Joint Statement on the Appointment of William Shawcross

Categories: Latest News
Tuesday February 16 2021
Several human rights organisations have published a joint statement criticising the controversial appointment of William Shawcross as Head of the PREVENT review, and outlined an intention to boycott the review.
The 17 organisations include MEND, Amnesty International, Liberty, and the Runnymede Trust.
The organisations argue that Shawcross has made flagrantly Islamophobic remarks previously, and would therefore be unfit to determine whether PREVENT is institutionally racist and/or Islamophobic (a major criticism of the counter-extremism strategy).
The joint statement said: “The appointments of both Shawcross and Lord Carlile have made clear, beyond doubt, that the UK government has no interest in conducting an objective and impartial review of the strategy, nor in engaging meaningfully with communities affected by it. We, the undersigned groups, cannot be complicit in a process that serves only to rubber-stamp a fundamentally flawed strategy.”
The organisations that signed the statement include:
Amnesty International
ARTICLE 19
Big Brother Watch
C.A.R.E. – Coalition of Anti-Racist Educators
CAGE
Child Rights International Network (CRIN)
DefendDigitalMe
Inclusive Mosque Group
Liberty
Maslaha
Medact
MEND
Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol)
No More Exclusions
Northern Police Monitoring Project
Open Society Justice Initiative
The Runnymede Trust