A child who was groomed and sex trafficked by terrorists is now being punished for it. Also this is a punishment that is only being applied to her because she has Bangladeshi ancestors so the government argues she is hypothetically eligible for a Bangladeshi passport (which the government of Bangladesh has no intention of giving her), and so the Tories can pretend they’re not illegally rendering her stateless.
This is literally a punishment that, by the Tories’ own formulation of their rule, would not be applied if the sex trafficking victim was a white girl called Shania with English parents instead of a brown girl called Shamima.
We’re supposed to be a country where people are treated equally before the law. But the Tories are now claiming that they and any future government has the right to render any Briton with some hypothetical right to a foreign passport (for example, most second generation immigrants and every single Jewish Briton) stateless at the whim of the home secretary.
Great summary, but I want to point out that the reality of why they’re doing this is to pander to racist voters who were told their opinion by a highly effective villification campaign against this woman in tabloid newspapers.
Once these things gain traction, politicians always kowtow to the loudest public opinions
Totally. In my alternative scenario where she was a blonde-haired blue-eyed white girl called Shania, the Daily Express would have turned her into a Madeleine McCann-like figure and campaigned every day on their front pages to ‘bring our girl home’.
A child who was groomed and sex trafficked by terrorists is now being punished for it. Also this is a punishment that is only being applied to her because she has Bangladeshi ancestors so the government argues she is hypothetically eligible for a Bangladeshi passport (which the government of Bangladesh has no intention of giving her), and so the Tories can pretend they’re not illegally rendering her stateless.
This is literally a punishment that, by the Tories’ own formulation of their rule, would not be applied if the sex trafficking victim was a white girl called Shania with English parents instead of a brown girl called Shamima.
We’re supposed to be a country where people are treated equally before the law. But the Tories are now claiming that they and any future government has the right to render any Briton with some hypothetical right to a foreign passport (for example, most second generation immigrants and every single Jewish Briton) stateless at the whim of the home secretary.
Great summary, but I want to point out that the reality of why they’re doing this is to pander to racist voters who were told their opinion by a highly effective villification campaign against this woman in tabloid newspapers.
Once these things gain traction, politicians always kowtow to the loudest public opinions
Totally. In my alternative scenario where she was a blonde-haired blue-eyed white girl called Shania, the Daily Express would have turned her into a Madeleine McCann-like figure and campaigned every day on their front pages to ‘bring our girl home’.