Promoting human rights from Salisbury UK
October 2023
Past event
A reminder that today, 10th October, is the World Day Against the Death Penalty and there is an action for you to take please, details on a previous post. If you can write or email that would be appreciated.
October 2023
Immigration remains a key issue for both the government and the opposition and the focus is on the large number of Channel crossings from France. The prime minister has pledged to end the crossings, however they continue to come in large numbers. The government spent considerable time trying to find countries willing to take migrants and eventually found Rwanda to which £145m was paid to set up the necessary reception facilities. The planned first flight ended when the European Court found against the deportations because under article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights, there is an absolute ban on the use of torture and other serious mistreatment of which there is considerable evidence that it takes place in that country.
In a Country Report by the US Department of State in 2022, there is an extremely long list of problems with human rights in Rwanda. They include: unlawful or arbitrary killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment by the government; harsh and life threatening prison conditions and arbitrary detentions. Their activities also extend overseas and in particular in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which include killings, kidnapping and violence. The report also lists a range of activities against the media and journalists. There are similar reports from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty. Altogether it paints a picture of a country which is a stranger to human rights and where violence and repression are a way of life.
Daniel Trilling in his ‘long read’ in today’s Guardian newspaper (5 October) Inside the Rwanda deportation plan: there were so many warnings it would fail. How did it get this far? traces the whole story of where the idea came from and how it got stuck after the European Court ended it at least temporarily. The proposal was meant to act as a deterrent to further Channel crossings. This was never likely to have been the case since people willing to risk their lives in a rubber dingy having paid considerable sums to a smuggler are sufficiently desperate not to heed any such threat even if they were aware of it.
He reveals that the Foreign Office said ‘no’ to Rwanda largely because of the sort of reasons listed above. They were aware of the UN putting pressure on Rwanda to stop its troops engaging in mass killings and rape in DRC. Officials from the Foreign Office were preparing Country Policy and Information Notes CPIN, which were unfinished at the time the decision was taken.
The government was embarrassed when an undercover report secretly filmed Johnson Busingye, the high commissioner for Rwanda saying disobliging things about the UK government such as it was “immoral for the British to claim to be a compassionate country”. Asked about the shooting of twelve refugees he replied “so what”.
The Supreme Court is due to rule at the end of the year and it is likely that the prime minister Rishi Sunack will ignore the European Court if it rules in the government’s favour.
It is hard to fathom the reasoning behind the government’s position on this policy. It was designed to be a deterrent but it was advised by its own officials that this was unlikely to be effective. The numbers of immigrants who would be sent is a matter of a few thousand which, in the face of the many thousands crossing the Channel and the tens of thousands languishing in immigration centres and hotels, will be a tiny proportion. They must have been aware of the copious evidence that the country was entirely unsuitable as a place to send vulnerable people. They must also have known that Israel abandoned the very same policy and the Danish government had put its policy on hold.
At the Conservative conference this week, the prime minister cancelled the next leg of the HS2 rail project claiming that ‘the facts had changed’ and this prompted a change in policy. Yet in the case of Rwanda, the facts haven’t exactly changed but have been visible all the while. It is though the policy – described as ‘shameful’ by Amnesty International’ chief executive – has become totemic existing in a space beyond reason and facts, a kind of belief system which defies rational thinking. Partly it is because the prime minister has made stopping the boats a key policy aim and Rwanda is central to that, a policy which cannot be cancelled for fear of looking weak. If flights take place at the end of the year it will cause considerable suffering to those sent there.
October 2023
An article in the Long Read section of the Guardian newspaper entitled Inside the Rwanda deportation plan has a photo montage in which group member Lesley features holding two banners.
The article is by Daniel Trilling and is a detailed review of the muddle, confusion and dissembling behind the government’s desire to send unwanted migrants to Rwanda.
We received word that the first deportation flight in June was to take off from Boscombe Down, a secure airfield near Amesbury in Wiltshire. It had been moved from Stanstead at the last moment to ward off potential protests and because it is surrounded by barbed wire fencing. Two Salisbury group members were able to make it to the airfield where there was a large contingent of police officers and a bevy of cameras. The photo was taken by one of the photographers. As you know, while we waited for the take-off, a final appeal to Europe meant the flight was cancelled hence the fury about the European Court and threats to take us out of the jurisdiction of the Court to enable future deportations to take place.
October 2023
Suella Braverman made a speech on the fringe of the Conservative Party conference on 3 October in which she said the Human Rights Act should be renamed the ‘Criminal’s Rights Act’. The speech as a whole – covering areas such as immigration and the threat that Britain will ‘go properly woke’ under Labour – received a standing ovation by a packed auditorium. She said that Britain was ‘enmeshed in a dense of set of rules designed for another era’ and that these rules acted against the interests of the country. The speech was dubbed a ‘red meat address’ by the Daily Mail.
Hostility to the HRA has a long history in the Conservative Party and many of its members would like to see it abolished and for us to come out of the European Convention. Plans to reform the act seem to have been shelved for the moment but may well reappear in the manifesto for the next election.
Commentators have seen the speech, together with one given in Washington on 26 September, as part of her leadership campaign ahead of a possible Conservative defeat and an election for a new party leader. But an attack on the HRA and the reception given to her remarks on this and other topics are of concern. A standing ovation suggests an element of the party still wish to see the legislation abolished. In some ways it is hardly surprising such has been the remorseless denigration of the act and its supposed iniquities by the right wing press. The impression has been firmly planted that the act is a criminal’s charter and enables such people to escape justice. This despite our gaols being crammed full to bursting and news that foreign prisons may have to be rented to house yet more.
People’s rights need protection like never before. We have witnessed example after example of wrong convictions, unarmed people shot by the police, criminal activities by the police themselves and a steady trail of mistrials and overturned convictions that to argue that we need less protection by abolishing our rights is perverse. The positive effects of the act seldom gain a hearing. In the coverage of the Hillsborough disaster for example, that it was the Human Rights Act which enabled families to gain justice scarcely got a mention in reporting by the right wing press.
Miscarriages of justice, police errors and overturned convictions, all weaken the public’s faith in the justice system. It is therefore depressing to see the Home Secretary make these remarks and receive a standing ovation for them. She seems to ignore the fact that terrorists and criminals are only alleged terrorists and alleged criminals until due process has found them guilty (or not) a fact which, as a barrister, she well knows.
Sources: APnews, Times, Guardian, Daily Mail, Evening Standard
October 2023
A planned action will be taking place outside the Japanese Embassy, London on Tuesday 10th October 2023 to mark World Anti-Death Penalty Day. Japan has long been criticised for retaining the death penalty and concerns have been expressed by human rights defenders about death-row inmates only being notified of their execution on the day it takes place.
In November, Japan’s Minister of Justice Yasuhiro Hanashi resigned after making a joke about the death penalty, in which he stated that the justice minister can only make the news headlines by signing off execution warrants.
Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception, regardless of the nature or circumstances of the crime, guilt, innocence or other characteristics of the individual, or the method used by the state to carry out the execution. We want to demonstrate that we are serious about ending the Death Penalty in Japan.
If you are interested in finding out more about this planned action and understand how to get involved please email Rebecca.patterson@amnesty.org.uk
October 2023
The 10th October is World Day Against the Death Penalty and we are asking you to write or email to Singapore which is active in using the penalty against drug dealers. The action contains some suggested points to make in your communication.
[Other Amnesty groups are free to use this material if they wish]
September 2023
In September 2017, BBC Panorama broadcast a programme, Undercover: Britain’s Immigration Secrets, into the shocking treatment of detainees at the Brook House detention centre near Gatwick in Sussex. It followed months of undercover filming to expose a wide range of wrongdoing at the centre. Those who watched the programme were treated to examples of what the report refers to as ‘the use of racist, abusive and derogatory language by some of the staff towards those in their care, the effects of illicit drugs and the use of force by staff on on physically and mentally unwell people’. An enquiry was commissioned in November 2019 and it was published today (19 September 2023) in three volumes.
It showed one custody officer place his hands around the neck of a detained person and say “you fucking piece of shit, because I’m going to put you to fucking sleep” (para 14). Using force to restrain detained people who were physically or mentally ill was common (43).
Conditions at the centre were extremely poor. It was run at the time by G4S and then by Serco both given contracts the report explains, based largely on price with little regard to quality aspects. Misgivings about the tenders were not put into practice (19). The Senior Management Teams were poor and largely invisible to junior staff.
Although conditions were poor to begin with, and the proximity to Gatwick added noise to the problems, the Home Office carried on adding numbers of inmates thus sometimes increasing to three the number of occupants in the cells. The cells had no privacy concerning toileting (25).
The report opens by saying that it was a matter of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. The combination of hostile attitudes to immigrants and refugees, the use of contractors who were unequal to the job, Home Office failures and seemingly no sign of inspections or visits from outsiders to see what was going on, combined to create a toxic mix of arrogance, cruelty and gratuitously bad treatment of people many of whom had suffered trauma and in some cases torture. Indeed, it is reported today that Suella Braverman, the current Home Secretary, stopped inspections taking place at all. Detainees were isolated from the outside world. Language barriers made things worse. Basic freedoms were curtailed the report said. This took place here in Britain.
Priti Patel was the Home Secretary during this time and in her many speeches and interviews she has made no secret of her hostile attitude to refugees and immigrants. She talked up the crisis and played a part in creating an atmosphere of disdain for those arriving, increasingly at the time, in small boats. One of her proposals for example was to install wave machines to prevent boat people from landing on our shores. That Britain took a far smaller proportion of refugees than many other nations was seldom mentioned.
It is sometimes easy in situations such as this to focus on the front line individuals behaving badly and one thinks of other undercover programmes in care homes and institutions where people with disabilities are living and where bullying and other failures have been exposed. They are the visible end result but their behaviour is in turn a result of failings further up the food chain by people less visible. It is the politicians who set the tone and agree the funding or more usually, the cuts to funding. It is the system which prefers outside contractors employed largely on who will do the cheapest job, who have weak management systems and whose main interest is turning in a profit. It is the media which perpetuates myths of ‘invasions’ and that immigrants are not really refugees but ‘economic migrants’ or even coming here to enjoy our bounteous benefit system. The combined effects of this hostility and disinformation was that someone poorly trained on the front line of an overcrowded detention centre feels it is acceptable to treat vulnerable people in the way they did.
Immigration, and in particular those crossing the Channel in small boats, is a political hot potato at present. The temperature is only going to rise as the election date gets nearer with attempts to ‘weaponise’ the issue for political advantage. We should all be aware however, that it is people we are dealing with in centres such as this and the majority are genuine migrants from war or persecution. A majority win their appeals.
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.
Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire 