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