Daily Mail, January 20 2003

A Taliban soldier who fought the British and Americans in Afghanistan has been granted asylum here because he says he fears persecution from the new western- backed government in Kabul.

Excuse me? Let’s just get our heads round this one. Britain helped get rid of a despotic, terrorist Afghan regime that persecuted its people and deprived them of their human rights. Yet we are now granting asylum to one of that regime’s soldiers who fled when we helped liberate the country.

Whatever next? Asylum for Osama bin Laden? This is surely more like lunatic asylum. Any claim to coherent principle has imploded into the surrealistic chaos of a system out of control.

Now, in a move as shifty as it is futile, the Home Secretary David Blunkett has commissioned 20 property firms to buy up country mansions and former hotels to house asylum-seekers. Not only is this a dodge to get round the planning laws, but since these hostels won’t even be secure it is not going to prevent the majority of asylum-seekers simply melting away into the population.

And it won’t stop them from overloading our buckling public services. In Staffordshire, a GP has now been forced to expel more than 30 patients from his list -- including an 88 year-old woman -- because of intolerable pressure from asylum seekers.

This crisis has arisen because Britain seems to have lost the ability to think straight – with the result that its citizens have now been put in danger. All the terrorist suspects in the fatal stabbing of DC Stephen Oake – and no fewer than 10 out of 14 Algerians detained as terrorist suspects in the last month – are asylum-seekers. The British seem to be no longer capable of grasping the difference between those who merit and those who abuse asylum.

Indeed, the very idea that such distinctions should be drawn brings on a fit of the vapours and the claim that asylum-seekers are being ‘demonised’. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has said he is ‘extremely concerned’ about the links being made between terrorists and asylum-seekers. And Mr Blunkett has fended off calls for more effective action by saying he is not prepared to denounce all asylum-seekers and immigrants.

But the fact remains that the government has lost control of its borders. As the Home Office itself has said, Britain has mislaid hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.

The vast majority of asylum-seekers are not genuine refugees; and of the 100,000 who arrive every year, no fewer than 60,000 are here illegally. Yet only about 12,000 are sent home, and the reminder abscond.

Of course, most asylum seekers are not terrorists. But the asylum shambles is the sea in which terror most easily swims. With the threat of terrorism so acute, it is obviously imperative to know the bone fides and whereabouts of everyone coming into the country. But for years, the government hasn’t had a clue.

The chairman of the Algerian Refugee Council has said hundreds of Algerian terrorists have been let in. Is he too a ‘demoniser’? Intelligence sources say that the worst difficulty they face is that the asylum system has turned into mass immigration without control or proper information.

And the problem is not just confined to terrorism. We know the influx has also imported drugs, firearms and child prostitution. To refuse to act effectively on the grounds that this ‘demonises’ all immigrants is an attitude of such terminal immaturity that any politicians who espouse it deserve to be deprived of office for that alone.

Mr Blunkett says radical measures would cost too much. What kind of a response is that if we are truly in what was described by the Prime Minister as a ‘uniquely difficult and dangerous’ year of ‘big challenges requiring big decisions’?

Radical measures are now urgently needed. The root of the crisis is the way in which European and British judges have effectively extended both the European Convention on Human Rights and the 1951 UN refugee convention.

In a pamphlet published by the think-tank Politeia, Martin Howe QC has argued that a key judgment by the European Court of Human Rights in 1989 extended the Convention’s prohibition of torture or degrading treatment to preventing removals to any country where ill-treatment might be practised. This made it impossible to deport terrorists, since they could always argue they would face ill-treatment if they are returned.

The second problem is that English courts have interpreted the UN refugee convention far more broadly than other countries. France and Germany, for example, say genuine refugees can only be persecuted by the state, whereas English judges say attack by terrorists or rebel groups also constitutes persecution.

As one Law Lord remarked, this grossly distorted British asylum policy. The result was that Britain became a magnet for asylum seekers.

But if the problem was largely created by English and European judges, the fault must lie with the politicians who have allowed this to happen.

So what should be done? The first priority must be to deter asylum-abusers from coming here. Most asylum-seekers arrive with no identity documents, and many deliberately destroy them. As the think-tank Migrationwatch has argued, those who arrive without proper papers should be locked up. This would send a powerful corrective signal to those who currently identify Britain as an easy target.

Next, Britain should withdraw from the UN refugee convention. This does not mean shutting our doors to genuine refugees. It means that rather than being trapped by an outdated convention that has been hijacked by the judiciary, Parliament should instead write its own asylum law, restricting refugee status to circumstances which most people would accept were a legitimate definition of persecution.

Finally, as Martin Howe suggests, Britain should remove from its human rights legislation all those measures which are preventing it from safeguarding its citizens. This would mean first withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights; then passing a law to allow us to exclude terrorists and other undesirables – in accordance with the actual words of the UN refugee convention; and then re-joining the ECHR, entering a reservation in accordance with this new domestic law.

It is not only possible for a country to join the ECHR on its own terms; it has been done. Other countries such as France entered a number of reservations when they joined it, because of their keen understanding of the need to protect their own interests. Britain by contrast --whether through naivety or arrogance -- entered not one such reservation when it joined. Isn’t it high time to start protecting our own interests, just as other countries do?

The government has a moral duty to genuine refugees. But its primary duty is to keep its citizens safe. If it fails to do so, the real danger to refugees and other immigrants will be from an enraged public that feels unsafe and turns on them in fear, fury and frustration.

Yesterday, Mr Blunkett said testily he was willing to consider any practical suggestions for resolving the asylum problem. Well, here they are. How about it, Home Secretary?

Posted by admin at January 20, 2003