Monthly Archives: March 2015

Alton Burnett

th

Our Comrade, Friend and Brother Alton Burnett finally succumbed to his battle with cancer and passed away on Friday, 7th March at 7.20 pm. Phillip Murphy, Maxie Hayles and I had visited a week or so earlier but found him in a deep sleep. We understood he was suffering considerable pain in his waking moments. Alton was a larger than life character committed to serve the community, which he did as a Councillor for Erdington and as Secretary to the Afro-Caribbean Millennium Centre on Dudley Road, Birmingham.

In 1985 Alton led a group along Lozells to pay tribute to the post masters, the Moledena brothers, who lost their lives in a fire at the post office.

th

More than 20 years later he repeated this act of reconciliation when some young men were tragically run down along the Dudley Road, yards from the Afro-Caribbean Millennium Centre. At the time there was considerable tension with a feeling that what had happened was due to friction in the community. It fell to Alton once again to dispel the idea as he carried a tribute to Tariq Jahan, father of one of the boys killed. Tariq himself rose above the rumours flying round and was given great credit for his generosity of spirit at such a time of personal loss. (He went to give aid to the injured only to find it was his own dying son he was trying to help.)

315501-dudley-road
Alton Burnett pays tribute to the young men who were killed along the Dudley Road speaking to Tariq Jahan, bereaved father of one of them.
Rather than a flashpoint, the makeshift shrine appears to have evolved into a focal point for the community to bond. It was there that Alton Burnett of the Afro Caribbean Millennium community center presented Mr. Jahan with flowers and a message of condolence on Thursday evening.
“We are one,” Mr. Burnett said. “We feel your pain and we feel your sorrow. We will not let this divide us.” The two men hugged, a symbolic moment recognized with applause from those watching.
New York Times 11/8/2011

DSC02342

 

Behind the Secrecy. Yarl’s Wood.

If there’s official secrecy, smell a rat. The usual answer is “security”, but in reality you’ll find a story of human misery, abuse, torture, rape. Yarl’s Wood is a name added to the long list of locations under the control of the very Western Governments bemoaning untold horrors committed by human beings on others. Sadism is supposed to be an act of barbarism which “civilised”, “democratic” states abhor.

Where did all this start? In recent history Chicago is seen as a contender, but a look at what was trended following experiments in human endurance to sensory deprivation. Go back a few decades and practices in Northern Ireland‘s detention centres look familiar.

Other familiar names include Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib where these techniques were practiced and refined. They continued even as they were getting press coverage, although the detail and horrors have only emerged when those who endured them have spoken about their sufferings.

The proliferation of these torture sites is not accidental, a product of rogue personnel. It is a result of deliberate acts around what Naomi Klein writes about in “Shock Doctrine”. I is practiced not only against what are regarded as problematic states, but is used against people internally. The withdrawal of benefits to many needy people is such an example.

That such doctrines are counter productive is amply demonstrated by groups who are now practicing their own forms of “shock doctrine”. Everyone has been sickened by the ever more outrageous practices of groups acting in the name of Islam. Their ideas are not new or confined to them: rather they have learned from a world that has practiced colonialism with no holds barred on the treatment of those colonised. Our leaders continually say they espouse humanity and justice. It might just work if they set an example using those humanitarian values rather than what they themselves describe as the law of the jungle.