a riot. Damages were estimated at up to 7.5 million pounds ($12 million) and 365 police and civilians were wounded.

-- Brixton saw more rioting in 1985, when a black woman was accidentally shot during a police raid, in 1995 when a young black man died in police custody, and most recently in 2001, after a man was shot by police who mistakenly believed he was carrying a gun.

* July 1981 - Toxteth, Liverpool

-- Rioting was triggered by the arrest of 20-year-old Leroy Alphonse Cooper whose supporters said he was subsequently mistreated in custody. Nine days of violence followed.

* October 1985 - Broadwater Farm, Tottenham, London

-- Violence between youths from the Broadwater estate in Tottenham and the police erupted when a woman suffered heart failure after a police raid on her home. Shots were fired wounding several people and PC Keith Blakelock was killed when he was stabbed by rioters while protecting a firefighter putting out a blaze.

* March 1990 - Poll tax riots, London
-- When Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government introduced the poll tax -- a levy on property imposed regardless of wealth -- 100,000 people turned out for a protest in central London which quickly turned violent.
* 1999 - Anti-capitalist protest, London
-- Demonstrators clashed with riot police, burned cars and stormed a major financial exchange during an anti-capitalist protest in June that caused 2 million pounds of damage.
* May-July 2001 - London May Day riot and violence in northern England

-- Some 5,000 anti-capitalist activists brought the commercial heart of London to a standstill with violence and vandalism. Police said they had arrested 92 people after good-natured demonstrations turned ugly. Shops in Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road were smashed as small breakaway groups of demonstrators ran amok and a hardcore of protesters clashed with riot police.

-- Riots in Oldham and Burnley were the result of tensions between the white majority and growing ethnic minority communities. Fighting broke out between far-right groups including the National Front and Asian businessmen, as well as the Anti Nazi League. Over 300 people were wounded and more than 350 arrested.

* April 2009 - Anti G20 protests, London

-- Violent confrontations between anti-capitalist demonstrators, environmental campaigners and riot police broke out in London during two days of protests in April as the leaders of the G20 nations attended an economic summit.

* November 2010 - Student riots, London

-- The newly elected Conservative-Liberal coalition government unveiled a series of higher education spending cuts and an increase in the cap on tuition fees. A planned peaceful demonstration saw students from across Britain descending on London. The protest turned violent when a small group attacked Conservative Party headquarters, smashing the windows, damaging the interior and throwing a fire-extinguisher off the roof.

* March 2011 - TUC march, London

-- Masked youths battled riot police and attacked banks and luxury stores in central London on March 26, overshadowing a protest by more than a quarter of a million Britons against government spending cuts. More than 200 people were arrested after anarchist groups splintered from the main union-led protest march and fought running battles with police.

* August 2011 - London, Manchester and other major cities

-- Rioting broke out around major cities in England including Manchester and Liverpool in the northwest and Birmingham in central England. Gangs ransacked stores causing millions of pounds of damage. Four people were killed in the violence. At least 1,300 people were arrested of whom 900 were in London.