By Paul Gerrard, Socialist Alternative Greater Manchester
Shocking video footage has emerged of a Greater Manchester Police (GMP) officer tasering, stomping on, and kicking a young Asian man Fahir Amaaz in the head at Manchester Airport on 23 July.
Fahir was at the airport, along with other family members to welcome his elderly mother home on a flight from Doha, who can be seen kneeling and comforting him after he is tasered. The release of the footage on social media provoked widespread outrage and protests in Greater Manchester. 200 demonstrated against police brutality outside the police station in Rochdale where the young man’s family live. On the following day, a larger demonstration held up the trams in central Manchester in protest.
Establishment response
Unsurprisingly, the racist right have immediately jumped to the GMP officer’s defence. Newly elected MPs for Reform UK were quick to endorse the police brutality. Lee Anderson MP, former Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party, and famous for telling asylum seekers to “f*** off back to France’” said he would ‘give the police officer a medal’. Richard Tice MP, and former party leader, denounced the “violent, vicious thugs” (classic racist language torn straight from the US far-right) and said that in any other airport “officers would shoot first and ask questions later”. These views were taken up on the Tommy Robinson demonstration in London the following weekend. This shows how dangerous and potentially violent the far right could be. We urgently need a campaign to unmask them and offer a real alternative to their racist, anti-immigrant and anti-working class propaganda.
Unfortunately Andy Burnham, Labour’s Greater Manchester Mayor, issued nothing in the way of opposition, only offering that it was “a complicated situation” and there were “issues for both sides”. Burnham’s inability to unreservedly condemn the vicious and unrestrained actions of the officer concerned speaks volumes about the Labour Party under Starmer, and confirms how we cannot rely on Labour to change. We need mass struggle and a new left party. Whilst a further video has since emerged, showing the preceding confrontation between armed police officers and four young men, this does not justify nor negate the violence meted out afterwards by the police, nor Burnham using this as an ‘excuse’ to not call out the police officers.
The officer who attacked Fahir has been suspended and the incident has been referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC). Many will suspect that a cover up or whitewash will result and there is a danger that footage from CCTV, or police body cams, may disappear or ‘become unavailable’.
An endemic problem
Oppressive and violent behaviour by police is rarely far from the news. There are frequent reports of police WhatsApp groups where racist, ableist and misogynist messages and memes are shared. Specialist units, such as firearms and diplomatic protection, to which Wayne Couzens, the murderer of Sarah Everard belonged, are especially prone to this behaviour. This incident comes only days after the publication of a damning report into the use by GMP of humiliating strip searches against vulnerable women. In the wake of the incident at the airport, but in an unrelated move, GMP announced the suspension of thirteen officers in Bury, with two further officers placed on restricted duty in the last fortnight for racist behaviour.
The IOPC investigation is not enough, and will satisfy no one. We need community control of the police through committees of trade unions, with full representation of women’s, Black, LGBTQ+ and migrant groups to ensure full accountability, and a real campaign to rid the force of racist and misogynist officers.
