Desmond Fernandes
The Nationality and Borders Bill, which passed through the UK House of Commons last December, has been criticised from several quarters. It was severely criticised in the UK House of Lords on 5 January by Baroness Ludford (amongst others) who observed that “the hallmarks of this Bill are illegality and inhumanity.” Racist and fascist aspects of the Bill have also been identified by academics and political commentators, who see them as bolstering racist and fascist agendas that are being promoted by the government in other bills. Part 1 and 2 of this series have already detailed a number of concerns that have been expressed over the Bill.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), for example, has stated that the Government’s proposals to reform the asylum system as set out in the Nationality and Borders Bill will “undermine established international refugee protection rules and practices and would break international law.”
Jeremy Corbyn MP, reflecting the views of several opposition MP’s, also asserted last month that “the attacks on refugees and the attacks on people who support refugees” via this Bill “are nothing but appalling and disgusting.”
According to a joint legal opinion by Raza Husain QC, Eleanor Mitchell of Matrix Chambers and Jason Pobjoy of Blackstone Chambers, Clause 9 “as presently framed, confers upon the Secretary of State an exorbitant, ill-defined and unconstitutional power to a make a deprivation order without notice. (…) There is a very significant likelihood that decisions taken in reliance on the Secretary of State’s new powers would result in serious breaches of Article 8.” As well as “Article 6 and (…) potentially Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”
The Good Law Project, who published the legal opinion, has concluded that “the provisions will affect the citizenship of almost half of all Asian British people and two in five Black Britons. Media Diversified told us: ‘Up to six million people will live in fear that one wrong move, even just one unforced error or car accident could see us arrested, judged in secret and deported. This targeted, racist legislation is an existential threat to all our loved ones, neighbours, and colleagues.’”
All-Party Parliamentary and several civil society groups have voiced their opposition to the Bill. As opposition has mounted, there have also been calls to engage in solidarity against the Bill and everything it represents. Guilaine Kinouani, the founder and director of racereflections.co.uk, states: “There are always opportunities to show solidarity. But empty ‘feel good’ gestures in the face of our continuing suffocation on land or at sea, is not solidarity. Indeed, solidarity without resistance is not solidarity, it is complicity.”
Lord Rooker: ‘A Bill that reduces protections for people in slavery’
Lord Rooker earlier this month in parliament described his shock at reading a letter, jointly signed by 114 CEOs “concerned about the sector under legislation” and sent to the UK parliament, that concluded that “the Bill sends a message to traffickers that they are free to exploit people with uncertain or insecure immigration status, or criminal records, even for minor offences, or those committed under duress, as they’ll no longer qualify for help” and that it “will reduce the number of criminal prosecutions for trafficking offences as there is no incentive for victims trapped in criminal exploitation, or targeted by traffickers for old offences, from coming forward.”
The joint letter by the CEO’s, he added, also concluded that the Bill is “unfair to victims of slavery, while making it easier for the perpetrators to get away with their crimes.” As he pointed out: “The Bill requires slavery victims to disclose at the moment of identification or be penalised. This is simply not realistic. As a result, fewer people will be identified and helped. I simply do not understand Clause 62, which disqualifies potential victims from protection. The reasons for removal of protection are badly drafted, vague and can be operated on a whim. (…) Parliament cannot possibly allow this vagueness.
“Of course, the Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Dame Sara Thornton, has said that there is a risk that Clause 62 will limit victim engagement in prosecutions and thereby significantly undermine the ability of law enforcement to bring traffickers to justice.
“The CEOs’ experience is useful, but the joint letter from the Anti-Slavery Commissioner and the Victims’ Commissioner to the Home Office, released on 30 December, is devastating” and it notes that “the Bill is set to degrade existing protections for these victims and that it ‘singularly fails to grasp the realities of being a victim.’”
This Bill, Lord Rooker noted, is also “a very poor signal to the police officers out there at the moment preventing exploitation. (…) What signal are we sending today’s police officers with a Bill that reduces protections for people in slavery?”
Tanmanjeet Dhesi MP: ‘The removal of ethnic minorities from these islands has been a long-standing fascist demand’
For Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi MP: “This Bill is deeply flawed, driven by ideology and destined to have lasting catastrophic consequences. If it is intended to make our system of citizenship and asylum fairer and more humane, it does the opposite. If it is intended to smash the evil gangs who trade in human lives, it does the opposite. If it is intended to end the heart-rending tragedy of people dying in the icy waters of the English Channel, it does the opposite. If it is intended to make our borders secure and make us safer, it does the exact opposite. Yet the Government plough on with their hostile environment, without thought for the devastating impact it may have.
“Ministers have been warned by experts and academics that the Bill undermines the UK’s commitment to the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention and much more besides. Given the weight of evidence against the Government’s approach, one might wonder why they persist. Why, indeed? The removal of ethnic minorities from these islands has been a long-standing fascist demand.”
The Bill – Adding to others that respond to fascist demands?
Other demands that many political commentators, academics and human rights defenders clearly identify as being fascist/neo-fascist in nature, we should note, are also being seemingly met and addressed by other Bills making their way through parliament, which clarify that the targeting of ‘Others’ forms part of the rationale for the new raft of legislation that the Conservative government is committed towards passing.
The Nationality and Borders Bill has to be assessed within this wider ‘fascist’ and racist context. As Nisha Kapoor, author of ‘Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism’ and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick has noted, the Home Secretary’s “powers sit at the extreme end of a broader reshaping of citizenship being propelled by the simultaneous agendas of big tech-driven state modernisation and Tory neo-nationalism.
“As the spectacle of citizenship deprivation reassures and responds to demands of the Conservatives’ fascistic base, intimidating those more conscious of their own precarity, the creation of digital biometric IDs promoted as necessary for more efficient modernised government imposes a quieter, more technocratic violence that will enable proficient extensions to external and internal bordering.”
For Kapoor: “The real overhaul of citizenship represented by this Bill is the promotion of a pass system (…) as the only route through which legitimate asylum will be recognised. In tempered form, this is being materialised through” proposed “vaccine passports to the citizenry as a whole. It is here where the state’s alliance with big tech merges with its authoritarian edge” and “biometrics provide for the indexing of populations.”
For Guilaine Kinouani, one cannot now ignore the fact that, via the propositions placed in the Bill, which was passed by the House of Commons in December, “some citizens, who are primarily black and brown, based on some constructed alleged traceable foreign ancestry and thus often assumed eligibility for some alternative nationality, may be disowned as citizens, if the state deems it in its interest to do so.
“As many have argued,” she notes that “our racial background, ancestry or religion should have zero bearing in the process of justice.” But, “of course, we know they always have. Now the law tells us, it is right, proper and lawful that they do. There are strong and chilling echoes of the past” here that, she observes, “we are continuing to ignore. The re-inscription of ‘le droit du sang’ – blood rights within contemporary legislation in Britain is chilling to me. This is foundational to fascist iteration of the nation-state, of belonging and alien control. A principle with a strong Nazi pedigree.”
Whilst Kinouani notes that “sceptics may argue the reference is inappropriate or alarmist, (…) linking the current administration’s on-going dismantlement of our freedom to protest or freedom to dissent, masked by faux concerns over the alleged erosion of ‘free speech’ to the present bill, helps us see that the wish to quieten and control the masses, also central to fascism, is present here.”
Indeed, “exaggerated concerns over ‘security’ have been leveraged to sustain both sets of political agendas, the right to protest and the right to citizenship. Both strongly reflect the kind of paranoia filled fantasies which have always provided the fuel for fascism and authoritarianism. There is a long history though of ignoring fascist violence directed at non-white bodies.” This is “even though we know their bodies have always been the training ground for later tyrannical violence on bodies racialised as white.”
She adds: “The bill reinstates powerful yet insidious normative expectations that black and brown people must watch what they say, how we behave. We must be compliant as the State may decide our country is no longer our country and dispossess us of our home. (…) Associations” are “made mainly because of the colour of our skin.”
For Kinouani: “This is what makes the bill a tool of social control and silencing. It’s all, once more in the small print. (…) Needing to prove we belong lies at the centre of the issues. The precariousness of British citizenship when one is racialised as ‘Other’” becomes all too evident.
For Umair Haque: “The thugs and hooligans are in charge of the country. (…) You want to give your base, your society, a license to hate. You know you cannot just get away with it, but be adored for it. You’ve produced what Orwell so presciently called the two-minutes hate, the daily fix of rage and venom and bile, that allows the weakened masses to get it out of their system, to vent their spleen at a scapegoat.
“So that afterwards, they’re not just placid and meek and obedient,” he notes, “they’re all that and they thank you for giving them someone to hate, while not noticing you’re really the one that ripped their lives apart. Does all that sound like fascism to you?”
Haque points out: “The way that we tell the story of Orwell’s 1984, in Anglo culture, goes like this. It was a denunciation of communism.” But, he states, it was “a denunciation of fascism. (…) What is really not allowed isn’t just free speech and so forth, but love, gentleness, kindness, which is why, when Winston Smith meets Julia, it’s so dislocating for him, because he is falling in love. 1984 is the story of a society which is not allowed to love, because it’s been seduced by hate.”
To Haque: “Orwell cut to the truth of what fascism really is. We have yet, even now, to understand it as well as he did. A society seduced and stupefied – literally made stupid, made a fool of – by the black magic of hate.”
Umberto Eco similarly saw ‘Ur-Fascism’ as “inherently aligned with the notion of tradition. He noted ‘one has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers.’ So, to what degree has a desire to revisit the past been seen recently in Parliament? Since the Tories took power in 2010, perhaps those two quintessential icons of Britishness – Albion and, to a lesser extent, Britannia – have both made a pre-Brexit come-back. The utterance of ‘Great Britain’ in the House has also almost quadrupled in that time.”
Amongst other factors – detailed by Iain Overton to be evident in the British political landscape – “the next area that concerned Eco was the fear of ‘the Other.’ ‘The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement,’ Eco wrote, ‘is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.’ It is of little surprise, then, that the word ‘migrant’ has witnessed a steady upward trend in the last decade under Tory rule. (…)
“[There] is a strong suggestion of a political culture whose ‘Overton window’ has shifted markedly to the right. A shift that is of concern not just to those on the left, but even to moderate Conservatives who often do not recognise the party they once supported. Within this political shift, something has entered British politics – an anger that has not been seen for a long while. Indeed, if you cross-refer the words ‘love’ and ‘hate’ in recent British political life, you can see that, the two years before last, hate was more articulated in the Commons than love was.”
For those who are critical of comparisons with the past, Priya Satia – described by Caroline Elkins as “one of the most important historians of our time” – argues that “eschewing comparisons to European fascism does not free us to understand our present discontents on their own terms but rather preserves undisturbed the anodyne analogies to ancient Rome and Greece that have legitimised American and British liberal empire since the Enlightenment, when invocations of history began to make history.
“Worse, it risks promoting myths of British and American exceptionalism. By changing our comparison set, we may more clearly grasp both what makes the present different from what came before and the way the past has habitually been repurposed in a manner inhibiting ethical accountability in the present.”
For former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell: “The depiction of right-wing populism can be described in some instances as ‘proto-fascism’, with regard to Trump and also with regard to our own country, the rise of Johnson, Johnson’s politics. It’s proto-fascism, no respect for democratic values, no respect for democratic institutions, no respect for the law, no respect for (…) rights and entitlements.”
Steve Topple has, in the Canary, also detailed “14 signs” of “the UK (…) becoming a modern fascist state.”
In terms of the Online Safety Bill and related measures already in place that one should be concerned over, Big Brother Watch, for instance, has warned that “the idea that the acceptability of speech online might be policed by a relatively unknown Government unit” – the Counter Disinformation Cell – “without any degree of accountability, is deeply concerning, particularly since the cell in question is requesting the removal of lawful content.
“The Cell’s secretive pressurising on intermediaries to remove unwanted speech, untethered from the rule of law, is at great risk of constituting extrajudicial state censorship. We strongly urge for more transparency over such activities and an immediate stop to Government requests for the removal of lawful communications.”
Moreover, “it is wholly inappropriate for our right to free expression to [be] curtailed by secondary legislation which is unamendable and allows for little Parliamentary oversight. In these circumstances, the power exercised by the online regulator and Secretary of State would bypass the full democratic process, creating a two-tier speech system whereby the increasingly ubiquitous online tier would be, for all intents and purposes, untethered from decades of existing law and highly susceptible to political swings of the day.”
Baroness Bennett also noted in the House of Lords on 13 December last year when she called for the removal of Part 4 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill that: “We find ourselves in a sadly familiar place, with a part of the law explicitly targeting people who been long subject to (…) prejudice, discrimination and the bigotry. (…) Part 4 of this Bill has caused great distress, concern and fear among the people who risk being affected by it and a great outcry from our entire human rights community. (…)
“At Second Reading, the Minister said that this was delivering on a manifesto commitment. (…) But what if something is simply morally wrong – is racist, and risks putting us on a potentially slippery slope to horrors that the world has seen before?
“It also worth questioning the celebration of British values. If any noble Lords have not seen it already, I point them to the article by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, in the Independent, which addresses that very point. I also point them to the conclusions of the Joint Committee on Human Rights: ‘Gypsies, Roma and Travellers (GRT) would (…) be in the position of potentially committing a criminal offence without having done anything at all, merely having given the impression to another private citizen that they intended to do something. This is very dangerous territory, which risks creating offences whose elements could largely be based on the prejudice of the accuser, and, perhaps, the justice system.’ (…)
“I would point out that blowing a dog whistle does not just create a momentary disturbance. Blowing a dog whistle calls the pack together, and we know that in a pack behaviour is different – potentially more violent, dangerous and disastrous than people acting alone. The [suggested] amendments (…) do not silence the dog whistle. Having looked at history, I have to say to your Lordships’ House that I have to do what I can today to try to ensure that that whistle is not blown.”
Lord Alton also commented of this Bill: “The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, reminded us of where prejudice can lead. (…) In our generation, it is down to us to guard against prejudice, which – I know the Minister would agree – can so easily morph into something worse. (…) As the Bill stands, it both criminalises people and deprives them of their rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. (…) These amendments point to rank discrimination and are an attack on a way of life.”
For Lord Bourne, the Bill “is discriminatory at root, I feel, and not something that a British Government should be doing. When I was preparing my speech last night, I noticed there was a television programme on, and so I thought that I would take a break. It was the excellent Simon Reeve – some noble Lords might have seen it. He was doing a travelogue on Turkey, and it was very interesting.
“There was a nomadic minority being moved on. It was wretched, it was sad, and I sat there thinking how proud I was that we do not do it this way. Then I had the chilling thought that we were about to. I hope we can pull back from this.”
To Lord Paddick: “All GRT people are likely to be criminalised by these new offences because people’s prejudices will result in them anticipating damage, disruption or distress, despite no previous experience of the GRT people concerned, or any other evidence – just their own prejudice.”
For Baroness Bennett: “I feel that this is a moral issue on which a line has to be drawn. (…) The Equality and Human Rights Commission said in its response to the government consultation that this is indirect discrimination that cannot be justified.”
Several CEO’s and representatives of human rights groups have stated in an open letter to the government that: “This Bill will have a profound impact on the right to protest, constitutes a direct threat to Gypsy and Traveller communities and includes a host of expansive policing and sentencing powers that will further entrench racial disparity in the criminal justice system. (…)
“The Human Rights Commission has stated the measures undermine human rights legislation. Former senior police officers describe the Bill as ‘harmful to democracy.’ Over 700 legal academics call for the Bill to be dropped. Three UN Special Rapporteurs, and top human rights officials warn that the Bill threatens our rights. Over 600,000 members of the public sign petition against the Bill.”
“Many may not be aware,” Marcus Cain points out, “of a batch of new amendments to the police bill that the government (…) snuck in late in the Lords committee stage of the bill. These amendments” were clearly “introduced at this stage in an attempt to bypass proper democratic scrutiny by MPs. (…) The amendments would essentially criminalise protest completely and extend police powers to include the right to stop and search people and vehicles without suspicion.”
As Eliza Egret, co-author of ‘Struggles For Autonomy in Kurdistan’ recently stated in the Canary: “Imagine being held in prison until your trial because you joined a street protest. This is what could happen if Patel and Johnson have their way.”
Amendment 319A, Back Bench reports, “states that people who attached themselves to another person (even linking arms), objects or land” – for example, Kurdish or other refugee rights protesters ‘locking-on’ in order to prevent ‘failed’ asylum seekers from being deported in questionable circumstances to repressive countries via deportation flights – “in such a way that disruption is caused to two or more people could face up to 51 weeks in prison. 319b even has a clause meaning ‘equipped for locking on’ is also a crime. So being at a protest with glue could also be an imprisonable offence.
“One of the Bill’s main provisions was to allow police to impose severe restrictions on protests based on noise levels (this predated the new amendments and was in the bill’s first draft). If a protest” – for example, a Kurdish protest against the criminalisation of Kurds in the UK or a protest against Turkish state repression and military involvement in Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan (where there have been allegations of Turkish military use of chemical weapons) – “was loud enough to cause ‘serious unease, alarm or distress’ to a single passer-by, the police could arrest those involved. (…) Amendment 319D creates a new offence of obstructing major transport works (airports, roads, railways and ports) with a prison sentence of up to 51 weeks.
“Next, we have Serious Disruption Prevention Orders (SDPO’s), (…) meant to be used against people who have protest-related offences, and can be imposed for one week to two years (Amendment 342Q). Also, being a ‘named person’ will get you banned from protesting. The criteria for being a ‘named person’ is very broad, including people previously convicted of protest-related offences (…) and if you attended a rally” – this could be a Kurdish or climate protest related rally – “that resulted in serious disruption (i.e. being a bit too loud). Even posting on social media encouraging others to go to a slightly too loud protest can land you on the banned list. Breaking an SDPO can land you up to (…) 51 weeks in prison.”
Even as opposition peers have “voted against a range of measures in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill,” the BBC reports that “No 10 said it was disappointed peers voted against [the] measures. (…) The bill now faces going back and forth between the Commons and Lords. The government is likely to continue fighting for its proposals.”
The Judicial Review and Courts Bill “aims to reduce the access people have to certain types of judicial review, particularly one called ‘Cart Judicial Review,’ which is often employed in cases related to immigration decisions by the Home Office when no other right to appeal exists.
“The Bill also proposes new powers that would potentially limit the power of ‘quashing orders’ – which ‘nullifies a decision made by a public body’ – for example, that might reverse the findings of a Home Office decision if it was ruled they had not acted lawfully. Like all this legislation frankly, it should be considered as part of the wider government attack on avenues to exercise our human rights.”
Moya Lothian McLean further details a “proposed reform to the Human Rights Act” that “would see the Act revised and replaced with a ‘Bill of Rights.’ It’s mainly to allow the government to pick and choose who has access to human rights, specifically to block deportation targets” – such as Kurds and ‘Others’ – from successfully challenging attempts to remove them from the UK.”
Tom Goodyer reports on the following Bill that has since passed into law: “As dissenting Labour MPs have pointed out, by indemnifying MI5 agents against prosecution for crimes committed ‘in the course of, or otherwise in connection with, the conduct of covert human intelligence sources,’ the Criminal Conduct Bill” – now passed into law – “‘essentially gives free rein for torture, murder, and sexual violence.’ The bill, then, is functionally a codification of the state of exception. It folds illegality into the framework of the law and makes sovereignty diffuse, translated from the courts and parliamentary chambers where collective oversight might be exercised, to the discretion of individual agents in the moment.”
Furthermore, with “Keir Starmer’s unwillingness to oppose the Bill, and the Labour Party’s whole-hearted acceptance of the discourse of security,” we now are faced with a situation in which “the power to decide who lives and who dies, who is worthy of legal guarantees against rape or murder by the state, the monopoly of violence, is ultimately central to what a state is. It transcends internal nuances of policy and proclaims the insubstantiality of a supposedly inherent right to life as such, leaving everyone vulnerable to having that life laid bare.”
‘Secret deprivations’ can ‘take place’ in ‘the interest of foreign relations’
The MP Bambos Charalambous further noted in parliament on 7 December 2021 – and this has potential repercussions for Kurdish, Baloch and ‘Othered’ diasporan UK citizens, for example – that the Bill even threatens several UK citizens from ‘minority’ ethnic communities: “Clause 9 provides the Government with dangerous and unprecedented powers to deprive UK nationals of citizenship, without warning. (…) The Government’s proposal also allows such secret deprivations to take place solely on the basis that the Home Office deems it ‘in the public interest’ or in the interest of ‘foreign relations’” – meaning if it potentially is in the ‘interest’ of ‘foreign relations’ with, for example, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Jamaica, Nigeria, etc.
Charalambous added: “Clause 9 means that individuals will not be able to challenge deprivation of their nationality as they will not be aware or told that they are no longer British citizens, and the time limit for appeal may run out before the individual becomes aware that their rights have been stripped. As Reprieve has pointed out, under these proposals, a person accused of speeding would be afforded more rights than someone at risk of being deprived of their British nationality. (…)
“The clause not only represents a total disregard for justice and the rule of law, but also says to certain British citizens that despite their being born and raised in the UK, their rights will always be precarious and subject to change, because, in the words of the Home Office, ‘British citizenship is a privilege, not a right.’
“The consequences of that are drastic. It is a threat to all, but particularly to those from ethnic minority backgrounds. According to analysis by the New Statesman, nearly six million people in England and Wales could be affected, and under this proposal, two in five people from an ethnic minority background are eligible to be deprived of their citizenship without being told.”
As Imran Hussein MP has noted: “Working-class people from a black, from an Asian or from any ethnic minority background have everything to fear from this Home Office. Let us not forget that it is this Tory Home Office that presided over the mass deportations in the Windrush scandal; that it is this Home Office that continues to prosecute a hostile environment against migrants, refugees and asylum seekers; and that it is this Home Office that uses Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ not as a warning, but as a guidebook. I therefore have no confidence, and neither do my constituents, that, based on its record, the Home Office will not further expand the scope of its powers to deprive someone of British citizenship on more spurious grounds. (…)
“Removing the requirement to provide notice takes things even further. An individual stripped of citizenship will not be told or given reasons and will therefore have no real right of appeal – and all this can happen even as they are being deported. Frankly, such a move should send shivers down the spine of anyone interested in upholding liberty and due process.”
For Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi MP: “This Government” is “hanging the sword of Damocles over our head. If someone does something wrong, or something perceived to be wrong by the nation of their ancestral heritage, they could be stripped of their citizenship and ordered to ‘go back home.’ This right-wing rhetoric has returned (…) Let us be blunt, Mr Deputy Speaker: the Bill will not affect your good self, because of the colour of your skin, but it will impact people like me, because of the colour of our skin and our ancestral heritage.
“What is even more galling is that the Prime Minister is getting someone with brown skin to do his dirty work with a Bill that could have disastrous consequences for black and brown people. No wonder there are accusations of tokenism from within the Asian, African and Caribbean British communities. What is the point of having black and brown people as Cabinet Ministers sitting on the Conservative Front Bench if they are going to directly act against the interests of black and brown people, just so that they can hold ministerial office?
“When the military Government of Myanmar disempowered ethnic groups by removing their citizenship, many of us shuddered with horror, but people are now frightened that the Home Secretary can remove their citizenship at a stroke, retrospectively and without any notice.”
Mohammad Yassin MP described it as an “inherently authoritarian Bill. (…) It amounts to a fundamental rejection of our international obligations under the 1951 UN Convention relating to the status of refugees and does nothing to resolve these complex issues at all. Even the Government’s own impact assessment suggests that measures in the Bill could lead to an increase in unsafe journeys across the channel rather than a reduction in them. The Bill originally tried to criminalise not only asylum seekers but those who try to help and rescue them. I cannot recall a more immoral and wicked piece of UK legislation.
“I am disturbed by clauses 9 and 10, which enable a Home Secretary to deprive UK nationals of citizenship without notice and restrict stateless children’s access to British citizenship.
“As a British citizen with dual nationality, I personally feel the ice-cold chill of those proposals. It looks and feels like a ramping up of the hostile environment. (…) The message this sends is that certain citizens, despite being born and brought up in the UK and having no other home, remain migrants, so that their citizenship and therefore all their rights are permanently insecure.
“This Bill clearly disproportionately targets those of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or other racial groups, regardless of their country of birth. The racialised nature of this tiered system is obvious: the citizenship of those like myself, many of my constituents and millions of others of minority and migrant heritage is less secure and less important than those who belong to majority ethnic groups in the United Kingdom. It is a shameful piece of legislation that we should all be concerned about.”
Desmond Fernandes is a former Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at De Montfort University and is the author of ‘The Kurdish and Armenian Genocides: From Censorship and Denial to Recognition?,’ ‘Education, Human Rights Violations in Pakistan and the Scandal involving UNHCR and Christian asylum seekers in Thailand’ and ‘Call it by its name: Persecution!’ He has co-authored ‘The Targeting of Minority Others in Pakistan’ and ‘The Education System in Pakistan: Discrimination and the Targeting of the Other.’
