Still We Rise

Following last week’s episode on the criminalisation of seeking asylum, today we take a deep dive into the prosecution and conviction of Ibrahimah Bah.  Is he a scapegoat? Is he a victim of political imperatives? Our Guest is Frances Webber, Author of Borderline Justice, Barrister and board member of the Institute of Race Relations for over 40 years. The facts of this case raise serious questions and the prospects of an appeal loom large. Every Individual must be afforded a fair trial and the principles of justice and fairness demand that all including those who don’t have power and are the most vulnerable in society have access to justice.

Frances gives us a masterclass in how the judicial system sees and treats people seeking asylum. One hopes that the courts uphold the dignity and rights of all individuals, regardless of their circumstances, notwithstanding the UK Governments' unilaterally ‘rewriting’ the Refugee Convention and violating international law in that vein the organisation Captain Support is helping 175 people who face prosecution to find legal representation. 

On the 12th of March 2024, they launched a letter-writing campaign calling for Mr Bah to be freed.

You too can play your part.

In this episode, we confront a disturbing reality unfolding, the criminalization of people seeking asylum, Britain of course is still a signatory to the Refugee Convention, a document it once championed. A recent report published by the Centre for Criminology at the No Such Thing As Justice Here lifts the veil on this criminalization law. One key feature of this report is the seminal trial of a Senegalese National, Ibrahima Bah whose age is contested, his birth certificate says he is 17 years old. He stands accused of steering a dinghy boat, in which tragically, four people perish, lost to the unforgiving depths of the sea. Bah, a person seeking asylum,  now finds himself ensnared in a web of injustice. His testimony at Cantebury Crown Court paints a harrowing picture: forced at gunpoint to navigate perilous waters by people traffickers, compelled by circumstances beyond his control. 
And yet, his narrative is not one of solitary suffering. It finds echo in the voices of those who, against all odds, made it to the shores of Dover, bearing witness to the horrors endured on that fateful voyage.

This week we are joined by Dr. Emelie McDonnell, a human rights and refugee advocate, with experience and expertise in human rights, refugee, and international law more broadly. We look at Britain’s diminishing rights record through the lens of Human Rights Watch whose work across the world is well-established and respected. Britain has set itself on an extraordinary path with a raft of domestic legislation that criminalises people seeking asylum who arrive without prior authorization, in breach of its obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Over the last few months Nicola Kelly, a former Home Office Staffer and now journalist focused on UK immigration and asylum policy and human rights, has been looking at what’s going on at the Home Office and the department its’ become today. She reveals a culture of fear that emanates directly from Priti Patel's office, civil servants who feel morally compromised by strident policy positions, not least the Rwanda Policy. Morale is the lowest it’s ever been. Faced with backlogs of over 100,000 asylum cases, Afghans living in hotels for over a year, Channel Migrants dumped in Napier barracks.  The department is too slow, too bureaucratic, too defensive and too hard-hearted. A compelling Listen.

A Decade ago, the Former Prime Minister Theresa May introduced the most draconian internal border controls on people who she thought were living in Britain without permission. This onerous policy and accompanying legislation resulted in what we now know as the Windrush Scandal. British citizens, particularly those from former colonies were caught up in papers please checks at GP Practices, DWP Offices, in the NHS and landlords became border guards, mandated to verify documents demonstrating a right to stay in the country. Schools were checking children's documents. It was a horrendous decade of state-directed discrimination which resulted in the deportation of citizens and ultimately the resignation of the then Home Secretary Amber Rudd. Maya Goodfellow an Academic and Author of Hostile Environment- How migrants became scapegoats joins us to provide her analysis and reflections on this architecture of oppression. She is candid and forthright. Her analysis lays bare how discrimination is sewn into Britain's statutory landscape.

Clause 9- is the Deprivation of Citizenship. Who is a citizen in Brexit Britain or as we often hear, Global Britain? Well, Priti Patel has shown her hand and through the Nationality and Borders Act has Executive Power to exempt herself from notifying you if she deems that your continued enjoyment of citizenry is not conducive to the public good, that it is not in the public interest. With a stroke of a pen and time-limited appeal rights, anyone deemed to have fallen foul of this broad power can now be stripped of their British Nationality. There is a caveat and an interesting one, so long as you qualify for dual nationality, you’re within her crosshairs. Alba Kapoor from the Race and Equality Think Tank, The Runnymede Trust joins us to explain the implications of the contentious Clause 9.

Over the last six months, many a Guest have lamented the Offshoring proposals in the government's New Immigration Plan. What appeared remote and a figment of either Priti Patel or some home office bureaucrats' fertile imagination has materialised in the form of a memorandum of understanding with the Rwandan Government.

We speak to Dr Anne Neylon, a Law Lecturer at the University of Liverpool whose insight and analysis on the Rwanda Deal came to the fore in her Blog https://criticallegalthinking.com/2022/04/19/the-uk-rwanda-and-the-spectacle-of-deterrence/

So this Bilateral (political) agreement will operate outside Domestic and International law. People who arrive in Britain to claim asylum without prior authorisation face the prospect of screening tests which will determine whether their Asylum Claim is admissible. Should they be found to have no grounds nor protected characteristics, they face a one-way ticket to Rwanda, whom for the princely sum of an initial £120Million will accept this human cargo from Britain. This ‘spectacle of deterrence’ as Anne so succinctly asserts, emulates the precedents set in Guam & Guantanamo Bay by the Americans, Nauru and Papua New Guinea by the Australians. Its Neo-Colonial in its expression and a dangerous assault on the spirit and letter of the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention. Anne’s analysis at this moment is critical, instructive and is a learning opportunity for those who are minded to resist this shift to a bygone era.

The invasion of Ukraine has caused the largest displacement of people in Europe since the end of World War 2. Britain has responded to this tragic set of circumstances by using its best endeavours and asked its citizens to sponsor a Refugee whom they should house for at least 6 months. 200 000 people have signed up, at the time of recording, under 4000 visas had been processed.