RSI asks you to write to your local MP to call on the government to scrap its sweeping and harmful counter-extremism programme, ‘Prevent’.
RSI and many others have long documented the harms to people’s lives resulting from Prevent, including damage to children and young people’s education and self-censorship among people who no longer feel safe disagreeing with the government. Over the past year, the UK has been further expanding the definition of what it considers ‘extremism’, painting a target on nearly everyone who holds a political opinion or believes in a cause.
You can use the email below when contacting your MP, and find out whom to contact by using this website. You may copy the e-mail template below:
Dear [insert MP name],
I am writing to you to urge you to end the government’s counter-extremism programme, ‘Prevent’.
For well over a decade, academics and other experts have been documenting the programme’s negative impacts on our rights to freely express ourselves and be free from state surveillance. Right now, official policy tells doctors, teachers and others to refer people to Prevent for government scrutiny even if those people do not express any desire to commit violence.
A referral can impact the rest of a person’s life, with this information stored on police databases for up to 100 years – when they have not committed any crime. Large numbers of referrals impact children and young people, damaging their education.
In a free society, the government does not target people for what they think – and it does not tell people to report on the opinions of their neighbours, their patients or the children in their care.
Free expression is protected under the law, and the freedom of thought is absolute. Prevent should end and the government should focus on stopping actual threats of violence – based on facts, not bias or fear.
As your constituent, I ask you to call on the government to scrap Prevent and target violence, not ‘thought crime’.
Yours sincerely,
(Name)
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