Letter to Scotshit

To: Editor, Scotland on Sunday

Dear Mr. Martin,

I am concerned to read your article "Anarchists riot, but peace wins the day" (http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=731222005) on Saturday's Make Poverty History/G8 demonstration.

The circumstance which I witnessed, attending the march with my young children, were peaceful young protesters, many dressed as clowns, being harassed and cordoned-off by riot police, seemingly with nothing better to do with their time. Our route home was blocked by obstruction by the police who outnumbered and intimidated a small and good-humoured group.

Your headline and textual content are inconsistent and misleading about the scale and origin of 'the violence'. Your own article states that only one arrest was made that day, among 225,000 demonstrators, and that the statement of the manager of the Human Be-In, the alleged site of your 'riot', also implicates the police as instigators of any trouble that occurred. ("A few of the protesters came into the bar and tried using it as some sort of soapbox for their views but they quickly ran out when the riot police charged them.")

Thus your reporting is not in keeping with the facts, to the point of overt bias.

Yours sincerely,
ion