The British Prime Minister David Cameron counted the key criticisms of his own government during his UN General Assembly address but accused Iran of facing those difficulties rather than Britain.
Cameron who was waiting in the wings when President Ahmadinejad was addressing the chamber diverted from his script and launched an attack on the Iranian president saying Tehran is impinging on the freedom of speech and of media and leading a crackdown on demonstrators.
"He [Ahmadinejad] didn't remind us that he runs a country where they may have elections of a sort but they also repress freedom of speech, do everything they can to avoid the accountability of a free media, violently prevent demonstrations and detain and torture those who argue for a better future," Cameron said.
The elements of his comments, however, were very familiar to the British who have been following up the news in their own country over the recent months.
The PM put social networking websites including Facebook and Twitter as well as Research In Motion company, which produces Blackberry devices, under pressure back in August to suspend their services during civil disturbances.
That was in the aftermath of the worst unrest in more than three decades that started in London's Tottenham area and spread across Britain.
“So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services,” Cameron told the Commons back in August.
That was only one case in the long list of the British government's clampdown on the freedom of expression that includes prosecuting anti-tax-avoidance protesters for fabricated violence charges and using brutal tactics in dealing with students calling for lower university tuition fees.
Closely affiliated with Britain's restraints on freedom of speech are London's violent suppression of demonstrations that have shaken the pillars of the British society over the second half of the 2010 and well into 2011.
The British police have been repeatedly charged with using ferociously aggressive tactics in dealing with demonstrators among them kettling protesters, using rubber bullets to disperse them, charging horses at demonstrators and resorting to harsh physical handling of activists.
This is while Cameron himself approved using water cannons during civil disturbances back in August.
As for the detentions, which Cameron pointed to during his attack on Ahmadinejad, it goes without saying that London is a champion in putting people in prisons as evidence of the recent unrests show.
The scale of the detentions after the unrest was such that prison officials said the arrests shot the number of inmates to record high levels making jails full to the brim.
After all, the question that rings in the mind after Cameron's attack on Iran is whether London's clampdown on freedom of speech, free media and demonstrations and detention of those opposed to the government policies make Britain a better country with a “better future.”
AMR/HE
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/200731.html
