Angry reactions have been trailed the referral of a vulnerable 11-year-old Muslim boy with special needs to anti-terror scheme by his school after a fellow pupil accused him of saying during a fire drill he wished the school would burn down.
The young boy, a Muslim of Asian heritage whose identity and school have not been revealed, is on the special educational needs register as he suffers from anxiety after witnessing domestic violence at his family home from the age of four, The yGuardian reported.
While the mother discussed with her boy alternative ways to relieve the stress he was experiencing at school, the Prevent officer decided swiftly not to take the complaint further.
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“I was told by the Prevent officer that the matter would not be taken any further as it looked like the matter related to ‘an 11-year-old boy struggling with school,” the mother said.
“My son had become so unhappy and stressed about the demands placed on him relating to homework.”
However, the boy’s details were automatically added to the counter-terror policing database, where they are routinely held for six years, a decision the mother decided to fight.
“I’ve achieved a partial victory because the police have agreed to remove his name from their database but I am seeking further information from his files which are held by the Home Office,” she said.
Withdraw Prevent
Dr Layla Aitlhadj, director at Prevent Watch and co-chair of the People’s Review of Prevent said: “It is extremely worrying that the thousands of children who are referred each year to Prevent who have in no way been suspected of a crime are essentially being criminalized through having their data retained on police databases alongside convicted criminals.
“It begs the question, just how many innocent children have a digital fingerprint across police databases as a result of Prevent and how might this impact their future.”
Created in 2003, Prevent is one of four strands of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy, known as Contest.
According to the Home Office, its aim is “to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism”.
The scheme has been criticized by some MPs, the National Union of Teachers and Muslim Council of Britain, while racial equality organization JUST Yorkshire says it has a “disproportionate and discriminatory” focus on Muslim communities.
A report by JUST Yorkshire in August 2017 said that the government’s anti-radicalization strategy, Prevent, is “ineffective and counterproductive” and should be withdrawn.