Joint Statement on the Appointment of William Shawcross

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