Category: Human Rights

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Why the European Court of Human Rights HAD to intervene

Daniel Sohege

When you hear government spokespersons banging on about how dare a “European Court” rule against it, this is why it had to. The UK government, by its own admission, has no means of monitoring conditions for the asylum seekers it sends to Rwanda. Yet, despite the highly selective glossy tourist pics being put out by […]

Compassion must win out against the drip feed of propaganda

Richard Haviland

Recent years have led many of us to question what we once felt about this country. But one thing I do believe is that most people, whether here or elsewhere, feel instinctive compassion for those in need when they are not being subjected to a drip feed of propaganda. But the drip feed of propaganda […]

Who is it fine to torture and drown?

Daniel Sohege

Okay, let’s have the debate shall we? Let’s have the debate about who you would look in the eyes and say it is fine for them to be tortured or drown in the channel. Let’s have the debate about whose kids you think should be denied a parent. Let’s not pretend it is a “left/right” […]

Ukraine diary – volume II

Gordon Dingwall
Humanitarian aid identifier on side of vehicle

Wednesday 27 April Graham and Bear arrived at the border early this morning, after they’d driven though the night. After a little rest in the house we are staying in, the load they had brought with them brought was shared out amongst us medics at the border and a contact in the international battalion of […]

Turning the tide of dangerous porn starts at the top

Caroline Voaden

As the Chief Executive of Devon Rape Crisis and Sexual Abuse Services, I am calling for a radical rethink in our approach to pornography after a Devon Conservative MP referred himself to the Standards Committee for allegedly watching porn while sitting in the House of Commons. I’ve heard many politicians say this week that ‘sunlight […]

Don your biohazard suits – it’s the week in Tory!

Russ In Cheshire

It’s been a challenge to find anything to write in the latest edition of the Week in Tory. They’ve all been such well-behaved boys and girls. Only kidding: it’s absolute carnage. Don your biohazard suits, top up your breakfast absinthe, and let’s dive in. 1. Under Boris Johnson, 10 Downing Street now holds the record […]

The UK and Russia: two “sick men” in need of a cure

James Chater
Johnson and Putn in close discussion

The UK and Russia are two of the ‘sick men of Europe’ (the others being Hungary and Poland), bookending a continent that has been pursuing peaceful collaboration and exchange for decades – on the whole with positive results in terms of stability and prosperity. Both countries have lost their way, crippled by myths and ‘alternative […]

Winter is here

Tomasz Oryński
Locals standing up to Russian soldiers in Mariupol

Tomasz is our ‘resident’ Polish writer. We preserve his unique voice in this challenging, thought-provoking piece on the reality of Putin’s Russia and the implacability of evil. In the first days of this war I was really hoping it’s true, that this is just a madness of one man, that those poor boys were lied […]

Ukraine diary: reports from Poland and Ukraine. Latest news!

Editor-in-chief
Ukrainian flag

The partner of one of our readers has gone to Poland to help with the effort to rescue refugees from Ukraine. He’s a field/trauma medic with extensive experience having served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had intended to go straight into Ukraine to join extraction efforts, but the attack on the Ukraine military base has […]

Time to waive the visas – and revisit the Nationality and Borders Bill

Tom Scott
Waive the visas campaign image

Insistence on complex visa requirements is in stark contrast to the outpouring of empathy for Ukrainian refugees by people in Britain. A government that promised it would cut ‘red tape’ is now using bureaucracy in the cruellest of ways, writes Tom Scott. When I was growing up in the 1960s, films and TV series set […]

The week in Tory…it’s an epic edition!

Russ In Cheshire
banner outside Westminster: corrupt Tory government

Russ’s epic and epigrammatic summary of the madness and horror that is the current UK political scene. We’ve left the numbers in so you don’t get lost! Buckle up! I was going to do #TheWeekInTory, but try as I might, I can’t find a single thing they’ve done wrong this week. Only kidding. It’s been […]

Pizza and positivity: feeding Ukrainian refugees at a Polish border aid camp

Anthea Simmons
Pizza prep at refugee camp, Poland Ukraine border

It’s day 8 for David Fox-Pitt and his team at the Medyka crossing point on the Polish/Ukrainian border and they’re working non-stop, 24/7, to feed the women and children arriving in their thousands from war-torn cities, towns and villages. I spoke to David via WhatsApp. Thank goodness for modern tech! ‘It’s like Groundhog Day,’ says […]

Ten years of the Tories’ hostile environment: Windrush victims, abandoned Afghans and mistreated Ukrainians

Sadie Parker
Meme of Gove and Patel

Already unpopular due to Brexit chaos, colossally corrupt covid contracts, ‘Partygate’, the raw sewage scandal and the cost-of-living crisis, our government is taking flak from all sides for its Kafkaesque response to the Ukrainian refugee crisis. Criticism is coming from the public, from a usually compliant press and even from some of its own back-bench […]

10 March 1933: the photo that alerted the world

Jon Danzig

This article is a timely reminder of the politics of hate and division at a time when our own government moves to remove or dilute our human rights and as the Home Office goes through endless contortions to dehumanise and avoid helping the refugees from conflict in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria; and, of course, as Russia […]

Letters to Neil Parish and Sir Geoffrey Cox re Ukraine

Editor-in-chief
placard: accept refugees on background of Ukraine flag

Dear Mr Parish, I wrote to you recently about the urgent need for Ukrainian refugees to be given safe passage and supported resettlement in the UK.  You kindly replied, and in short order, which I appreciated. Thank you. However, the assurances you provided about the government’s response did not address my concerns about the shortcomings […]

Speaking out, while we still can…

Tony Whitehead
Protesters at the Exeter rally against the Policing and Borders Bills

Reaching out across the seas Hold out our hands to refugees Make the world a better place To put a smile on everyone’s face Stop the bombing, join together International friends forever This poem by primary school children, read by Exeter’s Pete the Poet, opened a rally organised by Stop the War Coalition. More than […]

Democracy and human rights: both in grave danger in the UK

Editor-in-chief
woman holding placard 'we demand democracy'

Our latest edition has a focus on democracy and human rights. What follows is the rationale for putting this front and centre of our efforts to reach beyond the bubble and tell people what the mainstream media will or may not about the relentless undermining of these two vital pillars of a healthy society by […]

Never again? It is happening again

Jon Danzig

Genocide is not a thing of the past. Jon Danzig’s powerful and intensely personal account is a wake-up call for us all. After the Second World War, during which many millions were systematically, industrially, gruesomely murdered in the worst genocidal crime against humanity, the earnest, global, unison cry was, ‘Never again’. Those two words summed […]