Shoot-to-kill: Britain’s new anti-terror weapon?
July 26, 2005
I often walk around London listening to my iPod, not because I am necessarily in the mood for music, but so that I can block out the ear-piercing decibels of screeching buses, noisy cars, overly loud so-called music in shops, and all the other annoying racket that big cities produce. On occasion, I suddenly realize that I am running late for an appointment and decide to make a dash for a bus or take a short-cut, struggling with my purse and bulging briefcase or bag. If plain-clothed police officers observing my "nervous behavior" from afar should decide that I am a terrorist threat, I would neither hear them, nor see them, and would continue to run. Would that justify my being pursued, held to the ground, and shot dead at short range? (And would visa issues be relevant?)
Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27-year old Brazilian, may indeed have worried about his expired visa as he ran into Stockwell Tube station on Friday. For this, he was held to the floor and shot dead in front of fellow passengers. Not once, not twice, but with 7 shots to the head, and one to the shoulder, at extremely close range.
This is not just a tragedy, it is a perversion of power and justice that was exacerbated by the police changing its tale as the hours passed after this murder. First, we heard that the victim was potentially one of the terrorists (leading to screaming headlines in The Evening Standard about a suicide bomber shot dead). Then, the shooting was said to be directly linked to the anti-terrorist investigation. Finally, it turned out it was nothing of the sort; the police had run out of excuses, but helpfully explained today that the victim's visa had expired. Tourists, take notice.
I would imagine most people would find this whole episode despicable. One shot from afar may have been a mistake. One shot from close range would have been gross incompetence. 8 shots from close range was a public execution.
And yet, the guilty officer has not even been suspended, and many have been supportive of this shoot-to-kill measure, which police seem to think will make us all safer. Would it have made a difference had the victim been a native of another country/ethnicity? After all, some commentators have openly expressed relief that the innocent victim was Brazilian, and not Muslim (although I'm sure some people who are both), as it absolves them of accusations of Islamophobia. Do these people hear themselves speak?
Shoot-to-kill is not a good idea, and it has been the cause of many a tragedy around the world. Being as "desperately sorry" as Tony Blair was today is not good enough as we get dragged down the road taken by the US into the ramifications of the Patriot Act, leaving authorities free to tamper with our civil liberties, not to mention our lives.
It's going to take a lot more makeup for Blair to camouflage the abuses of power to which his government has helped itself in the last few years. Shoot-to-kill may be a relatively new catastrophe to Londoners and Britons, but it certainly isn't new to people in countries under occupation (like Palestine), or in countries which have been "liberated" by the Anglo-American forces but are now stumbling into the abyss of civil war (like Iraq). There, it's shoot-to-kill, bomb-to-kill, torture-to-kill, drown-to-kill, beat-to-kill. But who's really counting?
