teenager in the UK arrested for comments made on Facebook page

[Os Cangaceiros]

A teenager has been arrested for allegedly making comments on Facebook about the deaths of six British soldiers in Afghanistan last week.

According to Sky News, Azhar Ahmed of Ravensthorpe (19) posted comments on his profile page, criticizing the level of attention British soldiers who died in a bomb blast received, compared to that received by Afghan civilians killed in the war.
The actual comment can be viewed here. Please note this comment is controversial and might offend.
He was arrested on Friday and charged over the weekend.
A West Yorkshire Police spokesman said: "He didn't make his point very well and that is why he has landed himself in bother."
Ahmed has been charged with a racially aggravated public order offence and will appear at Dewsbury Magistrates Court on 20 March 2011.
The soldiers were killed on March 6 in the deadliest single attack on British forces in Afghanistan since 2001 when their Warrior armoured vehicle was blown up by a massive improvised explosive device (IED).
The deaths take the number of UK troops who have died since the Afghanistan campaign began in 2001 to 404.

It seems you have to be careful if you have an opinion on Facebook these days.

dumb.

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

He is right though, the dead innocent Afghans get less attention and much less admiration than the dead soldiers. The dead Afghans are the true victims of war. That is their land and other people came into it over 10 years ago promising to protect them from the Taliban, but all they have done is kill them. PM Cameron and President Obama have to get their heads out of their asses and return the soldiers back home soon if they really care about them and the Afghan people. But no, now Britain is arresting teenagers who post stuff on Facebook bringing up the true victims of this imperialist mess.

[consciousrevolt85]

THE UK has recently implemented totalitarian regulations i have heard.... what a load of bullshyt, fascists!!

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Cool kid

[Kitty_Paine]

He is right though, the dead innocent Afghans get less attention and much less admiration than the dead soldiers. The dead Afghans are the true victims of war. That is their land and other people came into it over 10 years ago promising to protect them from the Taliban, but all they have done is kill them. PM Cameron and President Obama have to get their heads out of their asses and return the soldiers back home soon if they really care about them and the Afghan people. But no, now Britain is arresting teenagers who post stuff on Facebook bringing up the true victims of this imperialist mess.

I agree, why he was arrested for that is beyond me. He didn't threaten anyone. While I think he went a little far in his post with the whole, 'go cry over their grave and wish them hell cause that's where they're going'. I think that was stupid, but by no means does it deserve arrest.

[Comrade Samuel]

THE UK has recently implemented totalitarian regulations i have heard.... what a load of bullshyt, fascists!!

Recently?

[Revolutionary_Marxist]

Unfortunatley this is where Fascist propaganda gets you. Soon it'll come to America, and the rest of the Capitalist world.

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

It was funny in America to see President Obama and PM Cameron hanging out in D.C., talking about how to be imperialist against Iran and Syria, talking about how they both will stick to their "safe withdrawl out of Afghanistan" plans, going to a basketball game, and Cameron hogging down a hot dog there like a fatass. I was wondering, "What the hell is going on? Why are they talking about not only continuing imperialism in Afghanistan, but also about spreading some of that imperialist love to Syria and Iran. Doesn't Britain and America have enough to deal with domestically?"

[Doflamingo]

The kid is absolutely right though. Leave it to the police to censor a teenager's opinion.

[Ostrinski]

This is worrisome I mean I'd probably say something like this if I was drunk.

[Revolutionair]

What were the charges? Did he do anything illegal? What was the official statement on his arrest?
It seems a bit strange that the state would censor a comment so openly while a lot of people probably agree with the teenager.

edit:
Nvm, I'm blind:

Azhar Ahmed, 19, is said to have posted the comments on his profile page and has been charged with a racially aggravated public order offence

How exactly was this racially aggravated?

[Ostrinski]

Guess cause he wasn't white.

[Leonid Brozhnev]

It's emotionally charged and within good reason, but a 'racially motivated' offence? So if I made the same comment would I avoid arrest on the grounds that I'm white? "He didn't make his point very well and that is why he has landed himself in bother" for me translates to "We spied on him because he was foreign and subjectively took exception to something he had written; now we personally want to make him suffer for it." Bunch of backward-ass hypocrites...

[dodger]

Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it!!!!

A raft of legislation governing race....how we might live together. "racially aggravated public order offence." Now we see it has bit some teenager. Shock and horror teens say and do silly things. The young and not so young even bragged on Facebook of the consumer durables stolen in riots. Many paid for their sillyness, still locked up even now. Day of 9/11 school kids came screaming over the bridge past my house the youngsters of MUSLIM ORIGIN CHEEERING WILDLY. Shocked? Hardly...though I sense that was the reaction they most wanted. I knew them and their parents. Very much hard working and decent neighbours. Call plod? Hmm!...in fact this is the first time I have thought it pertinent to raise the 'incident.'

None of us of any origins who make up the British Working Class wish "racially aggravated public order offences" to be part of our lives. Deemed necessary to legislate is a shameful reflection enough. To then use the law in this contemptible manner cheapens the true crime and was wholly predictable from the word go.

[eyedrop]

Seems pointing out that it's racist as fuck to pay 1000% more attention to every englishman dying than afghans is racist??

[dodger]

Seems pointing out that it's racist as fuck to pay 1000% more attention to every englishman dying than afghans is racist??

The powers that be have never just used Englishmen to do the dirty work. Irish Guards Hanoverian Hussars or our "own beloved Ghurka"...with over 50% black British Youth unemployment many forced to take the King's shilling.Uncomplicated issue. The corpses are all black by the time they reach our shores. The young man made a telling point. Lets see if the media can keep a lid on it or a worthwhile debate comes about with the issues he raised. Actually we should be paying 1000% more attention to our people dying....if we managed to do that? The hypocrisy and phony pomp associated with cadavers would blow up in their face.

[brigadista]

isn't Azhar Ahmed one of "our people"

[derg]

Guess cause he wasn't white.

Yeah. Richard Seymour wrote a good post on this:

Azhar Ahmed is the latest victim of a concerted effort to re-define racism as "anything that could conceivably offend white people". Ahmed is being prosecuted by police over a statement he made on Facebook. The police say it is a "racially aggravated public order offence".

Look at the statement. There is not a hint of racism in it. To make it racist, one would have to assume that the troops were not just exclusively white, but somehow the bearer of whiteness in its essence. Maybe they are in this day and age; maybe it is through imperialist action and its effects both domestically and internationally that whiteness is produced. But the second assumption one would have to make is that white people are the victims of racist oppression by black people, Muslims and so on. We'll come back to this.

A spokesperson for Yorkshire police said: "He didn't make his point very well and that is why he has landed himself in bother." So, the penalty for not making a point "very well" is prosecution and potentially a sentence of up to six months in prison. The suggestion, though, is that aside from being "racially aggravated" this statement constitutes an incitement to disorder. Of course, it is considerably more even tempered than some sentiments I have expressed myself in the past, though I won't suffer arrest or prosecution for it. In addition, the internet - and Facebook in particular - contains an abundance of pages that really do exist to incite violence. Yet a Muslim sassing our brave boys is too much for the state. Either this suggests that Muslims are an excitable brown rabble, apt to start cutting white people up at the merest hint of block capitals and exclamation marks, or it implies that it is the feelings of offended white people that must be protected, lest they be the ones who are incited. Unsurprisingly the EDL and Casuals United dirt (may I say that, or is it "racially aggravated"?) are delighted. Muslims won't be allowed to sass our brave boys now that the bizzies are 'on our side'. Hurrah for the filth! (Is that okay, or...?)

What is really at stake here? Why are the police behaving like this? The blog of the Index on Censorship website suggests that suspicion of Muslims voicing opposition to the troops is rooted in fear and suspicion resulting from 7/7. To be honest, I think this is lame. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service are not acting out of paranoia. But the blog also makes another suggestion which gets close to the truth in my opinion: "Unconditional support for soldiers is now expected, even as we become increasingly unsure of what they’re doing out there. From the most ardent supporter of the war to the most strident critic, everyone claims to be acting in the interest of Our Brave Boys. This is now not a matter of politics, but loyalty ... the “racially aggravated” charge doesn’t stick, unless one is willing to buy into the notion that Afghanistan is part of an ethno-religious war between “Islam” and “the West”."

This suggests that it is the state, through its action, which is racializing this issue. We know that the state is involved in more than simply the bureaucratic and repressive organization of society.

Fundamentally what it does is a kind of moral regulation, ordering the symbolic world, constituting norms and social classifications. Obviously the law, and the criminal justice system which executes the law, is critical to this constitutive action. The state's re-classification of racist crime in such a way as to efface the axis of oppression, to make it such that "racism cuts both ways", was an important precondition for this sort of action. But what is at stake now is an attempt to re-organize the social body behind a resurgent militarism. We have seen the PR efforts aimed at cementing a new consensus that can support war indirectly, or at least neutralise opposition, on the basis of pro-troops sentiment. I think the pukeworthy Military Wives, whatever the producers thought they were doing, was a masterpiece in this sort of propaganda. But consent does not exist in separation from coercion. Violence and, literally, terror is central to how consent is secured. How the police act in producing consent has been dealt with here.

So we could see this prosecution as aberrant, the criminal justice system over-reacting, over-playing its hand, being too fastidious with incitement laws, or whatever. No doubt some will attribute it to nanny-state authoritarianism, and the usual bores will say that the liberals who support anti-racist legislation caused this to happen. I think it would make more sense to see it as a speculative manouevre in the application of an emerging discourse of treason. For that is really the logic of this prosecution. One has to see this question of 'incitement' in connection with the repressive and racialized response to the riots last Summer, and the generalized unease of the British state about the combustibility of the social order. Those police actions extended the repertoire of repressive tactics already formed in relation to the student protests, G20, UK Uncut, the climate camp and so on. As importantly, I think, it has to be seen in the context of the new doctrine of 'total policing', which is essentially about giving the police more of a free hand to intervene in aggressive ways to solve problems of social order, coded as problems of crime prevention. A premium is being placed on preemptive action, literally - I repeat, literally - on terror. In this case, it is disloyalty that is being punished, in a racialized way. The action of the police and courts is about constituting a new field of punishable conduct. And when disloyalty is punished, there really isn't much that can't be included under its canopy.

[Ocean Seal]

How exactly was this racially aggravated?

Because if a white man kills dozen of brown people and a brown person complains then said brown person is a racist who is promoting racial tension.

[Bolshevik_Guerilla_1917]

Why do we always have our nose up some other countrys ass, that kid wouldnt have been arrested if the UK and the US werent in Afgahnistan