A young Muslim girl was arrested by police outside Sainsburys in Ladbroke Grove at noon on 27 April after being accused of illegally selling the Big Issue magazine on private property and "stealing money" from another Big Issue seller.
The man who claimed to be the "official" Big Issue seller at Sainsburys told the police that the girl was not legally entitled to be selling the Big Issue near his pitch and that she was stealing money from him.
Passing customers who asked the police about the freedom of the press in Britain and the laws allowing people to sell newspapers on the streets were ordered to "move on".
The Big Issue seller told the police the Muslim girl was involved with a criminal gang illegally selling the magazine on the streets of London.
The girl was in tears and claimed to speak no English as the police tried to question her.
"You do speak English and if you don't answer my questions I will take you to the police station and question you there until you do answer my questions," one of the police officers told the girl.
"These people are doing this all over London," the officer said.
"This money that I have taken off her has been stolen from the official Big Issue seller. She will be in big trouble with her family because she will be going home without any money today."
Asked if this dispute was a civil matter rather than a criminal one the officer replied: "No, this girl is only a child and she is being forced to do this against her will and it is illegal for her to be selling the Big Issue here."
Then he dragged the crying girl into the police car (number plate BX 56WMY) without formally arresting her or reading her rights to her.
The "official" Big Issue seller (badge number 1045) then went back to his pitch outside the entrance to Sainsburys at Ladbroke Grove with a look of quiet satisfaction on his face at his new found power to get the police to remove his young Muslim rival on his unproven accusations.
Passersby who witnessed the confrontation at Sainburys Ladroke Grove said that it looked as if the police had stolen the girl's money and then assaulted her when they dragged her into the police car without the usual legal arrest procedure.
Local residents at Ladbroke Grove said they will tell all the customers at Sainsburys what occurred and attempt to have Big Issue seller number 1045 banned from ever selling the magazine in the area again.
"This sort of thing should not be happening in our country," one said.
BBC London said they would investigate a complaint that young Muslim teenagers were being hounded and arrested by the police on the orders of Big Issue sellers claiming that their earnings were being stolen from them by immigrants and refugees.
Passing customers who asked the police about the freedom of the press in Britain and the laws allowing people to sell newspapers on the streets were ordered to "move on".
The Big Issue seller told the police the Muslim girl was involved with a criminal gang illegally selling the magazine on the streets of London.
The girl was in tears and claimed to speak no English as the police tried to question her.
"You do speak English and if you don't answer my questions I will take you to the police station and question you there until you do answer my questions," one of the police officers told the girl.
"These people are doing this all over London," the officer said.
"This money that I have taken off her has been stolen from the official Big Issue seller. She will be in big trouble with her family because she will be going home without any money today."
Asked if this dispute was a civil matter rather than a criminal one the officer replied: "No, this girl is only a child and she is being forced to do this against her will and it is illegal for her to be selling the Big Issue here."
Then he dragged the crying girl into the police car (number plate BX 56WMY) without formally arresting her or reading her rights to her.
The "official" Big Issue seller (badge number 1045) then went back to his pitch outside the entrance to Sainsburys at Ladbroke Grove with a look of quiet satisfaction on his face at his new found power to get the police to remove his young Muslim rival on his unproven accusations.
Passersby who witnessed the confrontation at Sainburys Ladroke Grove said that it looked as if the police had stolen the girl's money and then assaulted her when they dragged her into the police car without the usual legal arrest procedure.
Local residents at Ladbroke Grove said they will tell all the customers at Sainsburys what occurred and attempt to have Big Issue seller number 1045 banned from ever selling the magazine in the area again.
"This sort of thing should not be happening in our country," one said.
BBC London said they would investigate a complaint that young Muslim teenagers were being hounded and arrested by the police on the orders of Big Issue sellers claiming that their earnings were being stolen from them by immigrants and refugees.
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Comments
Hide the following 9 comments
Should have been in school
27.04.2007 13:48
What is your agenda not giving us these important facts?
KellyP
For once
27.04.2007 14:56
The Big Issue don't licence urchins. If you see a child selling the Big Issue, probably the best thing you can do for that child is report it to the police. Whatever or whoever led them to that state of affairs is probably best not handled by anarchists, you'll just get shafted on child-abuse or racism charges yourself.
danny
So would you care to apologise specifically to
27.04.2007 15:47
Sovereign
Dear Karen,
27.04.2007 23:34
Karen, though I choose to fixate on anarchists you don't have to be an anarchist to post here. Just non-hierarchial.
"Sadly - anonymous posting means that you can't take the comments very seriously."
I agree. I think that is a fault of the software not the volunteers or the punters though.
But 'murky depths' seems a bit strong. I guess I should have apologised to the Jubal too since he had the decency to apologise here, I just got caught up in other threads. Sorry, Jubal.
"- and I'd be even more surprised if one of them was an anarchist. "
Ouch. You could say that about many other of my posts but that stung, that was my best post this week. You want to point the Anarchist-O-Meter back in your direction too ?
Danny
Thanks
28.04.2007 15:22
Rob
Can You Save the Human Race?
28.04.2007 17:25
Thank you for your apology although I am not quite sure just what you are apologising for.
Maybe it's for saying that you were the voice of sanity, which could be construed as suggesting that I am insane, but I am used to people saying that about me and I'm sure it is for my own good.
Maybe you are apologising for calling the young lady an “urchin” which she did not appear to me to be, and if she was an "urchin" maybe this is not something that decent people would make a big issue out of.
Or maybe you are apologising for saying that the best thing to do if you see a child selling the Big Issue is to report the child to the police.
Calling the police on anyone is not a very kind thing to do in my opinion, especially if there is no particularly urgent reason to do so.
Such drastic action should surely be reserved for rapes and murders and other similar emergencies that you cannot deal with yourself, but not for the purpose of supporting a British adult in a public dispute with a Muslim child.
A “grown up” who publicly slanders a child and shouts abuse at her when he doesn't even know her deserves a good thumping in my humble opinion, and that is what I would have liked to have done in this case, but I was outnumbered by some very nasty looking people.
It is perfectly legal under British law to defend yourself and anyone else as well from unprovoked attack, and nobody should be made to feel ashamed of stepping in and helping a child who is obviously in trouble and distress, or is being abused by a number of adults whom she obviously does not even know.
In this case there was no evidence at all that the young lady was in fact a child, and I was astonished when the police said she was, and I wondered if they were trying to cover themselves to justify their atrocious behaviour. ("She is only a child," the police told me.)
In any case environmental campaigners have always been very protective of their children, especially since they have raised them to stand up for what they believe in, and to campaign for world peace and to protest against the destruction of the Earth's environment.
Anarchists might like to call the police on children because they are afraid of being accused of child abuse or racism, but I don't think that environmentalists are too worried about things that are not actually happening.
The children of the eco warriors started the kids' bloc Children's Revolution at the Gleneagles G8 protest at Stirling eco village in 2005, and they also led the march to the Drax power station with their “Kids Are Revolting!” banner in 2006.
Hopefully the Children's Revolution will carry on again this summer, and the eco kids will continue helping to raise awareness of the desperate plight of the hundreds of millions of children in the Middle East and the child slaves in the Third World.
Not to mention the very obvious dangers now being faced by the present and future generations of children who will have very little chance of surviving at all the way things are going.
The children's charity Kids' Company recently offered me full time paid employment to open squats for the homeless children and teenagers living on the streets in London, but I declined to accept because I felt this should be the collective responsibility of all the environmental activists at the new social centres.
In my opinion Britain's abandoned kids could become an important part of the growing worldwide youth movement to save the human race from extinction caused by global warming and climate change.
The heatwave in Britain has already started today, according to all the forecasts and news reports, and the Independent newspaper front page headline says that climate change may well give us 40 degree heat this summer, resulting in huge numbers of deaths.
In spite of being constantly personally abused for saying this, I still believe more than ever that the human race faces extinction relatively soon because of global warming, and a lot of reputable scientists have also been saying exactly the same thing for some years now.
Hopefully environmentalism will become the new political and economic system, and dare I say this – anarchism may well prove to be just as insane as all the rest of the obsolete political philosophies that have nothing meaningful to say about what to do when your planet is heating up to the point where all life on it will die out soon.
My report “Can You Save the Human Race?” contains all the evidence for court cases against the US government and the oil companies and the other transnational corporations and the banks and the Bilderberg Group, attempting to hold them all responsible and accountable for causing global warming.
In spite of attempts on my life and slanders and libels as well, I do intend to carry on fighting back in self defence against the evil Aliens who are destroying humanity for no apparent reason other than greed beyond belief.
On a lighter note I do think that the people who run the Big Issue magazine have a lot of explaining to do about what happened at Sainsburys Ladbroke Grove on 27 April.
If it is true that there are gangs of armed robbers stealing copies of the Big Issue from the sellers at knifepoint, and forcing child slaves to sell them on the streets of London,
then this would no doubt justify calling the police to drag the children away screaming and crying into the police stations, if only for their own protection.
But if it is not true then surely we are entitled to an explanation from the Big Issue organisation itself as to what exactly is going on with what looks a bit like a private war against a minority group in this country.
That is what a free press is supposed to be all about, the freedom to publish the truth without fear or favour, and to inform the public about the important issues of the day, and I understand that this is what Indymedia was established for.
Surely the Big Issue doesn't have anything to hide, so why can't we all know what is actually happening with this important crusading magazine that is supposed to represent the interests of the homeless and the oppressed?
I have obviously helped to stir up a hornets' nest and I am still sorry about all this, but I'm not quite sure why anymore.
Hopefully the Martians are coming soon to save us all...
Thank you once again for all the interest and attention,
Jubal Harshaw
e-mail:
earthaidcampaign@yahoo.co.uk
Arrested
28.04.2007 20:18
What makes you think the police weren't taking the child into police protection?
James
Small Issue
28.04.2007 20:47
I was apologising for assuming she was underage - partly your fault for calling her a 'girl' and a 'child' if you'd guess she was 21. I do that too though. If a person is a day younger than me then I call them a boy or a girl instead of a man or a woman, it helps me feel younger than my years, but I try not to do that in writing to avoid confusion. You are obviously not insane, I used the 'voice of sanity' phrase simply because I'd just written an angry post on a different thread where I knew I was going to get called 'mad' - I get that a lot too. If it had been a ten year old girl selling the Big Issue then I would still call the police for her sake - she would obviously have been being exploited by someone.
"Anarchists might like to call the police on children because they are afraid of being accused of child abuse or racism, but I don't think that environmentalists are too worried about things that are not actually happening."
Anarchists don't speak for other anarchists, not for long anyway, but I'd say most anarchists are among the best environmentalists. Environmentalist is a more 'police-friendly' label than anarchist though, most police assume all anarchists have a molotov-cocktail somewhere on their person.
You may be interested in this article :
take care of yourself, and peace,
Danny
Danny
International Criminals and Child Slaves in Britain?
29.04.2007 05:59
This is what has been suggested by Indymedia readers claiming to be former Big Issue sellers, and here are my answers to your recent questions:
The police did not arrest the young Muslim lady who was accused of stealing money from the Big Issue seller to begin with.
They simply made her stand to attention looking scared while they listened to the Big Issue seller complaining, and made calls on their radios.
Sainsburys' customers walked past and were concerned enough to want to know what was going on, and were told to go away by the police.
After about an hour more police turned up in a police car and spoke to her and she told them she did not speak any English, and they told her that they knew that she could speak English, and they would arrest her if she continued to refuse to answer their questions.
The police told me she was only a child and that she was guilty of stealing money from the Big Issue seller, amongst other things like begging on the tube trains which they said “these people” were doing all over London.
I did wonder how they could possibly know so much about her in such a short time when they didn't even know her name or her age or where she lived.
They did not tell her she was under arrest, they told her they would take her to the police station to question her and they did, apparently against her will, and I assumed that by dragging her away they were arresting her even if it was a false arrest.
They said she was only a child but if she is legally a child my guess is she would be about 16 or 17 years old at the youngest, rather than 21 which was my first estimate of her age, and she did not look as if she either needed or wanted “police protection”.
She had been selling the Big Issue in the approach to Sainsburys Ladbroke Grove for about two weeks without any problems, apart from the fact that all this time the Big Issue seller at the entrance could be heard loudly complaining about her to anyone who would listen to him.
He could be seen pointing her out to Sainsburys' security guards and other staff, but they appeared to take very little notice of him, and certainly they took no action on his complaints.
I did not like what I heard him saying about her, but I did not feel it was any of my business until I saw him publicly denouncing her to the police, and succeeding in getting her arrested by them.
Every day as I walked towards Sainsburys she would say “Big Issue” and show me the magazine, and I would reply “very nice” and keep walking.
If the Big Issue organisation is being systematically robbed by an international criminal gang using child slaves to sell stolen magazines on the streets of London, as has been suggested by Indymedia readers who claim to know about this, then I think the Big Issue should be telling the public about it on their front page and campaigning to free the child slaves, not just in Britain but in all the Third World countries.
Why have we not heard about this scandal before if it has been going on for so long already?
Maybe it is now my responsibility to challenge the Big Issue to answer a few simple questions about what is going on between them and the Muslim teenagers.
If they are legally obtaining their copies of the magazine then it cannot be illegal for them to be selling them on the streets, and this battle over territory should be resolved as soon as possible, but not by the police because it looks like a civil matter and not a criminal one.
Big Issue sellers should not be allowed to use the British police to further their business interests, if this is all that is actually happening.
Most of the comments to my original story were hidden or censored by Indymedia, presumably on the grounds that they were inaccurate, which leads me to believe that these stories about criminal gangs and child slaves in Britain may not be true.
I think we should be told the truth, and I still have a feeling that all these unpleasant public disputes with young Muslim women appear to have some connection with America's so-called “War on Terror,” and I am very concerned about where all this violence and hostility is leading us.
There appears to be a systematic campaign of disinformation in the media from the government, to stir up the public and make them angry and distract them from the real issues about the slaughter of more than a million innocent civilians in the Middle East, mostly young Muslim women and children.
We should all be uniting and joining forces in a War against global warming and climate change instead of allowing ourselves to be manipulated and controlled by the oil companies and the White House who appear to be trying to stir up racial and religious hatred.
For once in my life I find myself in agreement with the Pope, and I wish him well in his efforts to start a revolution against the American government to put a stop to global warming and a looming World War Three. (“Pope Benedict XV1 Calls for Permanent Worldwide Car Boycott” - Indymedia 28 04 2007.)
At last there are influential people taking action to try to save the human race from being driven to extinction by the burning of fossil fuels, and we will have to hope that these efforts have not come too late to ensure the survival of future generations.
It would be a shame if it turns out that much of what we read on the Indymedia website is just all lies being published by sinister people trying to further their own evil agendas to the detriment of the public interest.
Jubal Harshaw
Jubal Harshaw
e-mail:
earthaidcampaign@yahoo.co.uk