British govt. tightens grip on Britons

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/159487.html


The UK government is tightening grip on the British people in various aspects of their lives from economy to social liberties, education, health and security.

The government's policies including its austerity drive which covers each and every corners of the people's being, the rise in university tuition fees and cuts to higher education, police schemes to ban protests altogether, which is considered as a serious blow to the so-called democracy, imposing restrictions on how and who votes, again considered as depriving a person from its inalienable right as part of the nation's human rights, giving permission to police forces to sneak through people's life and the most humiliating of these the “control orders” which prompted an international cry and call for them to be abolished.

International human rights campaigners have unanimously condemned the British government for carrying out one of the “most serious violations” of natural injustice in any developed democracy by renewing the so-called control orders.

The 'control order' was produced by the UK Home Secretary to restrict an individual's liberty for the alleged purpose of “protecting members of the public from a risk of terrorism”.

The restrictions involved in control orders include what the person can use or process, his/her place of work, place of residence, whom he/she speaks to, and where he/she can travel.

Furthermore, the person can be ordered to surrender his passport, let the police visit his/her home at any time, report to officials at a specific time and place, and allow himself/herself to be electronically tagged so his movements can be tracked.

The British government, meanwhile, used a European court ruling as a pretext recently to ban prisoners who are serving long-term sentences from voting in the elections.

Prime Minister David Cameron has even said that he was willing to ban all prisoners from voting apart from what the European court has instructed.

The restrictions on the British begin here.

The UK politicians and diplomats have been selling the claim that their system is a democracy and they respect human rights as the core of humanity.

But, what's happening on the ground appears to be to the contrary. The UK was the scene of the most violent protests recently.

Tens of thousands of student protesters from universities, colleges and schools marched across the UK in protests against the huge hikes in tuition fees, together with the scrapping of Educational Maintenance Allowance and proposed cuts in college funding.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson referred to the level of violence in the protests, saying that he does not rule out banning all future protests across the country.

The Londoners are witnessing a police state in their doorsteps these days.

The government has beefed up security in and around the capital city. The security threat level for London's transport system including airports, train and subway stations, ports and roads has raised from substantial to severe, turning the city to a blockhouse rather than a secure place to live in freely.

The most humiliating of these measures, which are aimed at having control over the people at a time when they are angered by hard economic conditions, are police schemes to collect people's personal data.

According to reports, British police have been secretly collecting people's personal information whenever they contacted police to report a crime.