Vintage, in partnership with Index on Censorship, joined forces earlier this year to fund the best ideas for publication events. Winners Red Lion Books in Colchester and Rogan’s Books in Bedford will divide the £750 fund equally. Read the full article.
Frequent visitors to the skatepark on London’s South Bank may have noticed two new works of art among the decades-old graffiti. Both spray-painted in black and white, one image depicts a naked and emaciated mother clutching a newborn; another shows a starving boy, his hair on end, listlessly picking at his hands. Entitled “Hollowed Mother” and “Lost Generation” (pictured), the figures are cadaverous and haunting, with dark empty holes where their eyes should be. Similar works of street art can be found in Hodeida and Sana’a, cities in Yemen: on the wreck of a door, now in a garbage dump, or on the last standing wall of a house reduced to rubble. “Faces of War”, a project by Murad Subay, a Yemeni artist, seeks to draw attention to the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Read the article in full.
Using stencils and spray paint, Murad Subay creates haunting figures, portraits and motifs. Read the full article.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]We are deeply troubled by the appointment of Lord Carlile as Independent Reviewer of Prevent. Not only has the government failed to follow its own Governance Code on Public Appointments, but Lord Carlile’s close ties with and publicly declared support for the Prevent strategy undermine the integrity and credibility of this review from the outset.
In January 2019, following Parliament’s insistence on an independent review of Prevent, the government announced that such a review would occur. Proponents of the review have consistently called for it to be meaningfully independent and conducted by someone with no current or prior experience as a government-appointed reviewer.
In June, the government assured Parliament that the appointments process would follow the Cabinet Office Governance Code on Public Appointments.(1) Yet the government has failed to follow that Code, including by failing to publicly advertise the position and publish information about the selection criteria.
Lord Carlile cannot be considered impartial or independent. He has been a member of the Home Office’s Prevent Oversight Board (2) charged with “driving delivery” (3) of Prevent, and has declared his “considered and strong support” for the Prevent strategy.(4) In May this year, he told a public audience that “the appointment of a Prevent reviewer [is] completely unnecessary, based on fictitious or complete lack of evidence”.(5) Indeed, it seems that Lord Carlile himself doubts his ability to be impartial about Prevent, telling the House of Lords in 2018: “I admit I played a part in [Prevent], so I may be somewhat biased towards it […] and I accept the accusation of apparent bias as a possibility. However, I believe that Prevent has demonstrated that it has been successful”.(6)
There seems to be little purpose in an “independent review” whose outcome is pre-ordained by Lord Carlile’s self-declared partiality. His appointment to this vitally important position shatters the credibility of the review from the outset. The review should be comprehensive and wide-ranging in scope and not one that starts with the premise that Prevent should be continued and/or expanded.
We call upon the government to urgently rethink this appointment and ensure that the review is led by a genuinely independent person who inspires confidence in affected communities, with a willingness to go where the evidence may lead.
Liberty
Index on Censorship
Defend Digital Me
Medact
CAGE
Maslaha
MEND
The Runnymede Trust
JUST Yorkshire
Open Society Justice Initiative
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