The problem with the census is the people running it - in Scotland, a firm of American private-enterprise torturers with an appalling record of atrocities in Iraq.

SACC's flyer on CACI


Press Release from Scotland Against Criminalising Communities
Friday 25 March
For immediate release

Human Rights Group pledges support for census refusers

Human rights group Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC) will do all it can to support anyone prosecuted for failing to properly complete their census forms. SACC has been encouraging people to refuse to co-operate with the census in protest at the involvement in it of CACI, a US-based defence contractor involved in human rights abuse at Abu Ghraib. CACI is carrying out crucial Information Technology and "back-office" work for the census.

Richard Haley, Chair of SACC, said:

"The involvement of CACI in Scotland's census is a scandal and we support all forms of peaceful non-cooperation with the census. We urge everyone, whether they decide to complete their census form or not, to refuse to give any useful information to census staff who visit them. People who refuse to complete their forms are completely justified and if they stand firm they are very unlikely to be prosecuted.

"The law requiring people to fill in and return their census forms is almost unenforceable. Just three people were convicted after the last census, in 2001. We hope and expect that there will be no prosecutions at all after this year's census, in view of the justifiable outrage it has provoked. But if the Register Office does attempt to victimise anyone, we will provide all the support we can to the people involved."

SACC does not accept that the census, in the form it has taken this year, can help to secure public services in Scotland. Proper public service provision cannot be made on the basis of information gathered with the help of a private firm inappropriately contracted to carry out senstive public work despite a record of human rights violations.

The General Register Office of Scotland (GROS) has been negligent, unethical and irresponsible in its handling of the census contract. The difficulties that this will create over the next decade can be surmounted through a rigorous and imaginative use of other forms of data. But the problem is entirely one of GROS's making.

Advice for people who do not wish to co-operate with the census can be found at www.ethicalcensus.org.uk/non-cooperation.php