Human Rights in Jeopardy for People of Dual Heritage or in Cross Cultural Relationships

A quick recap of extradition and deportation cases in the United Kingdom, although boring to most minds, nevertheless displays some trends which will be of concern not just to human rights advocates but to anyone of dual heritage and anyone in a cross cultural relationship.

Nearly two weeks ago, the headlines were dominated by the case of Gary McKinnon, whom Britain refused to extradite to the United States. In 2002 Gary McKinnon allegedly hacked into several US government computer including NASA and the Pentagon. Mr McKinnon, now 46, admits hacking into US computers but says he had been on a “moral crusade” to find classified documents about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). His search had quickly turned into an obsession, an obsession that cost the US some half a million pounds sterling in computer damage.

A request for his extradition was filed by the US in 2004 and indeed the order was signed in 2006 by then Home Secretary John Reid. If convicted in the US, McKinnon faced up to 70 years in prison.

McKinnon subsequently fought the extradition on human rights grounds. Two Home Office appointed Psychiatrists in concert with three experts concluded that McKinnon suffered Asperger’s and was likely to commit suicide if sent to America to stand trial. In August 2008 Mr McKinnon was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome . A form of autism, Asperger’s syndrome sufferers commonly become obsessed with certain activities and interests. They also have a level of social naiveté when it comes to evaluating the consequences of their actions.

McKinnon appealed against the extradition order to the House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights, unsuccessfully. One of his major arguments against extradition is that he believed he would not get a fair trial in the US and would be punished much more severely because he had contested the extradition process.

It did seem that McKinnon, like five other Britons just weeks earlier, would be deported to the US to face trial. But in an extraordinary and uncharacteristic display of affection for human rights, as well as interference with the judicial process, Home Secretary Theresa May finally ruled that McKinnon should not be extradited, saying there was no doubt Mr McKinnon was ‘seriously ill’ and his ‘extradition would give rise to such a high risk of him ending his life that a decision to extradite would be incompatible with Mr McKinnon’s human rights.’

Yet less than two weeks before, the extradition of five other terror suspects to the United States was approved by Home Secretary Theresa May. These included the Egyptian born cleric Abu Hamza al Masri along with Babar Ahmad who has been in prison since 2004, the longest period any British citizen has been held without charge since 9/11.  The ageing Al-Masri has also been in a British jail since 2004 on separate charges of inciting racial hatred and encouraging followers to kill non-Muslims. Al-Masri has been portrayed in the British media as one of the most dangerous men in the country, his characteristic one eye and hook in place of a hand made it easy for the media to vilify him. But Al Masri, like McKinnon is a very ill man, suffering from depression, chronic sleep deprivation, diabetes and other ailments.

The men had been fighting extradition for between eight and fourteen years, when finally the British High Court ruled they had no more grounds for appeal and could be sent to the U.S. immediately. Clearly, in signing the order the Home Secretary concluded that Al Masri was less ill than McKinnon, and therefore his human rights were less at risk.

But the comments of Prime Minister David Cameron revealed other considerations. ‘I’m absolutely delighted that Abu Hamza is now out of this country’ said the Prime Minister, ‘Like the rest of the public I’m sick to the back teeth of people who come here, threaten our country, who stay at vast expense to the taxpayer and we can’t get rid of them. I’m delighted on this occasion we’ve managed to send this person off to a country where he will face justice.’

But human rights advocates who were always critical of the applications to deport Al Masri and Ahmed could not have envisioned that government interference in the human rights process could be so motivated by overt racism and Islamophobia.

Yet in a capricious twist, last year another terror suspect, Ismail Abdurahman, a Somali convicted of providing a safe house for a would-be 21/7 bomber, was excused deportation after serving his prison sentence on the grounds that his human rights would be at risk if he was returned to Somalia. Abdurahman is one of at least 11 convicted foreign-born terrorists allowed to remain in the UK under such provisions.

Meanwhile literally dozens of men who have served Britain both faithfully and even risking their lives, are also facing deportation. Veterans Aid has been fighting the cases of some 70 British servicemen who are facing deportation from the UK. Cases like that of Sapper Poloko Hiri who although having served in the British army for four years with an exemplary record, when the UK Border Agency reviewed his application for citizenship they claimed that a speeding offence he had received was a sign of bad character and he should be deported.

Hiri’s case is particularly urgent because it effectively leaves him stateless;  he faces certain arrest, prosecution and up to 25 years in jail if he returns to his native Botswana which deems enlisting in a foreign army a criminal offence. Rendering a person stateless would also be a clear violation of his rights. Hiri’s case came just days after over Fiji-born Lance Corporal Bale Baleiwai, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, was threatened with deportation because  a fight with a colleague in 2010 was deemed to be a sign of bad character. And like Baleiwai, Hiri has a child with a British mother. Their deportations will tear these mixed race, cross cultural families apart.

An in an extraordinary convolution of Britain’s human rights and citizenship policies, Britain will also be deporting one esteemed Professor Tulloch. Professor Tulloch who is 70 years old and can trace his ancestry in Britain back to the 14^th century, has a long and distinguished family history of serving British interests abroad. Because of this it happened that Professor Tulloch was born to a British Army officer serving in India before independence. The monumental changes in the political landscape could not have been known to the family, but this meant in fact that this conferred upon the infant Tulloch a lesser form of nationality known as a ‘British subject without citizenship’.

Despite this, Tulloch was issued with a British passport, was raised and educated in Britain, married a British wife and had British children. But when in the course of his academic career he took a job in Australia he subsequently took out Australian citizenship, believing in his right to take out dual nationality without risking his British citizenship. But as Tulloch was not a full British citizen his rights to dual nationality were invalid; his passport has since been confiscated and he faces expulsion. Like Hiri and Baleiwai, what makes Prof Tulloch’s plight so hurtful and outrageous is that it is a direct consequence of his family’s very service to this country.

But what do all these extraditions and deportations mean for people in cross cultural relationships?

That all their fundamental human rights are in jeopardy.

Firstly, the cases of Hiri, Baleiwai and Tulloch demonstrate that the consequence of engaging in cross cultural relationships will mean the loss of  protection for their rights to family life. This is an echo of earlier misogynistic  policies that deprived women of their citizenship if they married foreign men.

But secondly and more critically these cases demonstrate blatant discrimination. When comparing for instance, the McKinnon cases with that of Al Mari, Ahmed, Baleiwai and Hiri, discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity as well as religion is evident. In Professor Tulloch’s case, he is penalised for being born abroad whilst in British service, and being of dual heritage with similar parallels to the Baleiwai and Hiri cases. All of whom also have their rights to nationality and to not be stripped of citizenship nor rendered stateless, breached.

But if overriding rights to family life, to citizenship and nationality and crucially to equality are clearly in jeopardy, what becomes more apparent is the government’s arbitrary interference in the judicial process. A matter which leaves people of dual heritage and in cross cultural at risk of unfair and biased legal proceedings, contrary to their fundamental rights.

In stark contrast to other deportation and extradition cases, the government seemed only too relieved to be able to use human rights standards in McKinnon’s case which did not so much indicate a policy reversal but rather its underlying discriminatory and arbitrary practices.

The government and in particular the Home Secretary have made no comments on the touching cases of Prof. Tulloch, Baleiwai nor Hiri  and have not deigned to interfere in the normal judicial processes in these instances. Unlike in the early days of the coalition when Prime Minister Cameron expressed his unease about the ruling of one Justice Eady who granted a restraining order to a footballer whose extramarital affairs were about to be revealed. Cameron’s unease was so much that in fact the Prime Minister stated that in the future judges would be prevented by the government from issuing such discretionary orders.

What he was really saying was that in the future the judiciary will loose its independence and will be told what to do by the legislature. The Prime Minister attempted to defend his position by saying that such concessions afford to the wealthy the ability to buy their privacy through the courts, making a mockery of the law. But his real motivation for his disdain of these and similar judgements was to strike a series of blows at human rights. The Conservative government has been forthright in its position to rid Britain of the encumbrances of human rights legislation such as the Human Rights Act, the Equality Act and the European Convention on Human Rights.

However what is little spoken about, indeed understood, is that should the current regime extricate Britain from the European Convention on Human Rights this will be a back door to extricate Britain from the European Union. Membership of the European Union is predicated upon membership in good standing of the Council of Europe which requires its members to sign, ratify and comply with the Convention.

Not only would Britons lose their human rights but the failure to maintain the entry requirements to the world’s largest markets and trading bloc will have a catastrophic effect on the UK economy. The complex security architecture of Europe ensures that relations in all spheres; political, military, economic are enmeshed and interlocked. Losing human rights will not only harm the rights of all individuals, including the already precarious rights of people of dual heritage and in cross cultural relationships, but will also hamper cross cultural relations in the business and economic spheres.

Taken together, these cases show the crux to be that the government will interfere in human rights, through outright discrimination, as well as by interfering in the judicial process. People in cross cultural relationships or of dual heritage will not be afforded their rights to be heard impartially by an independent judiciary.

The effect will be to prevent the safeguarding of equality and protection from discrimination particularly when people are in cross cultural relationships or of a different place of birth, ethnicity, race or religion. As the clear evidence of discrimination and prejudice colours the cases of Al Masri and Ahmed, that someone as British as Professor Tulloch can also be stripped of citizenship and deported, naturally begs the question, what type of recognition and protection can there be left for people of mixed heritage or in a mixed relationship?

These cases signpost a regressive trend that there is and will be no reliability of equality, of protection from discrimination and this will, as it already has, have particularly devastating consequences on the rights and quality of life for people of mixed heritage or in cross cultural relationships.

GOLDENROOM Issue 11 ‘Business and the Economy’

EDITORIAL

Often cross cultural relations is seen as the preserve of community workers, diplomats and possibly psychologists. As such it is often a field that is thought to be ‘soft’, utilising informal skills and sometimes being downright undisciplined.

What such a view overlooks is the massive importance of cross cultural relations in the fields of business and the economy. Important, dynamic and demanding both intelligence and boldness, the business world and the wider field of economics are not only the location of cross cutlural relations, they are driven by cross cultural relations, even in as much as they influence cultures and relations between cultures.

Hence, it is only fitting that there should be an issue of GOLDENROOM that explores this dynamic in all its plurality. Two articles, each with a distinctive tone,  ‘Constructing Equality’, and ‘My Story: Shalini Bhalla’ are inspiring stories of how businesses have developed out of the importance and challenges of addressing diversity and cross cultural relations.

Economics frequently drives migration, but such shifts in demographics also have a profound effect on business and the economy. In fact entire communities change location and character, wax and wane at the forces of the economy, changing labour and business markets,but often with a terrific price on human rights and humanity. And often where cultures collide in competition, long lasting ethnic and cultural conflict ensues. Alasdair McKillop provides a sensitive and thought provoking analysis on how we remember such historical events where markets and migration are indelibly marked on the collective consciousness. He concludes by asking: ‘can we remember parts of our past marked by division and violence without perpetuating those divisions or exacerbating them anew?’

In a similar vein GOLDENROOM’s cover story, ‘ Pieces of the Puzzle’  looks at the history of Britain’s Chinese Merchant Seamen. their sizeable contributions to the economy and society and crucially, their establishement of Eurasian families and the legacy of this tragedy when they were forbidden to return to Britain. A difficult and often unknown chapter in the history of Britain, this article also gives insight into the salience of knowing one’s identity and heritage.

For a similar perplexing and intriguing read about dual identities, take a look at our article on Osel Hita Torres, also known as Lama Osel.

This issue is packed with similar such intelligent and substantive reading, from GOLDENROOM’s recommendations on books, CDs and DVDs following the theme of cross cultural relations in business and the economy, to the pleasureable discovery of an iconic tea house established by a recently immigrated couple. Enjoy the biography of this month’s iconic ICON, Mohamed Al Fayed and of course a fantastic recipe for chutney in our section, You At Home.

Lots more inside to inform and reflect upon, especially about better ways to do business such as our article on best language courses and a really uplifting article about a platform that unites travellers and locals. And hopefully, in all of this you will see something of you and yours in this packed issue too.

Dr. W.J.Tuinstra

Editor in Chief

GOLDENROOM

Online Journal for Cross Cultural Relations

 

Image by Salvatore Vuono www.freedigitalphotos.net

The Iron Lady. An Apocalypse for Cross Cultural Relations

 

Guest Blogger A.R.Mellor of South Yorkshire shares his thoughts on The Iron Lady.

‘With bright blue skies and a crispness to the air, autumn was heralded in, but in an adage to summer, whether it be wet or hot, I pottered in the garden, catching up on a few garden chores whilst listening to some classical music. A unique composition filled the airwaves, thoroughly grounded in classical elements but with the use of electronic music it was exciting and bang up to date. I was not surprised to learn that the composer was Thomas Newman whose work is widely recognised and respected for accompanying many modern films, such as Road to Perdition and The Good German. This particular score  however was Newman’s soundtrack to ‘The Iron Lady’, which somewhat cast a gloom over my sunny garden and deflated the sweeping melodies.

That film, and indeed any memento of Margaret Thatcher still has the power to raise in me a righteous anger. I was born and bred in a South Yorkshire mining town, and though I am now in my late forties, I am acutely aware that the course of my life was unduly and negatively influenced by Margaret Thatcher’s, prime minister-ship over this country. Her uncompromising leadership was admired by many, but  to myself and our community she was the enemy.

Yes, she is responsible for a great many of the difficulties and tragedies that our community experienced. Her deregulation policies, privatisation and clamp downs on the unions provoked the miner’s strikes and the country ground to a near standstill. On strike, unemployed and treated as enemies of the state, communities such as ours knew not only poverty and hunger in the Winter of Discontent, but alienation and police persecution.

Ultimately Thatcher and the Conservative government broke our communities. Mine was one of several generations of families tied together through their shared occupations, many facing dangerous conditions, but also through their solidarity, standing together against all of life’s misfortunes. Just as it was dramatised in ‘Billy Elliot’, our culture was one of hard work and routine, but pride, honour and history were also palpably evident and bonded us together. And just as ‘Billy Elliot’ dramatised, under Thatcher these communities were dying. Or rather Thatcher murdered them. Unemployment was followed by degeneration, drugs, dereliction, domestic violence, criminal gangs. Our working class was replaced by an underclass.

With communities like ours broken and often abandoned as families sought opportunities elsewhere, there was a cultural void. And this is something that often is not examined; the role of Thatcherism in promoting ethnic and cultural conflict. Her hardline stance continues to influence frosty Anglo- Argentine relations today, and undoubtedly with her defiant, ‘we do not negotiate with terrorists’, Thatcher entrenched and lengthened the conflict in Northern Ireland. But in our community as we stood on the threshold of despair and destitution, Thatcher’s crushing policies caused many to turn on each other. Some households did erupt into violence, but more notable was those who had to find someone closer to home to blame,  upon whom to project their sense of victimisation. Unable to fight the Conservatives, they needed someone they could see and access to fight. And very often, this meant visible ethnic minorities, like our Pakistani Muslim, Sikh and Hindu neighbours. They were recent additions to our community, but poor and hard working like the rest of us, I like to think we didn’t emphasise differences, that we felt we were all in this together.

That is until competition for jobs and resources, and  a pervading sense of unfairness and oppression would lead some to abandon solidarity. Neo fascism and racism quickly filled the void that Thatcher had created in our now fractured communities. Unable to confront the indifferent and relentless Conservative machinery, we found scapegoats.

But groups such as Sikhs, Pakistani Muslims as well as Afro Caribbean communities did not take the blame and the abuse lying down. I think of the anger behind the Brixton riots and consider it part and parcel of the same protest exercised in our mining community. Brewing in many Muslim communities was also a sense of inequality and disenfranchisement. Combined with outright racism that was both discriminatory on grounds of colour and religion, Pakistani Muslim communities were left out in the cold from British society and hence were vulnerable to militant forces, evident in riots but also extremism. It is no wonder that the anti racist movements of the Thatcher years, not only flourished, and necessarily so, but in many cases took on Trotsky-ite characteristics.

Where, we as a white British working class community fractured and disintegrated, our ethnically and religiously distinctive neighbours turned in on themselves. And both sides began to emphasise our differences. The barriers that were created were much more than between us and them, east vs. west, black vs. white. And it was much more than coolness, ignorance and polarisation that marked the cross community relations. Active violence and hatred sprung up from the scapegoating and stereotyping. I am surprised only that we didn’t succeed in destroying each other in some sort of micro genocide.

Thatcher was quite right. There was no society. Not anymore. She had seen to that.

Thatcher’s policies have a profound effect on where we, as a society today, are in terms of our cross cultural relations. But the effect is much more than on the abstract notions of multiculturalism. The effect is there, lived everyday, by the individuals who are mixed race and of dual heritage and struggling for their very recognition- they embody the legacy of deeply divided communities that still struggle to overcome their polarity. And then there are their parents, the mixed race and mixed faith couples who did find common ground, saw the struggles and cause as universal and the colour and religious lines as fallacious, as red herrings to the greater issues. In dramatic cases they are victims of honour related violence, but many others live lives isolated from either of their communities. Under Thatcher we were deprived of much more than our lunchtime milk and swimming lessons, but of an opportunity to live with each other peacefully, to learn from each other and to build a future together.

When the sociologists and politicians discuss multiculturalism- and few of them dare to consider the more personal, everyday elements of cross cultural relations- I often think of this period of Thatcherism as an apocalypse, where the whole of society, community and culture was broken down. And now we must somehow rise from the rubble and fumble our way forward. So it is with that dramatic image in mind that I wish to offer an alternative set of titles, to Newham’s soundtrack to ‘The Iron Lady’. I do not wish to alter Newham’s pleasing and sometimes fascinating instrumentation, but I think a new set of titles to his scores will more adequately reflect our reality under Thatcher and her legacy of permanently disabled cross cultural relations in this country.

Whether you watch the film or not, I do recommend the soundtrack only with this list as the more apt titles:

1. No Compromise

2. Milk Snatcher

3. Drowning

4. Popular Riots

5. Society Erased

6. Brighton

7. Dirty Wars, Popular Wars

8. In the Land of My Enemy

9. We Do Not Negotiate

10. The Political Prisoner

11. Private Enterprise’

And if classical music isn’t your thing, the one cultural wealth Thatcher did create was a flourishing of protest music, by Billy Bragg, the Clash, Paul Weller, Elvis Costello and many more, whose message of anti establishment and disenfranchisement are still relevant today.

By A.R. Mellor, South Yorkshire

 

Midsomer Murders. A Sophisticated Portrayal of Cross Cultural Relationships

A little over a year ago the acclaimed murder mystery series, Midsomer Murders received negative public attentions. This wasn’t the first time, but it was more serious than when it was discovered that in Russia, the drama looked so convincing, people thought it was a crime documentary and were convinced that the lush county of Midsomer harboured an unusual amount of murderers.

If only the more recent controversy was so culturally humorous. In fact the series came under scrutiny for its entirely White, British characterisation. With no ethnic or religious diversity the drama was said to be a poor and whitewashed representation of British rural society.

But this critique was not entirely warranted. The series has featured episodes with  characters and scenarios of minority ethnic heritage and less well known faiths at the heart of its plots. For instance there have been several episodes where characters are from  Traveller and Gypsy communities and the plot has centred on the serious cultural tensions between them and ‘locals’. As well, numerous episodes featured spiritualist, evangelical Anglicans, and modern day Puritan sects, as well as Pagans and Wiccans and more. Even ‘White’ characters are not always British; there have been Russians and South Africans living in Midsomer, to name just a few of the other nationalities present. Let’s not forget that Barnaby’s DI, Ben Jones, played by Jason Hughes, is Welsh and his first Sergeant, Gavin Troy was from the East End of London, replete with its own distinctive culture and dialect as well as being a melting pot of ethnicities and religions. And then there are other issues of diversity. In at least two episodes main characters have been homosexual and the majority of plots include a complex conflict dynamic between classes in some form or another.

But last week’s episode of Midsomer Murders truly brought the series to maturity for its sociological insights about cross cultural relations.  ‘Written in the Stars’, is the fourth episode of the fifteenth series. As Midsomer Stanton’s Astrological Society gathers on Moonstone Ridge to witness an eclipse, a man is murdered. And he has not been the first.

Barnaby and Jones attend the scene to begin to unravel an unwieldy web of relationships, both overt and illicit, and to sift lies from alibis, red herrings from facts.

Murder victims, Jeremy Harper was an apt portrayal of a proud and leading light of the village’s heritage. Accompanying him to the ridge on the night of the eclipse were his motley crew of colleagues from the Astronomical Society; the unemployed and alcoholic George, the gay extra terrestial buff, Peter, and academic prodigy Gogan Dhutta.

Also at the scene are Harper’s nemesis, the astute and avaricious  Dr. Lawrence Janson and Gagan Dhutta’s academic supervisor- and lover, Dr. Adrian Sharp.

The Dhutta’s are a tragically small family. Gogan Dhutta, played by Soraya Radford is the only child of chemist, Harmendra ‘Harry’ Dhutta played by Ace Bhatti. All credit to writer Steve Trafford for taking the bold step of placing Harry Dhutta’s character as a middle class professional, a chemist, rather than bowing to a stereotype and making him the owner of the local Indian takeaway. But Harry is also a man who struggles with a conflict within his heart and soul, a respected professional, he is also deeply spiritual and leads the local yoga classes. He tries to adhere to this spirituality, but as we discover, he is a passionate man. A man with a passion for a married woman, who is in fact the widow of murder victim Jeremy, Catrina Harper.

Harry’s daughter, Gogan Dhutta is his child by his first marriage to Mary. Mary, was also the late sister of Harry’s current amour, Catrina and had been murdered on Moonstone Ridge some fifteen years previously in mysterious and unresolved circumstances. That left Harry to raise his intelligent daughter and somehow reconcile nurture with protection, inspiring feminine empowerment with wisdom.

And Gogan Dhutta, at 21 years of age and of dual heritage, is both wise and precocious. Her full name, Gagandipika is Hindi for Lamp of the Heavens, and how appropriate for as a mathematical prodigy she is on the verge of an exquisitely important astronomical discovery- one that, in Midsomer Stanton’s cauldron of intrigue, could also endanger her life.

To add to the red herrings and false suspects the plot is wound tightly around a complex interplay of astrological predictions, cover ups, industrial espionage and intellectual theft, corporate corruptions plus discoveries of secret relationships and passionate affairs. Within this plot the issues of spirituality and mixed race relationships, as well as cultural stereotypes are deftly explored in a way that accords a certain humanity and dignity to all characters. All of Midsomer Murders characters are full of depth and surprises; stereotypes are always rapidly debunked by quick detective work, intuition and life experience. Suffice to say, this episode is no crude tokenism. Harry and daughter are much more than British Asians trying to make a living, their combined spirituality, intellect and embeddeness in village life attest to this. And the plot gives credit to the audience by never pandering to an idea that racism and distaste of mixed relationships could be behind any suspicions or motivations for murder. GOLDENROOM welcomes  the rich, subtle and truly life like portrayal of Britain’s diversity throughout the whole of the Midsomer Murder series- at least in the characterisation, and thankfully not the murder plots themselves!