Women's Views on News |
| Close down Yarl’s Wood protest Posted: 06 Nov 2015 01:17 PM PST
On 7 November over 1000 people from around the country will converge at Yarl's Wood immigration detention centre to demonstrate, demanding that Yarl's Wood is finally shut down and calling for a complete end to the practice of immigration detention. The brutal inhumanity displayed in the case of Alois Dvorzac, an unwell and confused 84 year-old man, shackled while he died of heart failure, is but one terrible story of the 30,000 people who get locked up indefinitely in one of the UK's 14 Immigration Detention Centres. Yarl's Wood has been condemned time and time again, most recently in the unannounced inspection by the HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, which concluded "Yarl's Wood is rightly a place of national concern". The women held at Yarl's Wood have been organising protests inside the detention centre through petitioning, demonstrating, defending each other from deportation and continuing to wear hand customised T-shirts demanding their freedom and asserting "We are not animals" – a reference to undercover footage obtained by the TV programme Channel 4 News that recorded a guard referring to the women as ‘animals’. This is the 6th demonstration that has been organised at Yarl's Wood by Movement for Justice, and 8 coaches from London are to be joined by coaches from Nottingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Oxford, Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow and Lancaster. Previous demonstrations have seen the outer perimeter fence breached as demonstrators pushed forward to get closer to the women held there, who, in turn, joined the demonstration from inside waving handmade signs and flags from their windows. A significant number of the people taking part in the demonstration outside will be asylum seekers and ex-detainees, as their friends are still imprisoned in Yarl's Wood. Supported by numerous organisations the march and demonstration promises to be a vibrant, dynamic and powerful statement that enough is enough. MPs have already called for a time limit on detention, report after report has condemned the detention of pregnant women, elderly, sick and disabled people and the UK stands alone in Europe as the only country with no time limit on detention. For, as Antonia Bright, from the protest’s organisers, Movement for Justice, put it: "The time for talk is done – we demand that action is taken. "Bring in a 28-day time limit as recommended by a recent parliamentary inquiry5 Stop detaining pregnant women, disabled, elderly, victims of rape and trafficking, shut down Yarl's Wood. "And we will not stop [protesting] until the travesty of justice and human rights that is immigration detention is ended once and for all." Please sign up for the Thunderclap so we can get #ShutDownYarlsWood trending on the day. If you are posting on social media use #ShutDownYarlsWood and #ENDdetention – others to use are #RefugeesWelcome and #SetHerFree For further demo info click here.  |
| Posted: 06 Nov 2015 04:09 AM PST
The Joint Committee on Human Rights, chaired by Harriet Harman MP, has announced there will be an inquiry into the UK government's policy on the use of drones for targeted killing. Earlier this year members of the British parliament threatened to take legal action to force the UK government to come clean over its 'targeted killing' of people in countries where Britain is not at war. That challenge was made in response to the Prime Minister's announcement of a US-style programme, in which covert strikes are carried out, commonly by drones, as part of 'the War on Terror'. A combination of faulty intelligence and a lack of safeguards has seen hundreds of civilians killed by the US drone programme in countries such as Pakistan and Yemen. Members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, supported by human rights charity Reprieve and law firm Leigh Day, have been demanding answers, wanting to know whether the government has formulated a targeted policy, and if so what that policy it is – and whether it is legal. The Prime Minister described Britain's adoption of the US-style programme as a "new departure" for the country, but has refused to disclose details on how such strikes are governed or justified. A Letter Before Action (LBA) sent by Leigh Day on behalf of Green party MP Caroline Lucas and Baroness Jenny Jones highlighted the lack of parliamentary approval for the UK's adoption of this new targeted killing policy; a lack of consistency in the justifications provided by Government ministers; and an overall lack of transparency. The LBA said: "The Claimants condemn terrorism. The government is right to dedicate resources to ensure the British public is protected. Yet those planning or involved in such acts must be dealt with in accordance with the law. "If any pre-authorised and targeted killing can be lawful, they must be carried out under a formulated and published Targeted Killing Policy which ensures transparency, clarity and accountability for such use of lethal force." The same lack of transparency in the USA meant that claims by the US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that its drone progamme had resulted in 'zero civilian casualties' went largely unchallenged, until investigations by Reprieve and other organisations showed that the numbers of civilian casualties – including children – were in fact in the hundreds. Speaking at the time, Caroline Lucas said: "The [UK] government appears to have adopted a 'kill policy' in secret – without parliamentary debate or the prospect of proper independent scrutiny. "Sanctioning lethal drone attacks on British citizens is a significant departure from previous policy, as well as potentially unlawful, and it's deeply concerning that it has occurred without appropriate oversight. "By refusing to publish the legal basis for these attacks, the government has created a legal and accountability vacuum. "We need to be able to determine whether the attacks – and what they signify in terms of government policy – meet the robust conditions set out in international and domestic law. "I am part of bringing this case because if we want to be effective at countering terrorism then we must ensure we act lawfully. "There are serious questions to be answered about the legality of the strikes, as well as the lack of robust oversight, Lucas continued. "Given the evidence from the USA, where former heads of defence and others have called their secret use of drones a 'failed strategy', it's crucial that the UK's actions to date and moving forward are subject to proper debate and scrutiny, particularly as its apparent new 'kill policy' goes beyond even what the US has been doing." “An effective strategy to end terrorism must learn from US drone policy which former senior military and intelligence staff have said creates a ‘tremendous amount of resentment inside populations’ and is deeply counterproductive.” And Kat Craig, legal director at international human rights charity Reprieve, said: "The government has said it has the power to kill anyone, anywhere in the world, without oversight or safeguards. "This is a huge step, and at the very least the Prime Minister should come clean about his new kill policy. "Instead," she continued, "we are seeing the UK follow the US down the dangerous path of secret, unaccountable drone strikes – a policy which has led to the deaths of hundreds of civilians in Pakistan and Yemen, without making us any safer. "Parliament and the public deserve to know what is being done in their name. "It is disappointing that MPs are having to turn to the courts to extract even the most basic information on a policy which the Prime Minister himself has described as a 'new departure' for the country." Baroness Jones pointed out that: "The government can’t argue that they are defending British values of democracy and the rule of law if they suddenly invent a new ‘bomb to kill’ policy which ignores all those democratic traditions and safeguards. "If our government is saying it will kill certain individuals, outside of armed conflict, whenever the opportunity arises, then you have to ask several obvious questions. "Which countries do we, and don’t we, apply this to? "Who decides that these people are guilty and how is that evidence challenged and proven without judicial oversight? "If it is seen as likely that the individuals pose a direct and imminent threat to our safety, but remain at large for six months, or a year, when is the ‘immediacy’ reassessed? "How many individuals are we targeting and why are we applying a death sentence to them rather than others? "The government," she said, "needs to not only answer these key questions, they need to be prepared to have their answers debated in public and challenged." Responding to the news that an inquiry will be held, Lucas said: "The announcement of this inquiry is welcome and couldn't have come a moment too soon. "As set out in the legal challenge to the government taken by Baroness Jones and I, there has been a complete absence of parliamentary scrutiny or approval of the Government's 'kill policy'. "I'm glad our challenge has pushed this issue up the political agenda. "This inquiry must urgently work to clarify the legal framework in which the UK is acting. In the meantime the government should suspend its targeted kill policy. "The evidence from the USA – where former heads of defence and others have called their secret use of drones a 'failed strategy' – makes clear the risks of so-called 'targeted killings'," she continued. "To be effective at countering terrorism we must ensure we act lawfully. "It's crucial that the UK's actions to date and moving forward are subject to proper debate and scrutiny, particularly as its apparent new 'kill policy' goes beyond even what the US has been doing."  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Women's Views on News. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |