blessed britons

When the East India Company was first established on new year’s eve 1600, Mughal India commanded 22 per cent of global GDP, with Britain producing less than a tenth as much. By the time Britain finally departed India’s shores three and a half centuries later, its national income was more than 50 per cent greater than its former colony.

— Nick Robins

mad world

The million Iraqi deaths from the “sanctions of mass destruction” of the 1990s is unmentioned in Samantha Power’s ludicrous treatise on genocide (“A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide), just as she fails to deal seriously with the Indonesian massacres in East Timor. The U.S.-coalition invasion-occupation of Iraq from 2003 has added another million to the Iraqi toll, but the idea that this is “genocide” is inexpressible in the U.S. mainstream media, which is focused on the more politically convenient killings in Darfur - attributable to a Western target, the Arab government of the Sudan, hence subject to the invidious word genocidal. This is implicit but real denial, which follows from the political basis of naming and concern.

— Edward Herman

asylum seekers

deportation and death

Submitted by antarchi on May 3, 2008 - 14:43.

Zarine Rentia was a 15-year-old Indian girl who had been severely disabled by an extremely rare disease. On a visit to Britain in 2005, she was diagnosed and began a course of treatment at Great Ormond Street, the world famous children’s hospital. In the meantime, she attended a local London School, where she impressed children and staff alike. With the support of Zarine’s doctors, her mother applied to the Home Office for leave to remain in Britain on medical grounds, but was refused. After an immigration judge turned down their appeal in February, mother and daughter returned to Gujarat, where Zarine died weeks later.

antarchi's quotes

atrocious barbarism

Submitted by antarchi on May 3, 2008 - 14:41.

Ama Sumani, a 39-year-old Ghanaian widow and mother of two, had come to Britain as a student in 2002. She overstayed her visa but worked and paid taxes. She was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and treated by the NHS. In January, immigration officials removed her from her hospital bed in Cardiff and deported her to Ghana, where she died several weeks later. The Lancet, Britain’s leading medical journal, denounced the government’s behaviour as an “atrocious barbarism”.

antarchi's quotes

detention for asylum seekers

Submitted by antarchi on May 3, 2008 - 14:39.

Unlike most European countries, and contrary to the recommendations of the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, in Britain there is no legal limit to the time a person may be held in immigration detention. Periods of up to six months detention — for people who have not even been charged with a crime — are not uncommon. The IRCs are overcrowded and lack medical and recreational facilities. Communication with the outside world is severely restricted. Many detainees claim to have been insulted and assaulted by immigration staff. A recent study found that excessive force was used against a number of detainees who had already suffered torture in their countries of origin.

antarchi's quotes

the UK: doing its bit to remember

Submitted by antarchi on January 8, 2007 - 07:09.

From the COE HR Commisioner's report On the Human Rights Situation of the Roma, Sinti and Travellers in Europe (2006)

On the basis of the Race Relations Act, the United Kingdom adopted a decree in 2001 ordering the immigration authorities to subject certain persons to “more rigorous examination than others in the same circumstances” on the basis of their nationality or ethnicity. The decree includes, in an annex, a list of such groups, among them the Roma. An immigration officer may, by reason of that person’s ethnic or national origin, detain the person pending his examination, decline to give the person’s notice of grant or refusal of leave to enter, and impose a condition or restriction on the person’s leave to enter the United Kingdom or on his temporary admission to the United Kingdom. Moreover, when the person is outside the United Kingdom, an immigration officer or the State Secretary may, by reason of that person’s ethnic or national origin, decline to give or refuse the person leave to enter before he arrives in the UK. This decree, which subjects persons to differentiated treatment solely on the basis of their nationality or ethnicity, is clearly in breach of the fundamental principle of non-discrimination and equality before the law, and should therefore be amended.