14 April 2022
Dear Members of Parliament and less and less honourable Members,
I am writing this in a state of utter disgust and disbelief that as members of Parliament in a country that pretends to be civilised and democratic, to follow the rule of law and respect the right to life, that you and that liar of a Prime Minister can even for one minute think not only of refusing asylum and refuge in this country to destitute people, who have committed no crime and have arrived here because they have been grievously and violently pushed out of their own countries, today Ukraine by a madman who is razing their country, and tomorrow because of others like him…. And then consider yourselves to have the right to forcibly remove them to a place thousands of miles away and effectively imprison them there indefinitely – against their will and without their agreement. It beggars belief. Treating them as sub-human, lower than cattle. It stinks of Hitler – airplanes replacing cattle cars – but with fascism intact. It’s racist, discriminatory, cruel and degrading treatment, and vile. It has to be illegal under international human rights law. It cannot be allowed.
The Tory Party has been abusing its majority in the House of Commons, taking no account of the opposition or the House of Lords, let alone the views of NGOs and the public, no matter how extensive and justified the opposition is, for far too long. They/you are crossing ugly red lines almost every day. They/you have begun to act as if they/you can do whatever they/you damn well please, no matter whose lives or which national institutions are destroyed, from the NHS on down, with no ethical basis or justification, and leading to no good end whatsoever. They/you have become a danger to the nation.
It is not only Boris Johnson and Priti Patel who must resign because of their lack of humanity, but the whole government. We need an election, and we need it now because, as a nation, we need to seriously reconsider our role in the world as the future comes to meet us. The destructive consequences of Brexit, in order to allow the government to do whatever it damn well pleases, has made this country into a renegade, rejecting the human rights of its citizens as well as those of asylum seekers and refugees.
Boris Johnson has violated every principle of public health during the Covid-19 pandemic, leading to widespread illness and the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of people. No one is holding him to account for that, let alone for giving massive amounts of public money away to the companies of his friends to provide public health services they were absolutely incapable of providing. And now he has bribed Rwanda with millions of pounds, a poverty-stricken country that has experienced its own horrid civil war and unbelievable violence in the not too distant past, to act dishonourably and accept dirty money to imprison refugees who have come here seeking a safe haven.
If as members of Parliament, you allow this to happen, you too will be violating every principle of the responsibility you have to protect vulnerable and displaced people. You have failed to recognise that in the coming decades, because of the growing number of climate crises occurring daily in an increasing number of countries, that the numbers of refugees will rise dramatically all over the world, and that we must start discussing how to cope with what will happen to avoid causing a massive number of terrible deaths. Indeed, many people on these small islands of the United Kingdom may find themselves needing to find refuge in other countries as the already rapidly rising sea levels eat into our coastlines and as floods and frightening weather start to destroy farms, houses and infrastructure. What then? Who will we have a right to ask to offer help and asylum to us?
I call on you to condemn and reject this charade, to demand that this clown of a Prime Minister, who dresses up as a doctor one day and a pilot the next, just to have his picture taken, as if that is his role in life, who believes he has the right to spend a fortune to fly into Ukraine to walk three steps in front of cameras in the middle of an empty square in Kyiv, expecting to be treated as the hero of all Ukrainians, and then come home, only to stop almost everyone from Ukraine entering this country, and then send Priti Patel to Rwanda to have her picture taken as she hands over bribery money to Vincent Biruta in order to ship any refugee she wants out of the country forever. Shame on all your heads for tolerating this. This whole country should be in the streets protesting, and you should be leading them.
It is not only Vladimir Putin who should be tried in the International Criminal Court, it is also Boris Johnson, Priti Patel and anyone else of you who allows these crimes against humanity to happen.
Yours faithfully,
Marge Berer
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