Nadine Osman
The UK government has neglected the threat posed by the far-right while implicitly “endorsing” the violence faced by asylum seekers, according to an open letter addressed to the cabinet and shadow cabinet ministers and co-signed by prominent refugee advocacy groups.
The letter, signed by the Community Policy Forum, Refugee Council, and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, claims that the government has continually failed to “adequately address the dangers posed by Islamophobia and racism against vulnerable people seeking protection and racialised communities in the UK”.
The letter, which was released last month, added: “With government ministers continuing to promote incendiary language labelling asylum seekers with harmful stereotypes and painting them as unworthy of the sanctuary, there must be accountability for their role in normalising and tacitly endorsing the threats that asylum seekers now face.
“As such, the government must immediately disown such language and pledge to tackle far-right rhetoric inciting hatred against minority groups.”
The letter was issued following William Shawcross’s long-awaited report on the government’s counter-extremism programme Prevent, which came to the contentious conclusion that the programme had placed disproportionate attention on the far right and not enough on “Islamist extremism”.
Urging the government to reject the recommendations of the Shawcross review, the letter argued the report used “incomplete and skewed evidence to minimise the threat of the far right.”
There was also a reference to far-right demonstrators who gathered in Knowsley to protest asylum seekers who had been housed in a local hotel by the Home Office. “The response to the violence and intimidation directed at refugees in Knowsley has highlighted the normalised far-right hatred in the UK.”
The organisations urged the government to “outline a robust strategy to tackle far-right ideologies” and to “distance themselves from the statements of government ministers normalising and mainstreaming far-right hatred against minority groups”. In November, Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, was criticised for referring to asylum seekers coming to the UK as an “invasion”.
Migrants’ Rights Network CEO Fizza Qureshi, who signed the letter, said, “The lack of acknowledgement about the role Islamophobia and racism played in the Knowsley riot is shocking but, unfortunately, unsurprising.
“We have been warning about the devastating impact hostile rhetoric and ideas can have on refugees and migrants for some time and how it has emboldened the far right. “Once again, racism, orientalism and Islamophobia have been omitted from discussions on the far-right attack.”
Photo: March Against Racism demonstration in central London on March 18. Protesters demonstrate in opposition to new anti-immigrant legislation. (Photo by Alisdare Hickson/Flickr CC)
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