Critics say controversial Prevent strategy targets Muslims, stifles free speech Each year thousands of referrals are made, but only 11 percent of cases are seen as legitimate after analysis LONDON: Human rights groups have committed to boycotting a UK government review into the anti-extremist Prevent program to protest the appointment of William Shawcross as its chair. Last month Shawcross, who chaired the Charity Commission between 2012 and 2018, was made head of the program. The decision was criticized because of previous comments he had made about Islam. In a joint statement, a coalition of 17 human rights and community groups, including Liberty, Amnesty International and the Runnymede Trust, said his appointment means that the review exists to “simply rubber-stamp” the controversial program. Critics have long demanded an independent inquiry into Prevent. They argue that the program encourages discrimination against Muslims and stifles free expression. It introduces a requirement for schools, prisons and authorities to report concerns about people who are at risk of extremism. This has led to cases of teachers reporting schoolchildren to police for having toy guns and discussing video games. Each year thousands of referrals are made, but only 11 percent of cases are seen as legitimate after analysis, recent figures have shown. The review into the program was announced in January 2019. But it has faced delays, and it took 13 months to appoint Shawcross as chair after Lord Carlile, the first choice to lead the program, stepped down in 2019 following a legal challenge by a human rights group. Explaining the boycott, the human rights coalition said: “The appointments of both Shawcross and Lord Carlile have made clear, beyond doubt, that the UK government has no interest in conducting an objective and impartial review of the strategy, nor in engaging meaningfully with communities affected by it. We … cannot be complicit in a process that serves only to rubber-stamp a fundamentally flawed strategy.” Rather than take part in the review, the coalition said it will stage its own inquiry to “properly consider the harms of Prevent.” Shawcross, as director of the conservative Henry Jackson Society, said in 2012: “Islam is one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of our future. I think all European countries have vastly, very quickly growing Islamic populations.” Muslim groups have also revealed comments by him supporting torture and the controversial US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in his book “Justice and the Enemy.” Under Shawcross, the Charity Commission for England and Wales was accused of institutional bias against Muslims. Liberty’s policy and campaigns manager Rosalind Comyn said: “This exercise could have been a chance to properly scrutinize the premise and impacts of the Prevent strategy, which stifles speech, spreads fear and distrust, and encourages discrimination. “But Liberty will no longer engage in the farce it has become. We need interventions that respect the rights of the people directly affected and that bring communities together. Both Prevent and its review are very far removed from that ideal.”