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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   9798 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025

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Shamima Begum is back in the news with news that the European Court of Human Rights are questioning the UK Home Office's decision to remove her citizenship on the basis that she may have been "groomed" and "trafficked" into joining ISIS.

In a document published by the ECHR earlier this month, it states that Ms Begum is challenging the decision to revoke her British citizenship under Article 4 of the European Convention of Human Rights - prohibition of slavery and forced labour.

The four questions posed by judges in Strasbourg to the Home Office, include: "Did the Secretary of State have a positive obligation, by virtue of Article 4 of the Convention, to consider whether the applicant had been a victim of trafficking, and whether any duties or obligations to her flowed from that fact, before deciding to deprive her of her citizenship?"

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said Ms Begum "chose to go and support the violent Islamist extremists".

He added: "She has no place in the UK and our own Supreme Court found that depriving her of citizenship was lawful.

"It is deeply concerning the European Court of Human Rights is now looking at using the ECHR to make the UK take her back."

If the UK is manoeuvered into allowing Begum to return at the the behest of the European courts it will be political suicide for the government, an open goal for the far right, but what gets me is how it will foreseeably be consequently counterproductive for the very demographics that human rights activists seek to defend! It will pour fuel on reactionary sentiment and division. I think that the functional part of Labour understand this, and will be working hard to make sure it doesn't happen, but I worry that the activist section of the back benches will work against them, ignorant (wilfully?) of the prospect of ushering in a Reform government on a swelling tide of rightist sentiment. It's like a moral puritanism that denies the political reality of trade-offs. Sure, there might be a hard right UK government, but it won't be their fault - they stood against it!

Punishing people for taking part in an armed conflict is a war crime. She can be punished for things she has done, she can't be collectively punished for crimes committed by her faction in a war.

Instead of solving the actual problem of mass immigration, we are solving fake problems such as privacy, lack of police state and freedom of speech.

This problem should never have existed and only exists because of bad immigration policy. It can only be fixed through changed immigration policy.

Creating special rules where for certain groups such as terrorists is a slippery slope. The west is slowly recreating Saddam Hussien's Iraq and justifying the policies that will turn us into Iraq with being tough on muslims.

Punishing people for taking part in an armed conflict is a war crime.

Isis are unlawful belligerents and so its members can be prosecuted.

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