WARNING: THREAD CONTAINS GRAPHIC LANGUAGE
🧵 What a morally vacuous, embarrassingly incompetent monster Suella Braverman is.
Having worked at the Home Office deciding asylum applications, I know the 1951 Refugee Convention's terms are far clearer than her pernicious propaganda would suggest.
She says many asylum seekers base their claims on “feeling” discriminated against in their home countries. But the scope of the Convention is limited to people who believe they have a “well-founded fear of persecution” for some specific reasons. Those reasons are race, nationality, religion, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Mere feelings of discrimination would not meet that rigorous test, and any application made on those grounds would (rightly) be fast-tracked for refusal.
She suggests that persecution, by definition, must involve a threat to life. Not true. Persecution often DOES involve a threat to life, but other things can qualify as persecution (arbitrary detention, unjustified confiscation of assets, withdrawal of state protection from crime). Braverman knows this, but the boneheads whose votes she is soliciting do not, so hey, why not spin the line?
In my time at the Home Office, I refused many asylum applications which, on the evidence presented, clearly did not meet the test of a well-founded fear of persecution on Convention grounds. The majority of those applications were made by people (mostly young men) who appeared to be seeking better economic futures for themselves and their families. That's completely understandable, and I never blamed them for trying, but it's not grounds for asylum, so neither did I feel any guilt in refusing them…that's not the purpose of the asylum system.
But I did grant asylum to a number of people who had clearly faced unimaginable horror in their own countries before escaping to the UK, where they felt safe and where they believed they would be able to live the rest of their lives in peace.
There was the Sikh activist who had a kettle of boiling water poured over him during a police interrogation. There was the woman from a minority Muslim sect who, when her husband died, and her neighbours started throwing stones through her windows at night, sought the protection of the local police only to be publicly ridiculed and then gang-raped by six officers in front of her three young children. There were the young Tamil men forced to inhale the fumes of burnt chilli powder by Sri Lankan police. Others hung upside-down and beaten for days until they confessed to crimes they played no part in. And many, many more with genuine, provable experiences just as gruesome.
Nearly thirty years on, I can still recall the faces of those people as they recounted their experiences to me during interviews and the tears in the eyes of the interpreters as they translated words no one should ever have to hear.
Since my days in the Home Office, I can’t recall a single Home Secretary who hasn’t had to wrestle one way or another with the asylum system. But neither can I recall one who has approached the task with as little humanity in their heart as Braverman. Truly, she is in a league of her own.
I simply don’t believe the majority of people in this country support the cruel policies that Braverman embraces so enthusiastically. As I listen to her today, my sincerest hope is that when Open Britain and our partners finally deliver a functional democracy in this country, monsters like her will never again be able to game their way into high office and abuse the power they find there.
This is our fight.
If you've read this far, please consider giving this a retweet and following me, @OpenBritainHQ and @StopTheRot_UK so you can be part of this positive change. Thank you.
Incredible video. Afghan dad jokingly says school is only for boys. Watch his remarkable daughter - who can’t be more than 5 or 6 years old - respond with these arguments.
Afghan girls have been denied access to schools and universities. This little girl's courage represents the collective voice of countless Afghan girls who yearn for equal educational opportunities.
As an advocate for girls' education the father's teasing is simply to highlight an important message: that the Taliban - another backward regime - are harming the people of his country.
It’s time the world is done with them.
Ditto the “Islamic” Republic in Iran #regime
Don’t want to watch GB News? Don’t worry, you can watch @MarinaPurkiss destroy Jacob Rees Mogg here 👇🏼
This is actually the closest I’ve ever come to pitying him.
Ps: Wonder if he supports fracking due to his alleged financial interests in the fossil fuel industry via Odey?
☢️ @CarloCalenda dice che l’energia nucleare «non ha emissioni, cioè non emette CO2: zero, niente». Questa dichiarazione è parziale e fuorviante. Il fact-checking:
pagellapolitica.it/fact-checking/…
'On what planet is that likely and how is that not inflammatory language?'
@susannareid100 grills @SuellaBraverman over her comments in the Commons where she claimed: 'one hundred million displaced around the world and likely billions more eager to come here is possible.'
In December 2020, 9-year-old Ella became the first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death.
No child should have to die because the air in our city is so dirty. We can’t give up fighting for children like Ella to have a future. standard.co.uk/comment/air-qu…
Iran: Hossein Mohammadi, 26, an artist & theatre actor, arrested on Nov 5, is one of the 5 people sentenced to death by a kangaroo court in Karaj. Like others, his case was investigated hastily. Stop the sham trials & killings! #MahsaAmini #مهسا_امینی #IranRevolution #محسن_شکاری
Salirò sulla nave #Humanity1 nelle prossime ore se il governo #Meloni terrà sospese le vite umane nelle acque territoriali italiane per propaganda ideologico-identitaria. Le vite umane si salvano. È finita la campagna elettorale. Governare è rispettare la Costituzione.
La Humanity 1 è in acque internazionali al largo delle coste di Catania. Ha salvato 180 persone, 100 sono minori, la maggior parte non accompagnati, molti hanno segni di violenze #ilcavalloelatorre