"All civilised people"
Home Secretary John Reid, in his speech to the Labour party conference in Manchester:
"It's not Muslims versus the rest of us, it's evil terrorists on one side against all civilised people on the other."Meanwhile, a couple of hundred miles north in Glasgow, immigration officials acting on the orders of Reid's own department this morning launched another of their infamous dawn raids on the family of an asylum seeker.
Whether Azaddine Benai (who escaped during the raid) is telling the truth when he claims that, if returned to his native Algeria, "I'm going to get killed, not by gun, by knife to cut throat" is beside the point.
Can we really call ourselves civilised when this man's wife and young children (aged 11 and 2 - the youngest therefore born and raised in Britain, as the family have been here for three years) are snatched out of the blue early one morning and transported to a detention centre?
Can we call ourselves civilised when both children need medical attention (the eldest being diabetic, the youngest awaiting an operation) and one has just started a new school year, yet are going to be deported tomorrow morning, allowing little time to gather supplies and belongings, let alone find legal aid and formulate a case for appeal?
The Home Office does not comment on individual cases.Courtesy and dignity - a 7am raid on a young family, forcing the husband to jump from a first floor balcony in terror, leaving the wife and two young children surrounded by uniformed officials who then cart them off to a temporary
A spokeswoman said: "The government has made it clear that it will take a robust approach to removing people from the country where they have no legal right to be here.
"We examine with great care each individual case before removal and we will not remove anyone who we believe is at risk on their return.
"Removals are always carried out in the most sensitive way possible, treating those being removed with courtesy and dignity."
Something "all civilised people" can be really proud of...
6 Comments:
Concentration camps? Are you sure? I think your observations on this families treatment is sensitive and forthright. But what is the alternative? They probably could have lived quite happilly in Glasgow but then... if you let one in what about the rest....
I'm sorry I don't mean to sound like a Daily Mail Journalist but we live in paranoid times, and if a big majority of British people are worried about the the threat of the OTHER then imagine what it must be like if you are dealing with immigration on a mass scale? It's a big job and unfortunatley John Reid is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
There's little smirk available on the Turkish question here :
http://thegallows.typepad.com/the_gallows/2006/09/reuters_ankara_.html
just commented on my blog on reid: if he runs for labour leadership, that means tony has given up and left the ground to gordon. and the reason for that is given in your post.
Who promoted the Scotch whore read to civilised?
The best alternative is the freedom of movement of people.
Alas, our dear John Howard of Australia has the solution for all racists and nationalists out there...
- Just sink the ships, or
- Deport off to another island and allow to starve to death
- Get the navy to take over the ship and steer it back to a third world country (eg. Indonesia, or wherever is closest, doesn't really matter does it?)
- Refuse to sign the kyoto protocol, thereby ensuring global warming, sea rise, and the drowning of those on low-lying parts of the earth
- Deport back, not just to original country, but to relevant government/ dictatorship/ prison/ sure death
Or, failing all that, dump in a desert somewhere. We've got plenty of room, right next to the US military base, which just-so-happens to be right near the Indigenous land where nuclear testing was conducted (with people still living on it) last century.
You're just not trying hard enough!
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