An ongoing battle between U.K. photographers and police had another uproar this week when the streets surrounding the British Parliament were flooded with hundreds of protesters, enraged by news reports of civilian casualties in Sri Lanka.
Traffic was snarled for hours as protesters, demanding the British government intervene to prevent further bloodshed, staged sit-ins and clashed with police.
British photo-journalist Marc Vallee sent a message through Twitter following Monday's imbroglio, "Back from covering Tamil protest. Post G2O honeymoon is over. Met police attacked protesters & any photographer trying to document this!" and published images of European Pressphoto Agency photographer Andy Rain being forcibly removed from the protests by police officers.
Vallee's tweet refers to the violent clashes of last month's G20 Conference where several videos surfaced that showed journalists being beaten by batons or denied access to coverage. These types of events are relatively common in protests around the world, but some photo-journalists attribute recent reports of photographers and press being targeted specifically by police as a result of new anti-terrorism legislation.
Part of the Counter-Terrorism Act of 2008, signed into law on__ __Nov. 26 last year, makes it illegal to collect or distribute information on military, police or secret intelligence personnel which could be used for the preparation of a terrorist act. Photo-journalists, have been accusing police of improperly citing the legislation to conduct stops and searches to prevent photographers from photographing police.
The contentious relationship between members of the press and police recently sparked a much quieter protest outside of New Scotland Yard on Feb. 16. Several hundred press photographers gathered in response to Counter-Terrorism Act and flooded Flickr with photos of the event.
On top of this, a growing outrage is brewing among photographers in general over anecdotal evidence that police are also invoking parts of the Terrorism Act of 2000 to harass casual photographers and tourists.
Film producer Gemma Atkinson says she began recording video on her cell phone when her boyfriend was stopped for a drug search at an underground station. An officer approached, telling her it was illegal to photograph the police, then tried to take her phone which resulted in Atkinson refusing, being detained by several police and handcuffed for a short period of time. Other similar accounts have received press recently as well, including the stories of Klaus Matzka and Edward Denison.
While incidents like this can happen with or without the counter-terrorism legislation, these laws seem to provide blanket protection from accountability to individual police officers since it's unclear what evidence is needed to support 'suspicious' activity. And while Prime Minister Gordon Brown affirmed that there are no legal restrictions on photography in public places, he vaguely states that sometimes taking photographs could raise security questions.
Promises have been made to circulate guidelines about proper stop and search procedure but previous statements from government officials suggest that ultimately the enforcement of law is left in the hands of individual police officers. The existing language of Sections 43 and 44 demands that a reasonable suspicion of terrorist activity warrants being stopped and searched, but many suspect that without strict accountability nothing will prevent the continued misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.
Photos: Roger Lancefield/Flickr
