THE government’s anti-terror Prevent strategy violates fundamental freedoms and should be scrapped, a human rights organisation said today.

A report by Amnesty International said there is a significant risk of discrimination against certain groups, including Muslims and children, and described the programme as lacking transparency, with people often unaware of why they have been referred or how they can challenge it.

The organisation also said it has a chilling effect on rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

Amnesty spoke to people referred “largely because they expressed non-violent political beliefs,” including someone who said their employer referred them for their left-wing social media posts.

The Prevent programme, which covers England and Wales, allegedly aims to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism by tackling the ideological causes, intervening early to support people considered “susceptible to radicalisation” and enabling people “who have already engaged in terrorism to disengage and rehabilitate.”

The government said the programme targets no one community, group or individual, and is used proportionately.

But the report cited an example of an 11-year-old boy being referred to the programme and said that “widespread stereotypes linking Muslim boys with ‘extremism’, ‘terrorism’ and Prevent, influenced the decision to refer him.”

It said that Islamophobic stereotypes have “played a major role in referrals to Prevent.”

The group also said a disproportionate number of neurodiverse people and children feature in Prevent referrals.

It said the scheme should be replaced with “greater investment in child protection and education, and safeguarding methods with a proven track record.”

Amnesty International UK chief executive Sacha Deshmukh said: “Prevent is fundamentally incompatible with the UK’s human rights obligations.

“There is no transparency and individuals are having to pursue costly multi-year battles for information about their own referrals.

“The dragnet approach inevitably sweeps up innocent people and can destroy their lives and futures.”

He said there is an “alarming shroud of secrecy” around the programme, with people having no way of knowing what is being done with their information “or if they will be flagged as a danger for life.”

A Home Office spokesman said Prevent is a “vital safety net against the threat posed by terrorism” and maintained that scrapping it would severely weaken the effectiveness of the country’s counter-terrorism strategy.