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A "no-go area" or "no-go zone" is a neighborhood or other geographic area where some or all outsiders are either physically prevented from entering or can enter at risk. The term includes exclusion zones, which are areas that are officially kept off-limits by the government, such as border zones and military exclusion zones. It also includes areas held by violent non-state actors, such as guerillas/insurgents, organized crime and terrorist organizations. [1] In some cases, these areas have been held by insurgent organizations attempting to topple the government, [2] such as Free Derry, an area in Northern Ireland that was held by the Irish Republican Army from 1969 to 1972. In other cases, the areas simply coexist alongside the state; an example is Kowloon Walled City, an area in Hong Kong essentially ruled by triad organizations from the 1950s to the 1970s.
In the 21st century, the term has most often been used to refer to areas that police or medical workers consider too dangerous to enter without heavy backup. Government officials and journalists from various European countries, including France [3] and Germany, [4] have used the term to describe neighborhoods within their own country. This usage of the term is controversial, generating significant debate over which areas, if any, are truly off-limits to police. [5] [6] [7] Some right-wing and conservative commentators and politicians have falsely claimed that Western countries contain areas where national law has been displaced by sharia law and non-Muslims are shunned. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
With no government enforcement from the British colonial government aside from a few raids by the Hong Kong Police, the Kowloon Walled City became a haven for crime and drugs. It was only during a 1959 trial for a murder that occurred within the Walled City that the Hong Kong government was ruled to have jurisdiction there. By this time, however, the Walled City was virtually ruled by the organised crime syndicates known as Triads. Beginning in the 1950s, Triad groups such as the 14K and Sun Yee On gained a stranglehold on the Walled City's countless brothels, gambling parlors, and opium dens. The Walled City had become such a haven for criminals that police would venture into it only in large groups. [13]
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During the Mozambican War of Independence, the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) set up and defended no-go "liberated zones" in the north of the country. [14]
During the Troubles, the term was applied to urban areas in Northern Ireland where the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and British Army could not operate openly. [15] Between 1969 and 1972, Irish nationalist/republican neighborhoods in Belfast and Derry were sealed off with barricades by residents. The areas were policed by vigilantes and both Official and Provisional factions of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) operated openly. [16] The most notable no-go area was called Free Derry. [17]
The areas' existence was a challenge to the authority of the British government. On 31 July 1972, the British Army demolished the barricades and re-established control in Operation Motorman. [18] [19] It was the biggest British military operation since the Suez Crisis. [20] Although the areas were no longer barricaded, they remained areas where the British security forces found it difficult to operate and were regularly attacked. [15] As a result, they entered only in armored convoys and in certain circumstances, such as to launch house raids. [21] Barricaded no-go areas across several settlements in the region were set up once again by nationalist and republican rioters when violence, supported by republican paramilitaries, erupted after the Drumcree Orange Order parade in July 1997, just days before the second and final Provisional IRA ceasefire. [22] The RUC and the British Army were forced to withdraw under fire from several Belfast neighbourhoods. [22] [23] [24] Police presence in these areas remained contentious into the 2000s as the main republican political party, Sinn Féin, refused to support the police. In 2007, however, the party voted to support the new Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). [25] In July 2007, the British Ministry of Defence published Operation Banner: An analysis of military operations in Northern Ireland, which assesses the Army's role in the Northern Ireland conflict; the paper acknowledges that, as late as 2006, there were still "areas of Northern Ireland out of bounds to soldiers". [26]
The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) were in actuality no-go areas for the Pakistani authorities, where the Pakistani police could not enter. The situation was changed temporarily with the United States invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, when the Pakistani government was supported by U.S. military forces. Currently FATA are no longer a "no-go area" as they have been merged with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. [27]
The term "no-go area" has a military origin and was first used in the context of the Bush War in Rhodesia.[ citation needed ] The war was fought in the 1960s and 1970s between the army of the predominantly white minority Rhodesian government and black nationalist groups.
The initial military strategy of the government was to seal the borders to prevent assistance to the guerrillas from other countries. However, with the end of Portuguese colonial rule in Angola and Mozambique, this became untenable and the white minority government adopted an alternative strategy ("mobile counter offensive"). This involved defending only key economic areas, transport links ("vital asset ground"), and the white civilian population. The government lost control of the rest of the country to the guerilla forces, but carried out counter-guerilla operations including "free-fire attacks" in the so-called "no-go areas," [28] where white civilians were advised not to go.
In 2013, the Venezuelan government negotiated with large criminal gangs on how to prevent violence and agreed to set up demilitarized areas as "peace zones". The concept behind the zones was to provide gang members with economic resources and construction materials in exchange for the surrender of the gang's weapons, with the understanding that the resources would be used to repair local infrastructure. The Venezuelan government hoped that through this process, gang members would disarm and become law-abiding and productive members of society. In addition, the then-deputy Minister of the Interior reportedly agreed verbally to avoid police patrols within the zones, should the gangs agree to disarm. The plan backfired as the gang members used the money and resources given to them by the government in exchange for their weapons to acquire more powerful weapons and began committing yet more crimes and violence within the zones. [29] According to InSight Crime, there are over a dozen mega-gangs in Venezuela, with some having up to 300 members.
In the wake of the 2015 Paris attacks, the Molenbeek municipality in Brussels was described by Brice De Ruyver, a security adviser to Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, as a "no-go zone", where youths drawn to petty crime end up in conflict with police. [30] Other academics, commentators, journalists and residents have contested the description of Molenbeek as a no-go zone. [5] [31] [32]
Some slum areas (known as favelas ) in Brazil, most notably in Rio de Janeiro State, are controlled by gangs with automatic weapons. [33] [34] Police and investigative reporters have been tortured and killed there, such as Tim Lopes in 2002. [35] Attempts at clearing up such areas have led to security crises in Rio [36] as well as in the State of São Paulo. [37] These organized crime organizations are known in Brazil as "Factions" (Facções in Portuguese), the two largest are the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital) or "First Command of the Capital" in English from São Paulo, and the Comando Vermelho (CV), "Red Command" in English, a faction from the Rio de Janeiro. [38]
It has been falsely claimed that France has Muslim-only no-go zones that are under sharia law. [39] [40] [41]
An early usage of the term regarding Europe was in a 2002 opinion piece by David Ignatius in The New York Times , where he wrote about France, "Arab gangs regularly vandalize synagogues here, the North African suburbs have become no-go zones at night, and the French continue to shrug their shoulders." Ignatius said the violence resulting in the no-go zone had come about due to inequality and racism directed towards French people of colour. [42] La Courneuve, a poverty-stricken municipality (commune) in the Paris region whose residents felt the authorities had neglected them due to racism, was described by police as a no-go zone for officers without reinforcements. [43]
In 2010, Raphaël Stainville of French newspaper Le Figaro called certain neighborhoods of the southern city Perpignan "veritable lawless zones", saying they had become too dangerous to travel in at night. He added that the same was true in parts of Béziers and Nîmes. [3] In 2012, Gilles Demailly , the mayor of the French city Amiens, in the wake of several riots, called the northern part of his city a lawless zone, where one could no longer order a pizza or call for a doctor. The head of a local association said institutional violence had contributed to the tensions resulting in the no-go zone. [44] [ verify ] In 2014, Fabrice Balanche, a scholar of the Middle East, labelled the northern city of Roubaix, as well as parts of Marseille, "mini-Islamic states", saying that the authority of the state is completely absent there. [45] In 2005 France's domestic intelligence network, the Renseignements Generaux, identified 150 "no-go zones" around the country where police would not enter without reinforcements. Christopher Dickey, writing in Newsweek , said the situation had arisen due to racism towards immigrants. [46]
In January 2015, after the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, various American media, including the news cable channels Fox News and CNN, described the existence of no-go zones across Europe and in France in particular. [47] [48] Both networks were criticized for these statements, [49] and anchors on both networks later apologized for the mistaken characterizations. [50] [51] [52] [53] The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, said that she intended to sue Fox News for its statements. [54] After complaints Fox News issued an apology, saying that there was "no credible information to support the assertion there are specific areas in these countries that exclude individuals based solely on their religion." [55] [56] [57] Berkshire Eagle columnist Donald Morrison, writing in The New Republic in the wake of the shooting, wrote that "the word banlieue ("suburb") now connotes a no-go zone of high-rise slums, drug-fueled crime, failing schools and poor, largely Muslim immigrants and their angry offspring" and that France has not succeeded in integrating minorities into national life. [58]
A sociology paper published in 2009 said that right-wing extremists had been discussing the creation of no-go areas in Western Europe since the 1980s. [59] It described attempts to create "national liberated zones" (national befreite Zonen) in Germany: "'no-go-areas', which are areas dominated by neo-Nazis," [60] attributing their appeal in the former DDR to "the unmet promises of modernisation and the poor socio-cultural conditions that offer no perspectives to young people". [61] Whether or not Germany actually had no-go zones was disputed: the paper concluded "according to ... state officials, the police and other relevant institutions, [the phenomenon of no-go zones] does not actually exist ... by contrast, the national press in Germany, various civic associations, and also experts acknowledge and give examples of the existence of no-go areas." [62]
In a February 2018 interview, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated that there are no-go areas in Germany, saying, "There are such areas and one has to call them by their name and do something about them." [4] This came in the context of arguing for a zero-tolerance policy in German policing. [63]
A 2023 article about Berlin defined "no-go zones for Jews" as "city areas Jews should avoid to reduce the likelihood of being attacked... inner-city districts in which Jews are recommended not to identify as Jews". [64]
In Kenya, the ongoing conflict in Somalia, where the terrorist organization al-Shabaab controls territory, has severely affected the security situation even on the Kenyan side of the border. There have been terrorist attacks and kidnappings in Kenya followed by a Kenyan intervention, Operation Linda Nchi, and police crackdowns. These have affected counties bordering Somalia and in Nairobi, the suburb of Eastleigh, which is inhabited mostly by Somalis. By 2004, Eastleigh was described as a no-go zone for Kenyan authorities after dark. [65]
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) maintains a border zone on the Gaza strip and declares "no-go zones", where they may use lethal force to enforce the security exclusion zone. [66] An IDF spokesman said that "residents of the Gaza Strip are required not to come any closer than 300 meters from the security fence", although there is some allowance for farmers to approach up to 100 meters if they do so on foot only. [67] The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that the no-go zones include about 30% of the arable land in the Gaza strip, and a small number of residents farm in the exclusion zones despite the risk of military action. [66] Unlike a legal border zone, the no-go zone is declared unilaterally in occupied territory, without acknowledgement or cooperation of Palestinian authorities, and as such can be considered a disputed no-go zone. It is considered unlawful by the Swedish organization Diakonia. [68]
The term "no-go zone" has been informally applied to high-crime neighborhoods in South African cities. In South Africa, the apartheid policy created segregated neighborhoods where whites risked being removed or victimized in black-only neighborhoods and vice versa. Because of the bantustan system, many urban inhabitants lived in the city illegally per apartheid laws. For example, in Cape Town, Cape Flats was a neighborhood where many of those evicted were relocated. It became a "no-go area", as it was controlled by criminal gangs. [69] However, many of these areas have seen significant gentrification; for example, Woodstock in Cape Town can no longer be described as a no-go zone. [70] In 2010, a housing complex comprising a number of city blocks in Atlantis, Western Cape were described as a "no-go zone for police conducting raids", [71] [72] and ambulances could not enter without police escort. In 2014, the situation had improved, and following convictions of several gang members, a police official said that "legislation concerning organised crime was beginning to work". [73] In 2018, a gang war in Parkwood, Cape Town was reported to have turned the area into a "no-go zone", although a minister visited the area to ensure policing continues. [74]
Some conservative American political figures, including Tony Perkins and Jim Newberger, have falsely claimed that some communities within the United States are either governed by Sharia law [75] [76] or are Muslim-controlled no-go zones. [77] [78] [41]
Some occupation protests in the U.S. connected with the George Floyd protests have been described as exclusionary zones. In Seattle in June 2020, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone was established as a "No Cop Co-op." [79] In Minneapolis, the George Floyd Square occupied protest persisted for over a year, until June 20, 2021, and was described as "a police free zone." [80] [81] [82]
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People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD) is a group formed in 1996 in the Cape Flats area of Cape Town, South Africa. The organisation came to prominence for acts against gangsters, including arson and murder.
Molenbeek-Saint-Jean or Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, often simply called Molenbeek, is one of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. Located in the western part of the region, it is bordered by the City of Brussels, from which it is separated by the Brussels–Charleroi Canal, as well as by the municipalities of Anderlecht, Berchem-Sainte-Agathe, Dilbeek, Jette, and Koekelberg. The Molenbeek brook, from which it takes its name, flows through the municipality. In common with all of Brussels' municipalities, it is legally bilingual (French–Dutch).
The United Kingdom has three distinct legal systems with a separate prison system in each: one for both England and Wales, one for Scotland, and one for Northern Ireland. As of June 2023, the United Kingdom has the highest per-capita incarceration rate in Western Europe, at 159 people per 100,000 in England and Wales; 162 people per 100,000 in Scotland; 97 people per 100,000 in Northern Ireland; and the largest prison population in Western Europe. The average cost per prison place was £46,696 in England and Wales (2021/22), £46,892 in Scotland (2021/22), and £47,927 in Northern Ireland (2022/23).
Gellerup is a neighborhood of the Brabrand district in the city of Aarhus, Denmark. The neighborhood was formerly a suburb that has now completely merged with the city and it is characterized by several natural attractions, detached house sectors, highrise apartments and an industrial park.
The Irish Mob is a usually crime family–based ethnic collective of organized crime syndicates composed of primarily ethnic Irish members which operate primarily in Ireland, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, and have been in existence since the early 19th century. Originating in Irish-American street gangs – famously first depicted in Herbert Asbury's 1927 book, The Gangs of New York – the Irish Mob has appeared in most major U.S. and Canadian cities, especially in the Northeast and the urban industrial Midwest, including Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Chicago.
Crime rates in New York City have been recorded since at least the 1800s. The highest crime totals were recorded in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the crack epidemic surged, and then declined continuously from around 1990 throughout the 2000s. As of 2023, New York City has significantly lower rates of gun violence than many other large cities. Its 2022 homicide rate of 6.0 per 100,000 residents compares favorably to the rate in the United States as a whole and to rates in much more violent cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans.
Crime in Chicago has been tracked by the Chicago Police Department's Bureau of Records since the beginning of the 20th century. The city's overall crime rate, especially the violent crime rate, is higher than the US average. Gangs in Chicago have a role in the city's crime rate. The number of homicides in Chicago hit a 25-year high in 2021.
Organised crime in Nigeria includes activities by fraudsters, bandits, drug traffickers and racketeers, which have spread across Western Africa. Nigerian criminal gangs rose to prominence in the 1980s, owing much to the globalisation of the world's economies and the high level of lawlessness and corruption in the country.
Crime in Los Angeles has varied throughout time, reaching peaks between the 1970s and 1990s. Since the early 2020s, crime has increased in Los Angeles.
Human rights in Dubai are based on the Constitution and enacted law, which promise equitable treatment of all people, regardless of race, nationality or social status, per Article 25 of the Constitution of the United Arab Emirates. Despite this, Freedom House has stated: "Extreme forms of self-censorship are widely practiced, particularly regarding issues such as local politics, culture, religion, or any other subject the government deems politically or culturally sensitive. The Dubai Media Free Zone (DMFZ), an area in which foreign media outlets produce print and broadcast material intended for foreign audiences, is the only arena where the press operates with relative freedom."
Stoning, or lapidation, is a method of capital punishment where a group throws stones at a person until the subject dies from blunt trauma. It has been attested as a form of punishment for grave misdeeds since ancient times.
Crime in Atlanta, Georgia is above the national median and has been a major problem for the city since the middle 20th century.
A sensitive urban zone is an urban area in France defined by the authorities to be a high-priority target for city policy, taking into consideration local circumstances related to the problems of its residents.
The legal system of Saudi Arabia is based on Sharia, Islamic law derived from the Quran and the Sunnah of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The sources of Sharia also include Islamic scholarly consensus developed after Muhammad's death. Its interpretation by judges in Saudi Arabia is influenced by the medieval texts of the literalist Hanbali school of Fiqh. Uniquely in the Muslim world, Sharia has been adopted by Saudi Arabia in an uncodified form. This, and the lack of judicial precedent, has resulted in considerable uncertainty in the scope and content of the country's laws. The government therefore announced its intention to codify Sharia in 2010, and, in 2018, a sourcebook of legal principles and precedents was published by the Saudi government. Sharia has also been supplemented by regulations issued by royal decree covering modern issues such as intellectual property and corporate law. Nevertheless, Sharia remains the primary source of law, especially in areas such as criminal, family, commercial and contract law, and the Qur'an and the Sunnah are declared to be the country's constitution. In the areas of land and energy law the extensive proprietorial rights of the Saudi state constitute a significant feature.
James Edwin Richards, also known as Jim Richards,, was an American citizen journalist, editor and publisher of Neighborhood News, a weekly e-mail newsletter, that reported on crime in Venice, California. Richards was murdered at his Oakwood neighborhood home, one convicted assailant was sentenced to 16 years in prison, and the anniversary of his death is honored by locals.
Crime in France is combated by a range of French law enforcement agencies.
Sharia means Islamic law based on Islamic concepts based from Quran and Hadith. Since the early Islamic states of the eighth and ninth centuries, Sharia always existed alongside other normative systems.
Gatestone Institute is an American conservative think tank based in New York City, known for publishing articles pertaining to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, specifically with regard to Islamic extremism. It was founded in 2012 by Nina Rosenwald, who serves as its president. John R. Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former National Security Advisor, was its chairman from 2013 until March 2018. Its current chairman is Amir Taheri. The organization has attracted attention for publishing false or inaccurate articles, some of which were shared widely.
Cape Verdean organized crime refers to the various criminal organizations that are active in Cape Verde & Cape Verdean diaspora communities. Cape Verde is important as a transshipment point in the cocaine trade, and the existence of sizeable Cape Verdean communities in New England, the Dutch port city of Rotterdam as well as in several cities in Portugal, France and Switzerland, led to the formation of criminal gangs in the community active in the international drug trade supplemented with other criminal activities. Cape Verdean organized crime primarily comes in the form of street gangs, with varying levels of organization and sophistication.
American Sharia is a 2015 American buddy cop comedy-drama action film directed by Omar Regan and starring Omar Regan, Baba Ali and Eric Roberts. Written by Omar Regan, the film is about rogue government officials using Islamophobia to maintain power while two Muslim police officers attempt to solve a case involving the disappearance of several Muslims.
The notion there are places in Germany outsiders — including police — can't visit has previously been dismissed by officials.
A number of localities in the United States, France, and Britain are considered Muslim "no-go zones" (operating under Sharia Law) where local laws are not applicable. False.
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