Given that the Home office is committed to deporting 50 Jamaicans and has already deported 13 Jamaicans as of yesterday and is attempting to continue this, as Decolonise QMUL we believe this is unlawful and want to call out the dehumanising, colonial and racist roots of this decision. The justification was based on the idea that these 50 Jamaicans are criminals with severe sentences and so thus, can be deported to protect the national security of the UK. Despite being in a global pandemic, the Home Office has decided that these lives are not worth being protected, whether or not they have committed crimes. The despicable treatment of these British citizens and the lack of legal representation is a violation to basic human rights, and “some of those detained and due to be deported on 2 December, have physical scars and further evidence of being subjected to ill-treatment, or have had siblings killed in Jamaica, which puts them at grave risk from the UK”. You are putting human lives at risk. We stand against the increasingly lack of empathy and humanity from the British government and associates who do not care for the dangerous implications their policies have on the lives of people from different backgrounds. Priti Patel in a letter in response to some Labour MP’s opposition stated that ‘removing those from the country who have caused harm, served their sentence and now have no right to remain is just one way in which a responsible Government acts to keep its people safe’. The idea of keeping ‘its people safe’ is a telling example of the way in which ideas of belonging, citizenship, racism and colonialism work in the UK. The idea that ‘its people’ are British citizens that need to be protected from an ‘other’ when the reality is that these people you are deporting have histories which cannot be separated from the British Empire and the reconstruction of post-war Britain. We are not here to discuss the crimes that have been committed, but if there have been crimes, they should be dealt with in the UK - not deported to countries they have no affiliation with or relation with or have been made unsafe by the legacy of Empire, which has ruined the social, political, economic and environmental fabric of formally colonised countries. This is about wider rhetoric and implication. Underlying all of this, many of the colonial impacts of the British Empire has meant that the Windrush generation has had their livelihoods here. To simply deport people who have lived their whole lives here is not only telling of the racist immigration system that dehumanises people who are not white and English, but also is another attempt to erase how people from the Commonwealth or formerly colonised countries are the backbones to Britain. “One of the men deported from the UK to Jamaica on a charter flight in February 2020 was the grandson of a woman who arrived on the Empire Windrush and is still seeking to have his deportation order revoked”. The precedent that this set is extremely dangerous to all non-white British citizens; that we can be sent back to a country we have never lived in nor have living family members in, is incredibly unsettling. We do not want another apology from the British government, just as they have done with the Windrush Scandal because the policies have remained the same. A non-white face creating, continuing and advocating for these policies, does not negate the inhumane implications these racist policies have. As Decolonise QMUL, we first acknowledge the racist, colonial law systems and immigration system that places humans as an ‘other’ based on race, religion and gender. It is crucial to understand the deeply problematic concepts of who gets to be a citizen or not based on artificially made borders and claims. There needs to be a recognition of the communities that made up the British empire and thus arrived to the “mother nation” to build her up after the destruction of the Second World War, and yet we have a government that can play around with who is a citizen, who is English enough and who is a national or not. This is based on an artificial understanding of the modern state system that seeks to create those who belong based on racial hierarchies and who is an ‘other’. The dehumanising, alienation of people is abhorrent. Resources: We recommend watching Bell-Ribeiro Addy's speech on the deportations schedule this recent Wednesday: https://twitter.com/BellRibeiroAddy/status/1333464588159954945?s=20 BAME Lawyers for Justice response: http://blackactivistsrisingagainstcuts.blogspot.com/2020/11/bame-lawyers-for-justice-response-to.html Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights Report which highlights discrimination faced through immigration policy, policing and the criminal justice system. It states that Lessons Learned recommendations, plus all the other recommendations from other reports they list, must be urgently implemented.
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February 2021
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