Why stripping rights from migrants strips rights from everyone

[Music]

[Applause]

there is a whole

world of stories behind everyone’s eyes

important human stories the sort that

populate

each chapter of every one of our

individual books of life

my job is to bring the unheard stories

the silenced memoirs of survival to

light

as a human rights barrister i spend my

days in a powder white horse hair wig

and a floor-length black gown

i’m a storyteller of the lesser-heard

human stories

i share stories of pain of struggle

of love and a family to persuade a court

of decision makers that

each protagonist of every story

is entitled to access basic rights

even though they may have dared to cross

a border

i want to share a story with you today

that will make us journey

into the messy unseen rights-less

corners of the world

that migrants are relegated to a story

that will

shine a light on the machinery built in

the palaces of power

and deployed to divide us

but this isn’t a migrant story this is a

human story

and we start with leila hers isn’t a

particularly unusual story

leila’s from syria her grandparents were

well-regarded business people in aleppo

she describes her grandfather as having

well-polished

shoes a booming voice in a shiny gold

watch which jangles just a little with

every step he takes

the courtyard of layla’s parents house

in syria would become

entirely infused with the powerful scent

of orange blossom

every spring she closes her eyes now

she can almost taste that hot sweet

scent

in the air of home in august 2013

the month that layla arrived in the uk

oxford university conducted a study and

after analyzing

58 000 newspaper articles

found that the word illegal was the most

common descriptor

for migrant that was the world

leila’s journey of refuge thrust her

into

that world our world has almost 80

million people who’ve been forced to

flee their homes

yet now more than ever before in human

history

we have a global rhetoric around

migration

that stokes fear and division

the word migrant it’s a simple word

described as one who moves either

temporarily or permanently

from one place to another simple

yet now the mere whisper of the word

immediately stirs conflict around a

dinner table

our television screens are used to

emblazoning migrants likened to

criminals cockroaches

vermin even in technicolor

last summer alone those who walk

westminster’s corridors of power

use the words swarms invasion

and floods to describe boats of

desperate children cold crying and dying

seeking sanctuary at our shores this

language casts people who move as other

as undesirables who exist outside of our

society

a criminal element a threat to security

a drain on valuable resources they

are attacking our land our values our

rights

as if the very concept of a person who

moves represents a foreign power waging

war

and that justifies a state-sponsored

attack and so leila

a brave talented syrian young woman

becomes tarred with the same powerful

rhetorical brush

of being just another parasitic

dangerous asylum-seeking other

words can dehumanize entire groups of

people

swallow up and silence scores of untold

stories

and in doing so normalize removing

rights from vulnerable groups

the way we allow people who move to be

talked about

dictates the way we allow people to be

treated

but that’s words what about action

why should we care after all they

exist outside of our protective cloak of

citizenship rights

laila is different to us by virtue of

having

fled her home fled a war

let’s have a full and fearless

exploration of what happens

when we treat one group of people as

less worthy of rights

than another when we disable migrant

communities from accessing basic rights

and let’s see how different layla’s

position

really is two hours

layla’s many things she’s a survivor of

war

an individual with an entirely legal

right to claim

asylum and someone who hasn’t been

accused of

any criminality yet purely because she

is an asylum seeker

she doesn’t enjoy the automatic luxury

of liberty because she dared

to seek refuge she was detained

with no notice locked up for five months

imprisoned in a facility managed by a

private security company

with a tragic record of fatal

mismanagement

locked up and locked out of sight

the phenomenon of immigration detention

affects many groups of people

undocumented migrants asylum seekers

victims of trafficking survivors of war

even european nationals and it allows

the home office to

imprison people indefinitely with no end

of sentence in sight

for no other reason than the convenience

of knowing where they are there is no

presumption of innocence because of

course there’s no actual crime involved

and we’ve normalized that this is an

acceptable way to treat people

it doesn’t take much to think of the

psychological

sociological and physiological scars

this forever

leaves on detainees but again some might

say

this happens to them people who don’t

have immigration status

the trouble with treating one group of

people

differently depriving them of a set of

rights

is that it’s a short walk to depriving

another group of people of the same

right

fast forward 2020 and a new bill was

proposed

the counter-terrorism and sentencing

bill

this bill wants to give authorities more

power

so that they can deprive anyone

regardless of nationality of their

liberty

on the mere suspicion of terrorism

so individuals that the authorities

can’t

criminally prosecute can’t convict at

trial

can still face never-ending measures

depriving them of their liberty

they can have an electronic tag cuffed

to their ankle

they can be put on indefinite house

arrest

so with this bill simon a hard-working

british engineer from milton keynes

can be forced to live away from his

family

away from his home indefinitely

not because he was prosecuted and

convicted

of terrorism but because the authorities

harbor a suspicion they cannot prove

he won’t spend next summer teaching his

children how to ride a bike under the

apple blossom tree

that sacred right to liberty has

gradually been eroded

and the path between layla and

simon is a short one

but layla wasn’t just detained

before she was detained she was subject

to government ordered hostility

she arrived in the uk a year after the

hostile environment was birthed

it’s a tremendously named policy which

does just what it says on the tin

it put in place a labyrinth of punitive

and

painful legal measures designed to make

living in the uk without status

as insufferable as possible

but it did this not by putting a fleet

of white vans throughout the country

but by empowering private british

individuals

doctors employers landlords

bank managers any british individual

as the new first guard of immigration

enforcement

by legally requiring landlords to

discriminate against and be

suspicious of migrants the home office

is able to multiply the tentacles of

surveillance

by criminalizing landlords who do rent

people without immigration status the

hostile environment makes landlords

quake in their boots at the mere sight

of someone they don’t perceive to be

british

we know that even survivors of the

grenfell tower fire

were too scared to seek help

that is how far the tentacles of

surveillance now reach

they are instead rendered street

homeless

the intended painful consequence

of state designed hostility

just like with the right liberty the

hostile environment used migrants as a

testing ground for social policing

but the tentacles of surveillance no

longer stop with immigration offences

they now reach each and every one of us

with the prevent duty the prevent duty

is a recent home office invention

requiring public sector workers to

monitor and report

signs of extremism it sounds

orwellian but it’s in modern day britain

that school teachers are required by law

to view even very young children as

potential

future criminals monitor their thoughts

and beliefs and report on signs of

extremism they might view

extremism in this context is defined as

active or vocal opposition to british

values

british values would you know what they

are

would your sister know whether she was

abiding british values

it’s so dangerously vague a term

that it can be hijacked by whomever lays

claim to it

what extremism is is defined by whomever

is in power

which is why in 2020 extinction

rebellion

were formally classified as an extremist

group

young people protesting for a cleaner

greener future were seen to be other

to british values was seen to be

practicing

ideological extremism

so now seven-year-old elizabeth a

british school girl

in birmingham who praises a comic act of

protest by xr

can have her thoughts reported to the

home office

there is no distance between layla

and elizabeth that is how far

the tentacles of surveillance and

control now reach

it’s a collective rights grab

these immigration policies were put in

place

to break down the social fabric that

binds us together

by justifying that one group of people

is less worthy of rights should be

harassed and punished over another

there is no breathless horror when we

hear of migrants rights being removed

and we’re quick to forget that by

allowing the authorities to remove

rights from one group of people gives

authorities permission to remove the

same right

from other groups so

what do we do what do we do about these

tools of oppression hiding in plain

sight

injustice thrives in the darkness

sunlight is the best disinfectant

we have to keep shining a light on the

darkest

messiest unseen corners of society

telling and re-telling invisibilized

stories until they no longer feel

other here’s the part of the journey

where i get to give you some good news

it’s working we’ve seen an unprecedented

movement in recent years

of people coming out in support of

migrants

as people who move people

thousands have come out and come

together been vigilant

protested against anti-migrant and

racist policies

and in doing so have uplifted quietened

voices

and shared untold stories with

or without wig and gown we are all

storytellers and advocates

and is more crucial now than ever to

dare to speak

truth to power

we must remember that when we speak of

migrants

rights we’re speaking of human rights

layla’s rights are our rights

her her orange blossom courtyard is

simon’s apple blossom

garden her love of x factor is

elizabeth’s love of bake off

her story is our story her rights

are our rights so as we journey back now

to our own

stories from this place of rightlessness

i’ll leave you to quietly question

whether in 2030

you can be absolutely certain that you

will still

be cocooned in a protective blanket of

citizenship rights

whether those quiet nuggets of thought

you dare to whisper

the little complaints you make of this

government won’t be heard

misheard and misused against you

and whether in your story there will be

any real distance

between you and laila who stands in that

messy

uncertain space of rightlessness

just because she dared to cross a border