Starmer's bigotry has just come back to haunt him

Right, so problems Keir Starmer manages to cause for himself, not that we have any sympathy for him in that. It’s amazing how often his own actions come back to bite him, his lies getting undone, his promises and pledges made that he goes back on to public ridicule and of course all the abuse he has heaped out both on his own party and it’s membership but also to ethnic minorities in a bid to woo the votes of the right wing and their media mouthpieces. During the election campaign for example there was a certain interview he did with the Murdoch Scum, he does so love writing for that fetid rag, why not do a televised interview too? But the bit most people came away from that remembering was an attack upon Bengali’s, complaining why people from Bangladesh were not being deported despite there being a returns agreement and while he was slammed for his dogwhistle racism and targeting of those people at the time, I certainly gave him short shrift, it seems this is a story that continues even now to evolve, that the biggest crime actually is that there ever was a returns agreement, because events in Bangladesh now not only show Starmer’s foreign policy ignorance, but they’ve come back to bite him on the backside tenfold and leave him in another fine mess all of his own making.
Right, so Bangladesh, the scapegoating of Bengali minorities as a people who have integrated very well into British society over the course of all the decades that have passed since many such families moved here, yet Starmer made a point of targeting them during the General Election campaign as cannon fodder to appease right wingers wanting a clampdown on migration. Only 0.03% of migrants coming here to seek asylum via small boat come from Bangladesh. The assumption widely posited, is that the Labour election campaign figured because many older Bengalis resident in Britain tend not to speak English, yet vote Labour, they could be attacked without losing many votes from them. That didn’t work out well for them.
But that is what has already happened, that is what Starmer has already been attacked for, what is happening now, that this matter has come up again?
Well much like the Rwanda scheme of the Tories was panned on the basis of safety, human rights issues and abuses that happen there, such that Sunak legislated Rwanda as a safe country despite that not really changing a damn thing, Bangladesh is now in much the same way, but this isn’t a recent thing, simply matters coming to a head over there has been. Here’s an excerpt from Amnesty International on the matter, just to illustrate matters:
‘The government intensified its crackdown on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly ahead of general elections scheduled for January 2024. Authorities used the powers in the Digital Security Act and other legislation to target journalists and human rights defenders, subjecting them to arbitrary detention and torture. There was a concerning increase in enforced disappearances and lack of accountability for deaths in custody. Occupational safety remained a distant dream for many workers. Refugees endured homelessness due to a fire in a camp and a cyclone as well as food insecurity. Rations for refugees were restricted due to the UN’s acute funding shortfall. Bangladesh remained extremely vulnerable to impacts of climate change.’
Bangladesh’s Digital Security Act is basically used to eliminate freedom of speech and expression. It’s been used to threaten and silence journalists, critics, human rights campaigners and more through the additional powers the police have through this act.
Peaceful assembly, demonstration, protest, has seen the police arrive and meet them, not only with arrests, but with tear gas, rubber bullets and in fact on one protest on the 18th July last year, live ammunition was used, resulting in one person’s death.
There are other reports from Amnesty on forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, torture, clamping down on workers rights and of course when it comes to that so often broached topic of migrants and refugees, for the last now 7 years, Bangladesh has been home to a million Rohingya refugees, kept in appalling conditions having fled Myanmar.
Bangladesh is not a country in a good state and things have just got a damn sight worse, as things have now spilled over into civil unrest, to the point the Prime Minister of Bangladesh for the last 15 years, Sheikh Hasina, has fled the country.
I suppose in no small way, does this reflect on how damaging it can be for one party and one person in fact to remain in power for so long. But Hasina came to power – for the second time as it happens, she’d already been Prime Minister from 1996-2001 previously - leading her Awami League to victory in 2009 and both the party and her at the helm remained there ever since, until she was forced to flee, her autocratic regime finally falling on the 5th August.
All of the issues Amnesty International have written about, have happened on her watch. The longer she’s been in power, the more violence and corruption surrounding elections, accusation of fraud happened and certainly Amnesty are not the only ones who have commented on all of this, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders have voiced their own concerns too, so it was something of a farce for the Tories this year to arrange a returns policy with Bangladesh, but then, human rights concerns went out of the window with them, it was all about deportations, they had to happen, these people needed to be removed. Not only that, but arms sales to Bangladesh between 2020 and 2023 soared, totalling £270m, weapons used against the Bengali people, after all, in the run up to Sheikh Hasina’s fall, since the middle of last month certainly, students have been shot at, tear gassed and beaten by the police for demanding a fairer system to gain well paid government jobs, with not just students, but teachers, construction workers, journalists, businessmen all killed for choosing to stand against the regime on this. Hasina fleeing by helicopter to India. But now of course they are gone and we have Starmer in charge here in the UK and if you were wondering if I was coming back to him at some point, then wonder no more.
What Starmer said in the election campaign has been covered regarding Bangladesh and Bengali people and certainly I’ve covered all of that in other content, but while Bangladesh now genuinely has a chance to reform and rebuild, which will take time, though there are already good signs of things to come, as one example Middle East Eye have covered the release from prison of a barrister, forcibly disappeared 8 years ago and nobody knew where he was being held. Great news, a lovely positive story, but this civil unrest has put Starmer in quite the spot because of his previous comments and while he might find himself in a bit of a hole over his clear ignorance over the reality of life in Bangladesh under the Hasina regime, all despite being a human rights lawyer himself of course, yet again his qualification on that score becoming highly questionable. But despite being in that hole of his own making, he’s digging it even deeper.
Why are we not deporting Bangladeshi’s he cried during the election, well good luck trying to now. Bangladesh has got rid of a dictator, she’s fled to India, but has no intentions of remaining there, because Hasina has ironically now applied for asylum herself – to come to the UK. What wonderful optics Keir Starmer! You want to send Bengali’s back to Bangladesh and another has applied to come here - their former dictator of a Prime Minister at that! Surely you will say no!
We have Bangladeshi’s in the UK celebrating her downfall as much as they are in Bangladesh and you’d have her come here? Surely not? Have you not damaged relations with Bengali communities enough already? Even the Evening Standard have covered this celebration amongst British Bengalis in no uncertain terms:
‘A large crowd of Bangladeshis gathered across east London to celebrate the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday.
They were seen waving flags or attaching them to car bonnets and holding signs that read: “Killer Hasina and her cabinet must step down”. Other placards had Ms Hasina’s face with a red X drawn across it.’
Will she come here though? There’s some uncertainty about that, the global media are a bit mixed shall we say. We know Hasina and her sister Sheikh Rehana have applied for asylum to the UK, but there’s apparently been no formal answer yet, Starmer is waiting presumably for someone to tell him what to do. I’ll come back to that notion in a moment for one big, fat problematic reason, but other news sources, like Bloomberg and Time of India, are reporting that Hasina is all set to depart for London, so I guess we’ll see how that pans out. If Hasina and her sister do get granted asylum, the hypocrisy of Starmer’s words regarding Bangladeshi’s, him singling them out and why they aren’t being sent back will come crashing down on him as it deserves to, because he weaponised those people for no better reason than seeking right wing votes, he used these people for electoral cannon fodder, and we’ve riots happening in no small part because of that and similar rhetoric from an array of politicians and political parties. But there is another reason why this matter is uniquely painful for Starmer and why it could provoke splits in his own party now as well.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy has said there needs to be a UN led investigation into the protests, which would obviously be a source of embarrassment for Starmer champing at the bit to send people back there, but also imagine if he says no to Hasina, yet lets her younger sister Rehana in, because she holds British citizenship? That won’t be well known, but further to Starmer’s problems is the fact that Rehana’s daughter, just happens to be the Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, as well as the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Tulip Siddiq. Will he bar her mum, do a Shamima Begum to her and strip her British citizenship from her to keep Hasina out and stick by his rhetoric against Bangladeshi’s in spite of mountains of evidence that it is an unsafe country and will likely remain so for some time as it recovers? Or will he instead admit Siddiq’s mother and dictator of an aunt and keep his MP happy while exposing his own racist hypocrisy? It’s lose-lost and Starmer only has himself to blame.
Signs of change are coming already in Bangladesh it seems though, that recovery potentially beginning in earnest as many in the country rally behind Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for pioneering a form of small loan for poor people, lifting them out of poverty, to lead an interim government. That Hasina referred to him as a bloodsucker speaks volumes.
Meanwhile, for more on Starmer’s cynical weaponisation of racism to win votes where it comes to Bangladesh, or if you were unaware of Starmer’s rhetoric on this matter check this video recommendation out for more details and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.