Home Secretary attack on rights of LGBTQ+ refugees and women are shamefully cruel
Suella Braverman and the Home Office seem totally focused on making life as hostile and punishing as they can for some of the most vulnerable people in the world, says the Scottish Greens justice and equality spokesperson, Maggie Chapman MSP.
The comments come as the Home Secretary prepares to give a speech to a right wing US-based think tank, calling for the United Nations Refugee Convention to be reconsidered. She is expected to say that "simply being gay, or a woman" should not be enough to qualify for protection under international refugee laws.
Ms Chapman said:
“The Home Office, and the person who leads it, seem hell-bent on punishing vulnerable people. Braverman’s proposals are shameful and cruel. They would effectively undo decades of convention and work, and the protections that were agreed over 70 years ago.
“The Home Secretary is clearly solely focused on making life as hostile and punishing as she can for those fleeing persecution and oppression. Being able to rebuild their lives in the UK as human beings with dignity has been a fundamental function of offering sanctuary since shortly after the horrors of the second world war.
“Many people, targeted because of their gender or sexuality, have, rightly, been granted safety under the Refugee Convention.
“There are far too many women who have been treated in abhorrent ways, and LGBTQIA+ people who have been targeted or criminalised. Just for being who they are. I want to stand with them, not turn them away.
“With the anti-refugee bill and deportation flights to Rwanda, the Tories were already building an utterly brutal, authoritarian and anti-human migration system. These proposals would make it even worse.
“We need to break from a Tory government that is determined to strip the remaining humanity from the asylum system as part of its disgraceful culture war.
“The Home Secretary has made clear that she would rather put vulnerable peoples lives at even greater risk than look ‘weak’ to her right wing, extremist colleagues.
“We can have a humane and welcoming system that is based on openness and solidarity, but it won’t come from a racist and reactionary Tory government or a Home Office that should have been abolished long ago.”