The West is content to incarcerate their own child nationals and put them at risk of torture, abuse and death at hands of terrorists they control
/from thefreeonline on 7th Aug 2023 by Vanessa Beeley at Uprooted Palestinians
(…..) When human rights reports were circulating in 2019, estimating 60 British children and 30 women in north-east Syria ISIS prisons, the British government said that, since the United Kingdom does not have a consulate in Syria, it would not be able to “provide assistance”. Since then a handful of orphans have allegedly been repatriated.
The shame of Shamima Begum
A spy working for the Canadian Intelligence services smuggled Shamima Begum into Syria and Britain later conspired to cover up Canada’s role in the operation, a new book has claimed. – The Telegraph
Begum was just 15 when she travelled to Syria with Amira Abase, 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, fellow pupils at Bethnal Green Academy in east London, in 2015. She was a child.
The Begum family lawyer, Mr Akunjee, said:
“Britain has lauded its efforts to stop Isis and the grooming of our children by spending millions of pounds on the Prevent programme and online monitoring.
“However, at the very same time we have been co-operating with a western ally, trading sensitive intelligence with them whilst they have effectively been nabbing British children and trafficking them across the Syrian border for delivery to Isis all in the name of intelligence-gathering.”
Begum was stripped of her citizenship by then-Home-Secretary Sajid Javid. Javid effectively offered 28 days amnesty to British nationals fighting with Al Qaeda, in Idlib, in 2019 but condemned Begum to stateless abuse in Syria despite the UK Intelligence alleged role in her being trafficked as an ISIS bride, aged 15.
Syria’s al-Hol camp on ‘the brink of collapse’, Red Cross warns
A New Yorker headline in 2020 asked a pertinent question:
If Shamima Begum, the ISIS bride, is no longer British, what does citizenship mean?
2019: Begum identified herself to Anthony Loyd, a war reporter for the Times, after he had stopped by the al-Hawl camp on the last day of an assignment. “I am a sister from London. I’m a Bethnal Green girl,” Begum told Loyd. She was anxious about her unborn child. “I’m scared that this baby is going to get sick in this camp,” Begum said. “That’s why I really want to get back to Britain, because I know it will get taken care of, health-wise at least.” Loyd’s story ran on the front page of the newspaper. Five days later, Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary at the time, stripped Begum of her citizenship. Her baby, a boy named Jarrah, died of a respiratory infection, when he was three weeks old.
At the time of Begum being stripped of her citizenship – the British regime had a policy of turning problematic citizens into former citizens.
Richard Barrett, former head of global counter-terrorism for MI6 told the New Yorker:
I think the government position is precisely that. If there is a way of getting rid of the problem to somewhere else, let’s get rid of the problem somewhere else.
Since 2006, Home Secretaries have been able to deprive a person of her British citizenship if it is “conducive to the public good”—a subjective rather than a strict legal test—as long as it does not leave her stateless.
Journalist Anthony Loyd pointed out the UK FCDO manipulation of the law:
International law forbids governments from rendering their citizens stateless. The British government has justified taking away Begum’s nationality on the grounds that her mother is Bangladeshi, and so she is eligible for citizenship until the age of twenty-one. This is a fiction. Begum has never lived in Bangladesh.
Barrett, the former MI6 official said:
This is a purely political decision. Why one would think that Bangladesh had any better capacity to deal with somebody? It doesn’t make any sense.
In refusing Begum’s appeal last week, the U.K.’s Special Immigration Appeals Commission acknowledged that her situation at the al-Roj refugee camp, in northern Syria, exposes her to the risk of torture and degrading treatment.
Anthony Loyd the Times reporter who met with Begum “ was struck by her guilelessness. She was awkward but direct.”. Yes, she was “unfazed” by some of the ISIS atrocities she had witnessed but I have personally met children who could describe terrorist crucifixion of relatives without batting an eyelid after being incarcerated by Western-backed terrorists for years in different areas of Syria. War does that to children.
Former British Ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford gave me this statement:
The UK, so apparently solicitous regarding the children of Ukraine, appears less concerned about some of its own. To the extent in fact of denying them not just a right of abode in the UK but even a right to UK nationality. The most well known case is that of Shamima Begum, an East London teenager encouraged by British government propaganda demonising Assad to join ISIS, and subsequently stripped of her nationality and forced to fester for years in the extremism incubators which are the ISIS prisoner camps in US/UK-controlled Northern Syria.
The sins of mothers being visited on the children, Begum’s children, are consequently also denied their birthright, a chance to live in Britain. For a government which behaves this despicably towards children of its own nation to posture as a children’s champion is a sickening hypocrisy.
Conclusion – the West is collectively hypocritical and is content to incarcerate their own child nationals and put them at risk of torture, abuse and death at hands of terrorists they control
For a government which behaves this despicably towards children of its own nation to posture as a children’s champion is a sickening hypocrisy. – Peter Ford
None of these children, Begum included, exploited and abused by their state of birth should be punished for the alleged crimes of their relatives. The only constructive solution is for western regimes to repatriate their child nationals and provide psychological and trauma support to enable them to reintegrate into society and into their culture of origin.
HRW report:
The unlawful detention in northeast Syria of 23,000 foreign children from dozens of countries has deprived them of their basic rights as children, including the rights to a nationality, health, education, family unity, and freedom from mistreatment and arbitrary detention. Those who have died because of the conditions or circumstances of their detention have been denied the right to life itself.
The HRW report concludes that although several countries have marginally increased the repatriation of child nationals, the rate remains indefensibly low.
Children have also drowned in sewage pits, died in tent fires, and been hit and killed by water trucks. These children come from many of the countries that have been responsible for the regime change war waged against Syria since 2011.
Western regimes continue to outsource responsibility for their child nationals to militants, terrorists, child and organ traffickers in north-east Syria. In the process ‘the children’s countries of origin are re-victimizing children who have already endured unimaginable horrors’.
Tens of Thousands of Children in Syria’s Al-Hol Camp Need Help Now …
While the West bears responsibility for the mass imprisonment of child nationals in squalid environments where they are preyed upon by all manner of criminals while depriving these children of any meaningful rehabilitation, identity or hope, they cannot take the moral high ground and prosecute Russia for unsubstantiated claims of child abduction in a war zone that the West created.
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Why Western regimes are complicit in Daesh carnage at popular Iran shrineOctober 29, 2022In “Afghanistan”
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