Citizenship

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Richard
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Citizenship

Postby Richard » Fri Feb 22, 2019 12:57 pm

Shamima Begum was one of three British schoolgirls who fled their home in Bethnal Green, east London, four years ago to marry Isis fighters in Syria, probably they were 'groomed' on the internet somehow.
Home Secretary Javid’s latest decision to strip Begum’s citizenship has caused controversy.

The parents were hoodwinked into believing Shamima was going on holiday to Turkey for a few days but she ended up going to Syria.
They must surely be very weak parents if they were totally ignorant of her state of mind?
I think it would be better to allow her back into Britain and then put her on trial but there is no easy answer yet or policy in place to deal with such situations.
There are shades of the Jamaican 'Windrush' deportees, where citizenship rights to remain are being overturned.

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seahermit
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Re: Citizenship

Postby seahermit » Sat Feb 23, 2019 4:06 pm

She made a decision to become involved with an organisation which she knew was murdering and bombing civilians. She has expressed no regret whatsoever.

Like joining the Nazis and then, after the war is lost, saying "I made a mistake, can I come back?"

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Richard
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Re: Citizenship

Postby Richard » Sat Feb 23, 2019 7:22 pm

Shamima Begum was an immature child aged 15 at the time of her indoctrination by terrorists, via the internet.
She was impressionable and outside the influence of her woefully inadequate parents.
The girl surely made a mistake but the alleged criminality has yet to be judged in context and with all the facts.
We can't hold a type of 'Kangaroo Court' through public hearsay and knee-jerk reasoning alone.

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seahermit
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Re: Citizenship

Postby seahermit » Sat Feb 23, 2019 7:39 pm

What do you mean by "public hearsay"? The facts of the situation have been well-publicised and have never been denied by anyone.

I don't believe that at age 15 people are still children to the extent that they don't know the difference between right and wrong and don't see anything wrong with murder and terrorism. In modern times and with all the access to information on the internet, many "children" are probably far more grown-up than you and I used to be - and much more aware of what is going on in the world. I feel no sympathy at all with the perpetrators, only with the victims (in their thousands).

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Richard
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Re: Citizenship

Postby Richard » Sun Feb 24, 2019 9:08 am

Any suspected criminal activity by a British citizen should be prosecuted in the UK.
The practice of depriving individuals of their citizenship while they are abroad, without any form of due process, resulting in them becoming stateless, is illegal under international law.
I suspect that there will be legal challenges if the family can access lawyers to argue the case.

Terrorists always target the youth because they are more susceptible to manipulation, the internet has made this easier and when presented with the other points of views they may be willing to believe them, they don't have the experience to weigh things in the balance as we who are more mature may do.
Tony Blair went to war against Iraq on the basis of alleged weapons of mass destruction held by Saddam, without any examination of the American 'false intelligence' or thought for the consequences.
Isis seems to have arisen on the back of the Iraq war and then subsequently the chaos in Syria.
There were also failings in Afghanistan and Libya.
It seems something of a knee-jerk reaction to banish the girl who became involved with the terrorists when we at least partly provoked the situation that then arose.
It appears that the Syrian uprising started among his own citizens on the ground in Syria but that Assad then used the terrorists to bolster his position.
One huge mess and of course we don't want schoolgirls or anyone else going off to support terrorists but there are lots of arguments and rights and wrongs along the road.

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ColinL
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Re: Citizenship

Postby ColinL » Wed Feb 27, 2019 7:06 pm

British society needs to examine where it failed a young girl in that she was able to become convinced that at that age (she would not be able to consent to sex in the UK) that she should get married and become a bearer of children to the exclusion of all else as Daesh women tend as far as I am aware to remain indoors.

Our security /IT services enabled three young girls to access dangerous sites, then although it seems they were under some surveilance when they were told they were missing, failed to stop them at the airport or Turkey having landed there. Despite your coment Seahermit that we know the facts, it is not possible to rely on snippets and extracts from newspapers. Richard mentioned the parents being inadequate(no criticism of you Richard) but again statements broadcast by a family friend of the Begum's, who is a retired senior police officer the family were quite average and parents of any ilk do not necessarily know what their children are up to. Certainly mine did not.

It was reported at the time, and again recently that Shamimia Begum had received a leter from the Met that they wanted to speak to her and the letter was found in her school bag after she left. Why on earth would the police have contacted the child first, rather than a simultaneous contact with the parents, social services, the school and the girl? It is ludicrous.

It is a UK problem. If we export our problem a third country then we should fully expect retaliaton of other countries nationals who happen to be here if they revoked the citizenship and told the UK it was our problem.

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Richard
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Re: Citizenship

Postby Richard » Wed Feb 27, 2019 10:43 pm

Hi colinl.

As far as I can make out counter-terrorism police interviewed the schoolgirls over the disappearance of their friend, Shamima Begum but failed to directly notify the parents of the schoolgirls that these preliminary interviews were taking place in the school, instead they just gave letters to the girls to pass onto their parents.
The school failed to explain the seriousness of the situation to the parents when Shamima was classed as a 'missing person' and the two other girls were easily able to join Shamima abroad.
The first thing police should have done was to talk directly to the parents of the other girls and perhaps, after they had departed, question where any of the young school girls got the money from to travel abroad.

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seahermit
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Re: Citizenship

Postby seahermit » Thu Feb 28, 2019 2:33 am

Certainly there are failings by the authorities, schools etc. - but it is not all their fault, e.g. the security services are monitoring thousands of "suspect" individuals, young and old, on a day-to-day basis and having the unenviable job of assessing the level/urgency of risk posed in each case. We cannot expect them to be perfect and get it right every time.

We DO know many of the facts and not from snippets and extracts from newspapers - or are the BBC and other news organisations really that unreliable and untrustworthy? But I take your point, in that I am not trying to make a judgement here about one particular case in circumstances which to outsiders are unknown - who knows what family set-up or restricted, introverted life led a young girl to think and eventually act in such an extreme way?

However, none of this alters the basic fact that the parents being "average and ordinary", unaware of quite what their children were up to is an old chestnut and I have never gone along with that. If you as a child had been hanging out on street corners, getting involved with local drugs people or (as in this case) associating with religious extremists, would your parents really have had no inkling of the company you were keeping? They would have been very neglectful and irresponsible parents and this is where I think some of the blame should be directed. Supervision is indeed more difficult these days with the barrage of surreptitious social media to which children are subjected, but parents HAVE to deal with it and try to be in proper communication with their children - there is no other choice, unless one wants the whole situation to just get even worse.

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Richard
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Re: Citizenship

Postby Richard » Thu Feb 28, 2019 9:45 am

I know what my parents would have had to say if, as a child, I came out with the sort of nonsense recently spouted by Shamima. The different cultural background may explain part of the situation.
She has not been made to stop and think and listen to reasoned arguments on both sides by her school and parents.
The school, the police, the council were all inadequate and indicative of inner-city failings.
And the parents expected these public bodies to do the parenting, providing the skills that they lacked.
A 'lose-lose' situation. Good parenting starts at home.

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ColinL
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Re: Citizenship

Postby ColinL » Thu Feb 28, 2019 8:54 pm

Richard, with all due respect, you don't know what her parents did or did not do and cannot say whether the parents were inadequate. It is quite possible that the young girl as she then was may not have disclosed her true thoughts to them.

I mentioned previously that bits of pieces of information get published and they maybe misinterpreted or confused and thus innocently false information is circulated, such then as I said to Seahermit we have to be careful. If I have read your previous but one post correctly you may have done this. You mentioned that the 'two other girls were able to join Shamimia abroad'. All three girls from that school travelled together and there is airport video footage of the three of them walking together. There have been other school children who left but as individuals.

Seahermit, you asked if the news and TV press could be trusted to inform us of the 'truth'. It is not that easy. The Media Reform Coalition at Birkbeck College Univ of London published a study last summer and highlighted the fact that it is not possible to say that the press lies, as much as how it edits what it publishes, what is not published as a part of an article, or from whom it seeks external comment thus slanting an otherwise innocuous matter coming over as very controversial.

Another good example is what is seen in pictures published along with comment. A couple of years ago the Express or Sun or similar (cannot remember which) published a photo of Mr Corbyn on Remembrance Day at the Cenotaph with the caption that he was disrespecting the dead by 'dancing a jig'. He had his arm out and his body was seemingly jiving. That however was a carefully edited shot. Had they published the picture of the whole scene, it would have shown Mr Corbyn on one side a Jewish war veteran who was likewise moving with Mr Corbyn; they had known each other for some 30yrs. The threat of an injunction made the paper withdraw the picture from the website. However by that time thousands of people would have been mislead to thinking that he was acting disrepectfully. Once damage is done it is hard to correct. There are many more examples

We have to be cautious of what we are told and what we read because although it might be accurate as a snippet it tells a different story if considered as a whole. One half of the photo was an accurate picture but edited to look different from the scene, although it would have not been worth them publishing a photo of him walking with an elderly Jewish man as it would not convey the image they want to develop
Last edited by ColinL on Thu Feb 28, 2019 9:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.


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