London, UK, October 26 2007 – Speaking at Westminster University yesterday, Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised to open a "new chapter" on civil liberty in Britain, designed to strengthen individual freedoms against arbitrary powers of the state. His ambitious words could not hide the fact that for ten years in Government he has been a supporter of ever more authoritarian measures including increasing detention without trial and the introduction of ID cards, control orders and further draconian legislation.

Dr Imran Waheed, media representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain, said, "Gordon Brown has been at the centre of a Government which has created a Britain with 28 day detention without trial, a commitment to ID cards and expanded use of CCTV. His government like others before it actively supports oppressive tyrants in the Muslim world, like General Musharraf. To speak glowingly of a Britain that ‘made liberty the foundation of everything, and became a great, mighty and splendid nation because liberty is its direct end and foundation,’ is frankly laughable."

"This government – supported by the Conservative opposition – have created a parallel justice system which disproportionately targets Muslims through the UK’s anti-terror laws. They allow some to be charged with vague offences that require lower levels of evidence e.g. visiting websites. Unlike numerous cases involving Muslims, Miles Cooper, who had searched the internet, amassed explosives and successfully set off bombs to change state policy, was not arrested nor charged under the new terror legislation and received a more lenient sentence."

"Under the ‘war on terror’, it is questionable whether the label ‘liberal’ can be used to describe societies where there has been increased detention and surveillance, greater interference by the state at home and in education and the advent of thought policing that insists on the teaching of ‘identity’. Such measures were once seen as the preserve of totalitarian societies in the communist bloc."

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