On 26 February 2021 the Supreme Court delivered a unanimous judgement denying Shamima Begum entry to Britain for the purpose of appealing against the government’s decision to strip her of her British citizenship. This affirms the racist decision made in February 2019 by then Home Secretary Sajid Javid to leave Begum stateless.
In 2015, aged 15, Shamima Begum, along with two others, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, left London, where she had been born and brought up, to join the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). That Begum, Abase and Sultana were reportedly helped on their way into Syria from Turkey by an individual related to Canadian intelligence has gone unreported and uninvestigated by British media.
ISIL’s crimes are many and horrendous but they cannot be understood in isolation from the many and horrendous crimes of imperialism over the centuries in the Middle East. And, as we wrote in 2019*, Begum has been neither convicted of nor charged with any crime in any country. Even had she been convicted, as a British citizen she would have been entitled to state protection and the choice to serve her sentence in British gaols near her family.
In its decision, the Supreme Court affirmed the right of the Home Secretary to make decisions on ‘national security’ and the need for the courts to be provided with ‘overwhelming evidence’ to consider making a decision to the contrary. The Supreme Court overturned an earlier Court of Appeal case, saying that the judges in that case ‘mistakenly believed that, when an individual’s right to have a fair hearing of an appeal came into conflict with the requirements of national security, her right to a fair hearing must prevail…’
At present, Begum cannot even contact her lawyers from the Syrian refugee camp where she is located, so there is no possibility of her mounting any kind of legal challenge to the decision to make her stateless. The Supreme Court judgement does not refute that Begum is not in a position to make any type of fair or effective appeal at present, but decrees that she must now wait until she is in a safer place in order to challenge her statelessness. This is despite the fact that there is no imminent likelihood of any change to her current circumstances, so the decision effectively stands unchallenged.
This decision cannot be separated from the current attacks by Home Secretary Priti Patel on migrants and refugees; the climate of hatred which is engendered necessarily affects all racialised minorities in Britain. It will legitimate further state repression and surveillance of predominantly Muslim groups under the guise of preventing extremism, and in turn will result in greater hostility against these same groups, including the threat of violence from the far right. No opposition to any of this can be expected from the Labour Party, which in government introduced the legal framework which allows individuals to be stripped of their citizenship in this way. Asked about the Supreme Court ruling on the Ridge on Sunday programme on SkyNews, Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds said: ‘We respect that judgement. We respect the rule of law.’
The Supreme Court ruling underlines once again the truth of our conclusion in 2019, following the initial decision: ‘The decision to remove Shamima Begum’s citizenship is a further declaration that for the racist British government some citizens are more equal than others, and that black and brown people whose families came to Britain from former colonies cannot rely on their status being the same as that of white citizens.’
Despine Dohman
*British citizenship rights attacked by racist government
https://www.revolutionarycommunist.org/britain/fight-racism/5510-british-citizenship-rights-attacked-by-racist-government
