Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire
Promoting human rights from Salisbury UK
September 2023
WE are pleased to attach the minutes for our meeting in September 2023 thanks to group member Lesley for compiling them. We have titled this post as ‘minutes and reports’ because the group does not produce a newsletter but individual members submit reports on chosen topics such as refugees, the death penalty and the state of current human rights flavoured bills in parliament.
September 2023
Refugees continue to be a hot political issue and it is likely to be a hotly contested feature of the next general election. Stemming the flow of cross Channel arrivals is proving to be extremely difficult. This report goes into the current situation in some detail and we are grateful for group member Andrew for compiling it.
As Parliament returns and the conference season looms, small boat crossings are back in the news. Latest figures show more than 800 people crossed the Channel in small boats on 2nd September. The latest provisional government data put the figure at 872 people in 15 vessels, suggesting an average of about 58 people in each one.
The cumulative figure for 2023 now stands at a provisional 20,973. The previous high for a single day this year was on 10 August when 756 people made the crossing. The total for the year so far is still lower than at this time last year, when 25,000 people had made the journey. The record for a single day since current records began in 2018 was 1,295 on 22 August 2022.
This week (one day into the new parliamentary session) Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick set out the next stage in the government’s immigration clampdown. Alongside the Illegal Migration Act against arrivals on small boats, he opened a second front focusing on people who employ, house or otherwise abet illegal immigrants.
Businesses that employ undocumented migrants are already liable to fines, and landlords are obliged to check whether prospective tenants have permission to reside in the UK. The penalties for not doing so will be increased threefold (up to ten times for a repeat offence).
A new focus of the policy is the pursuit, by the so-called professional enablers taskforce, of lawyers “who help migrants abuse the immigration system.” This follows newspaper reports earlier this year of cases where solicitors had colluded in false asylum claims and wilful deception to get refugee status. The maximum jail term for conviction in such cases will be life imprisonment – longer than the 10-year tariff reserved for extreme cases of fraud; longer in fact than the 14-year maximum for indecent assault of a child. The maximum penalty need not be the standard, but it is still revealing that the government thinks lawyers who help migrants break the rules (in ways not yet specified) should spend so long behind bars. It was noted that this only seems to apply to lawyers, not to Home Office staff…
Both these new crimes are already illegal; the only difference is the increased supervision and penalties. Colin Yeo at Free Movement has noted an increase in activity at the Home Office. These are his comments and summary of the current situation for migrants:
“The Times reported on 3 September 2023 that just over 2,000 asylum decisions were made in the previous week. Some of these may have been so-called “withdrawals” — essentially, the Home Office taking an asylum seeker off the books for some minor perceived or actual administrative failure by the asylum seeker — but it looks like a lot of proper decisions must be being made as well. This is reported to be in large part because full asylum interviews have been dropped for asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, Syria and Yemen and certain claims from Sudan”.
Basically, it sounds like nationals of those countries are simply going to be granted asylum, subject to security checks. This change is in line with the historic trend of allowing more claimants to stay. The number of asylum seekers returned in 2006 was 18,000, against in 2022, 4,000 (and most of those voluntary.)
The 3 countries with the most applications are Albania, Afghanistan and Iran. Interestingly, the percentage of grants for them are 19%, 98% and 76% respectively.
The overall asylum grant rate for the year ended June 2023 was 71%. Of those who appeal against a refusal, a further 53% win their appeal. So, lots of asylum decisions mean lots of newly recognised refugees plus a relatively small number of failed asylum seekers.
When an asylum seeker is granted asylum, they will have to leave their Home Office-funded asylum accommodation and they will lose their Home Office-funded asylum support. That’s good; asylum accommodation is terrible and asylum support is miserly. It’s part of transitioning properly into British society. They will be granted leave to remain for five years. In theory this can be taken away if their country becomes safe; in practice this is very unlikely. At the end of the five years, they are eligible to apply for settlement, formally called indefinite leave to remain or sometimes permanent residence.
Once they have that grant of legal status and proof of their legal status the idea is that they can either find a job and a place to rent or they can access mainstream welfare benefits if they need to. They absolutely need proof of their legal status because employers will not usually give anyone a job without such proof, nor will landlords rent property to anyone without such proof. At the moment the fines for doing so are £15,000 per worker and £1,000 per occupier respectively. These are due to rise to £45,000 and £5,000 per person at some point in the near future .
And you cannot claim normal welfare benefits without proof of your legal status either, so the Department of Work and Pensions will simply send you away.
The problem is that the Home Office is failing to issue proof of legal status (called a biometric residence permit) promptly but evicting recognised refugees from their asylum accommodation and cutting off asylum support anyway. Newly recognised refugees have no prior notice of what was coming — after waiting for years for a decision, remember — and will have just a few days to find a job or contact their local authority for support.
The result is that a newly recognised refugee will often find themselves with no asylum support but also unable to work or rent accommodation and unable to to access the welfare benefits to which they should theory be entitled. They will almost inevitably therefore be homeless. They will become the responsibility of the local authority where they were then resident.
Local authorities have had as little notice as the refugees themselves.
Free Movement also have thoughts about the Illegal Migration Act:
“If the Illegal Migration Act is ever activated, the government’s plan is that every asylum seeker arriving after an as-yet unannounced date will either be removed to Rwanda or kept in the UK in a new perma-backlog. None of them will ever receive an asylum decision here in the UK. There will be no recognised refugees in future.
“There are two ways it might play out in practice.
“If it goes according to plan, the removal of a relatively small number of asylum seekers to Rwanda will suddenly stop the boats or severely diminish the number of arrivals. Ongoing removals to Rwanda will be necessary to maintain the deterrent effect but not in significant numbers.
“No-one actually thinks that is going to happen.
“It is possible the government will strain every sinew to try and make it happen anyway, building huge detention camps and forcing ever-increasing number of refugees onto flights to Rwanda. Some may be deterred but undetected arrivals would probably increase and anyone not detained will simply disappear into the community rather than risk removal to Rwanda. There will be a large official backlog of people who are either in detention or who have disappeared who will in theory one day be removed to Rwanda. And there will also be a large but unknown number of people who arrived undetected and never claimed asylum because there was no longer any point in doing so.
“Needless to say, creating a large permanent-backlog of people who might one day be removed to Rwanda as well as an unknown number of unauthorised entrants who try to stay below the radar is a questionable integration strategy. The vast majority will in reality stay in the UK permanently, so this approach will cause huge social damage.”
A couple of other items:
September 2023
We are pleased to attach the latest death penalty report produced by group member Lesley for the period mid August to mid September 2023. As ever there is good news and bad with some countries engaged in heavy use of the penalty. China – believed to be the world’s largest executioner of its citizens – is briefly mentioned but detailed statistics are not available because they are a state secret. It is depressing to note in the UK, that following the conviction of Lucy Letby of murdering new born infants and attempting to murder others, a national newspaper ran a poll showing a strong majority to bring the death penalty back for such crimes.
Ben Wallace, the former Defence Secretary, has a piece on the front page of today’s Daily Telegraph (13 September 2023) under the headline “Wallace: Human rights laws protecting terrorists” written by Isabel Oakeshott and Daniel Martin. The sub heading is “Ex-minister attacks ‘lunacy’ of rules such as the ECHR that block rendition of suspects’.
He claims that human rights laws including the ECHR have become a serious risk to national security and are thwarting efforts to stop terrorists. The two main reasons the ex-minister gives are that one, they are unable to kill individuals, usually by drone and two, we are unable to render people across borders or arrest people in countries whose police forces are unacceptable, means that we are more often than not forced into taking lethal action than actually raiding and detaining. He says we are unable to carry out raids such as the US did to kill Osama bin Laden.
It is an extraordinary article for a senior politician to have agreed to appear in a national newspaper. Firstly, it is of a piece with a decade of fairly relentless attacks on the Human Rights Act (HRA) and the various promises to abolish or rewrite it which never seem to appear. The benefits of the act for ordinary people in their quest of justice against the state does not get a mention.
But the truly extraordinary part of it is the clear statement about wanting to murder people in a foreign country as a form of foreign policy. We are quick to condemn foreign states such as Russia who attempted to murder a man in Salisbury for example, but seemingly, it is perfectly OK for us to murder a suspected terrorist in a foreign land. In any event, how certain are we that the proposed victim is a terrorist and is plotting to carry out an attack here? Last week, a suspected terrorist escaped Wandsworth prison and stayed away for 4 days with the finest of our security and police forces combing the country for him and with his photo on the front pages of our newspapers. In the events leading up to the Iraq war, our government and their security advisers were telling us that Sadam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons evidence of which was never found.
How certain can we be therefore that an attempt to murder a suspected terrorist in a foreign land would be successful in finding and killing the right person? Terrorist take great pains not to carry mobile phones and regularly move around. What about deaths of family members and possibly children?
There is also the moral point. We are a member of the UN’s Security Council and as such, we should be promoting the law abiding behaviour in our and other’s international relations. It is true that this is frequently ignored by a variety of nations, nevertheless, it would be difficult for us to adopt the high moral ground if we go around the world killing suspected terrorists ‘plotting against Briton’.
The article is full of dubious reasoning and bellicosity. “Somalia may say you can blow up al-Shabab” he writes “because they’re our enemy as well, but if we go in and they surrender, we get told their detention pathway isn’t compliant [with ECHR law]. It’s a ridiculous catch-22 position, which doesn’t reflect the threat”.
September 2023
The Wine Society was formed in 1874 and flourishes today with many thousands of members and an enviable reputation for seeking out and supplying quality wines from around the world. In its latest newsletter to members (Issue 12, Autumn 2023) it has an article Announcing the fair treatment of workers in our supply chain explaining what the Society proposes to do to ensure human rights are observed throughout the supply chain.
Globalisation has produced many advantages for consumers in the West. Products and produce from around the world have arrived on our shores and into our high street stores to enable people to enjoy cheap clothes, out of season produce and a wide range of manufactures which, if made in the UK, would be many times more expensive.
But globalisation has come with some serious disadvantages for those far away who toil in the fields or work in sweatshops for minimal pay. They have no rights, and suffer many abuses which would be unacceptable in the UK. For many this is out of sight and some companies like it that way. Recently, companies – and quite respectable (?) high street names – have shown to be using cotton picked by Uyghur forced labour in China. We can remember the Rani Plaza collapse in Bangladesh in which several thousand died working in a vast sweatshop producing cheap clothes for several well-known high street UK stores.
Many firms now pay attention to the issue of how things are produced and the labour abuses happening far away across the world. However, after every incident which is discovered, we see those same firms express shock at the revelations and claim in written statements (noticeably: few actually appear on screen to face interviews) that they knew nothing and state their company policy which is that they take seriously the issue of human rights.
The Wine Society is cautious in its approach recognising that policing what growers and vignerons do in far flung parts of the world is not easy. Their requirements include no use of forced labour or children; promoting worker participation; decent standards of accommodation where this is offered; paying a living wage and recognising the rights of local communities to clean air and water. They are about to roll out an independent whistle blowing line across their entire global supply chain. They are also supporting The Sustainable Wine Roundtable a global collaborative platform. The Society’s overall aim is to have the world’s most socially and environmentally sustainable wine supply chain by 2030.
This is a welcome development and a recognition that importers in the UK have a direct responsibility to ensure, as far as they can, that those producing their wares in far away places are treated decently and their human rights observed. It is all too easy to place a contract with a supplier containing well-meaning clauses which in turn sub-contracts to someone else and so on down the chain ultimately to families living in squalor, paid a pittance – if that is they are paid at all – with children working instead of going to school, all with complete deniability.
And the Society supplies very good wine.
‘Children of the Stone City’
September 2023
PAST EVENT
There will be a presentation by Beverley Naidoo, the author of Children of the Stone City concerning the life of children in the occupied territories. It will be held at the Methodist Church in Salisbury on Saturday 9th September starting at 2pm. Further details on the Salisbury Concern for Israel website https://www.sarumconcern.org. Tomorrow.
August 2023
The UK, in common with some other western countries such as Germany and the US, is trying to block the ICJ from considering international humanitarian law matters in relation to the Israeli government’s treatment of the Palestinians. A legal opinion has been leaked enabling us to see the reasoning behind the government’s position. The opinion, if genuine, claims it is ‘inappropriate for [the UK] to insert itself into a bilateral dispute without Israel’s consent’. The most obvious thing to say is that such consent is unlikely ever to be given.
Another argument in the opinion is that it will hamper prospects for relaunching Israel/Palestine negotiations, prospects for which are vanishingly small. The two state solution collapsed in 2014, nearly a decade ago. The opinion does not seem to take into account recent developments in Israel and the statements by Itamar ben Gvir, leader of the ‘Jewish Power’ party and currently the National Security Minister, who said ‘his rights in the occupied West Bank are more important than those of Palestinians’. This and similar remarks in interviews have led to condemnation by the US government. Gvir has also fallen out with Bella Hadid, the super model who repeated his remarks in a blog.
Violence has increased in Israel and the process of seizing land and destroying Palestinian/Arab communities and land continues at a fast and increasing pace.
The opinion also claims that this is a ‘bi-lateral dispute’ which may be true but it has not hindered the UK government and other members of NATO, from interfering in a ‘bilateral dispute’ which happens to be called Ukraine.
The ICJ is the main UN judicial organisation and it played a key role in ending the apartheid system being run by the South African government in Namibia. It also forced an unwilling UK government to open talks with Mauritius concerning the Chagos Islands and the forced removal of its people.
Whether the ICJ will follow through on this and endorse the reports by a range of human rights organisations alleging Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians amounts to apartheid remains to be seen. Both the government and the Labour party seem blind to the actions of the Israeli government in the occupied territories. Both steadfastly refuse the accept the considerable evidence of apartheid in the country. No reasons have been provided. For Labour, it is possibly a legacy of the bruising anti-semitism allegations the party received under the previous leader of the party.
Sources: BBC; Guardian; 972 Magazine
August 2023
It has been confirmed today that a visit is planned to the UK by Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) of Saudi Arabia in October and the prime minister Rishi Sunak has apparently phoned him to discuss details. It places the UK into something of a quandary and is a test of our adherence to moral standards in our international relations.
It was only in October 2018 that the journalist Jamal Khashoggi entered the embassy in Istanbul where he was murdered and dismembered. It is highly likely that MBS ordered the assassination. It caused an international outcry at the time and a British minister referred to it as an act of ‘appalling brutality’. This was not an isolated incident which could perhaps be explained as an overzealous act of a group of secret police. The human rights situation in Saudi is grave. Executions have increased since MBS came to power. Between 2010 and 2021, 1,243 were executed and in 2022, at least 147. 81 were executed in one day last year. The six bloodiest years have occurred since he came to power. The process is highly secretive and torture is practised to secure confessions. Minors are also killed.
Human rights organisations are banned. Critics of the regime are arrested. Women are not free although after a long campaign they are now allowed to drive.
Bin Salman has used the enormous wealth of the country to try and ‘buy’ a better image and we have commented before on the purchase of Newcastle United Football Club as part of a widespread programme of sportswashing. Football, golf, tennis, boxing, F1 motorsport and recently, some high profile purchases of footballers. Sporting organisations and sportsmen have happily accepted the largesse with seemingly no qualms about its source. Slowly, the issue of sportswashing has made it out of the back of newspapers into the news pages. It does seem however, that there are no misgivings or revulsion evident from sports people who are only too keen to take the money.
The vast wealth of the country, its immense reserves of oil and its desire to acquire weapons, means it has considerable influence over governments like the UK. There is thus a conundrum: we simply need Saudi wealth in a variety of ways and so we are forced to deal with an odious regime. We cannot it seems, afford to be squeamish. They can buy their weapons from a variety of countries and invest their wealth other than in, or via, the City of London. To pretend to be concerned about their human rights record, the executions, the treatment of women and their activities which have so immiserated Yemen, is not an option. Sporting people and their millions of fans are mostly unconcerned so why should we? Roll out the red carpet – which after all the French have done – arrange meetings with the King, hold our noses and sign the deals so vital for our economy. Is this where we are?
Money or morals?
The government has to choose: money or morals? It is likely to choose the former. They might wrap it up in claims of realpolitik but the power and immensity of the money – a wall of cash estimated to be around £1tn – is the deciding factor.
The UK was one of those countries which, sometimes reluctantly because of our continuing activities in the colonies, took a leading role in promoting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after the war. For a time we had an ‘ethical’ foreign policy. But it seems that slowly but surely, the need for business has led to the watering down of policies and quietly dropping our commitments to some kind of moral compass in our dealings with countries who flagrantly abuse the human rights of their citizens. Outrage is expressed at the treatment of the Rohingya in Burma but little seems to happen to stop insurers enabling jet fuel for example being sold to the regime. More outrage was expressed at the treatment of the Uyghurs in China but little action followed and cotton produced by forced labour still finds its way onto our shelves. Public outrage – let it go quiet – then back to business as usual. Is this the new policy? Will human rights be mentioned when MBS visits? It is doubtful.
Perhaps the visit by MBS represents the final curtain call on any claim we might have had for moral leadership to the rest of the world.
Sources: Channel 4; Reprieve; Amnesty International
August 2023
Various individuals in Sweden and Denmark have sparked serious unrest and violence as a result of burning the holy book and a considerable degree of opprobrium has been heaped on both countries. The prime minister of Iraq expelled the Swedish ambassador last month. News of the burnings have featured in the media for some time. The Swedish embassy in Baghdad was stormed and the country’s flag was burned in Pakistan. Although the burnings have been carried out by a small number of individuals, they have generated considerable fury among Muslims and caused a degree of concern in the Nordic countries who wish to maintain the right to free speech and protest.
Clearly it is upsetting for Muslims to see a book they cherish being treated in this way.
Uyghurs
In China the appalling treatment of the Uyghur people continues apace. There is no word to describe the actions of the Chinese since the Uyghurs are not subject to genocide. Mostly, they survive the treatment they are subject to. However, the persecution has intensified over the past few years. There is forced sterilisation, the demolition of thousands of mosques, and children taken from their parents. They have been isolated from the rest of the world and the only means of communication was shortwave radios and these too have been seized. The Qur’an is seized wherever it is found. The entire population is subject to repression and detention in so-called ‘re-education’ centres where torture and physical violence is routine. Over a million are held in these camps and access to the region is strictly controlled by the Chinese government. Thousands are arrested on spurious grounds for ‘crimes’ of being a Muslim, sending messages or texts with quotations from the Qur’an or for having more than three children.
There is an attempt – seemingly a successful attempt – to extinguish the culture of the Uyghurs in what amounts to cultural genocide. Children are not allowed to be given names such as Fatima or Aisha because they are deemed ‘too Muslim’. The region is subject to heavy surveillance making any kind of social contact almost impossible.
What has been surprising however is the relative silence from the very same countries who are angry about the book burnings and who made a huge fuss about the Satanic verses. It would be expected that in the face of the appalling treatment of mainly Muslims in Xinjian, there would be an outcry of deafening intensity. Indeed, in 2019, when mainly western countries tried to get a UN motion to allow independent observers into Xinjiang, it was countries – mostly Moslem countries – like Saudi, Algeria and Egypt who blocked it. The contrast between the response to the burning of a handful of Qur’an in Stockholm and the seizing of what may be tens of thousands of copies in Xinjiang is remarkable. It is difficult to explain it. Some suggest it is China’s increasing investment in these countries which is leading to a reluctance to make much noise. This hasn’t prevented these same countries engaging in critical activities against western countries who are also significant investors so that explanation seems unlikely.
It is astonishing that in the 21st Century we are witnessing one of the world’s biggest crimes against humanity, yet very little is made of it. Countries who might be thought to have sympathy through a shared religion with the Uyghurs, are strangely silent. A huge fuss is made of a few individuals burning the holy book but the much more systematic attempt to annihilate a kindred culture and incarcerating over a million individuals in the process, engenders little protest.
Testimony from survivors in this piece from Substack [added 21 August 2023]
Sources: Observer, Time, Washington Post, International Bureau of Investigative Journalists, CAAT, BBC
[Readers might wish to know of a recently published book Waiting to be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet’s Memoir of China’s Genocide, by Tahir Hamut Izgil, published by Jonathan Cape]
August 2023
In place of a meeting in August, we hold a summer party and this is a photo of this year’s. We were lucky with the weather as rain was forecast but it held off until quarter an hour of so after everyone had left!
The Salisbury group is the only Amnesty group in Wiltshire sad to report and if anyone from Wiltshire or north Dorset would like to join us we would be pleased to welcome them. Just keep an eye on the website or on Facebook or X as it now is (Twitter) for details of our next event.
Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire 