Farage didn’t seem too concerned about potential human rights abuses
It was pointed out to Nigel Farage at his press conference this morning that his draconian mass deportation plan could result in returned asylum seekers being tortured or killed.
Farage has set out a plan to detain and deport hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers if his party gets elected in 2029.
At the press conference, Paul McNamara from Channel 4, said to Farage: “There is a realistic possibility that if you go forward with this, there might be a case where someone arrives in the UK by small boat, you send them back to the country from which they came, and they will be tortured or killed because of a decision you’ve made.”
He asked: “How does that sit with you?”.
Farage failed to answer the question about risks to asylum seekers’ lives, and instead replied: “Well the alternative, of course, is to do nothing”.
“That’s the very clear alternative, we just do nothing,” Farage repeated, adding: “We just allow this problem to magnify and grow.”
Farage then claimed that if people who arrive on small boats aren’t deported, it will lead to civil disorder. He added: “And I don’t want this to happen so we can prevent civil disorder from happening, but that is the direction this country is going in.”
Ironically, Farage has been one of the main right-wing figures encouraging far-right activists to protest outside migrant hotels.
The Reform leader added: “We cannot be responsible for all the sins around the world.”
In his speech today, the Reform leader said his party would rip up international human rights agreements, by leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, the Refugee Convention and the UN Convention against Torture, and repealing the 1998 Human Rights Act.
The removal of these human rights laws would weaken protections both for UK citizens and asylum seekers.
Asked by the BBC’s Ben Wright whether the possibility of thousands of asylum seekers facing imprisonment, torture or death if they were returned to their home countries “bother[s] him at all”, he claimed it does bother him.
However, he added: “What really bothers me is what is happening to British citizens, what really bothers me and you’ve seen this from the Bell Hotel onwards, is the growing concern with justifiable evidence that women and girls are far less safe on the streets than they were before all this began.”
It has been pointed out that Farage didn’t raise the issue of women’s safety before more people started arriving in the UK on small boats.
In 2015, before small boats started arriving, 103,614 sexual offences were recorded in one year, with almost 35,000 reports of rapes, 68,000 reports of other sexual offences. Yet Farage wasn’t talking about women’s safety back then.
Kolbassia Haoussou, director of survivor leadership at Freedom from Torture, has reacted to Reform saying it would leave the 1951 Refugee Contention and the UN Convention Against Torture.
Haoussou said: “The UN Convention Against Torture is a promise to defend our shared right to live a life free from torture. For centuries, the UK has been a leading voice against torture, helping to shape the very international laws that Reform proposes we destroy.
“These laws were created in the aftermath of the second world war to protect us all. If Britain were to abandon this legacy it would hand repressive regimes around the world a gift and undermine one of humanity’s clearest moral lines. We must not stay silent.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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