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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Article on Shamima Begum

87 replies

ArabellaScott · 05/06/2021 17:02

Interesting read in the Times.

Discussing culpability, rehabilitation and empathy, via a creative writing workshop run in the camp Shamima Begum is held in.The workshop was run by a Kurdish woman:

' The 29-year-old activist is a member of the Kurdish Women’s Movement, whose revolutionary ideology espouses the necessity of emancipating women as a way of recalibrating society. From this perspective, Evdike regarded the internees as being in need of her help, as victims of an extremist patriarchal society that had allowed women little personal choice, confining them to the roles of housewives and child breeders.

Yet Evdike was also revolted by her own experiences of the war with Isis.'

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/d7c55aca-c2e7-11eb-a26e-4c086490cfe1?shareToken=ae4b283c36582267ebd13481836e279e

OP posts:
RoseRedRoseBlue · 06/06/2021 19:45

Plus that would mean legally recognising the ‘marriage’. It’s 100% our situation to resolve. It’s pretty off that anyone would disagree.

KimikosNightmare · 07/06/2021 00:08

@RoseRedRoseBlue

Plus that would mean legally recognising the ‘marriage’. It’s 100% our situation to resolve. It’s pretty off that anyone would disagree.
The UK is far from being the only country who doesn't want ISIS fighters back. The Netherlands has washed its hands of her husband.

France has handed over French citizens to be tried in Iraq where if this report is correct, 11 French citizens have been executed.

foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/15/how-europe-is-handing-off-its-isis-militants-to-iraq/

Those of you who think she should be repatriated will be bemused I expect to find yourselves in agreement with Donald Trump. It's not specific to Begum but he thinks European countries should repatriate their citizens.

www.npr.org/2019/12/10/783369673/europe-remains-reluctant-to-repatriate-its-isis-fighters-here-s-why

This explains some of the reasons why countries are reluctant to repatriate these people- clearly on the one hand they are traitors and terrorists but on the other hand the judicial systems of the countries they were happy to betray protects them because of the difficulties of producing evidence which would satisfy a court in Europe.
eeradicalization.com/why-european-countries-do-not-repatriate-their-foreign-fighters/

KimikosNightmare · 07/06/2021 00:12

So far as it being "100% our situation to resolve" I'm afraid the plight of Begum wouldn't make it on to my personal top 1,000 injustices I want something done about.

RoseRedRoseBlue · 07/06/2021 01:14

That’s fair enough, I don’t have to agree with your opinion to respect it. Two main points though - firstly, we have already taken 100’s of (male) fighters back, we just don’t hear about it as the media choose not to emphasis it and secondly, my motivation for having her back is more to do with national security than pity.

Tibtom · 07/06/2021 07:21

I think her suppprters and advisors made a mistake in making repatriation efforts public. Sometimes this can help but in this case it has done the opposite - it has meant the government has felt obliged to use her as an example of how if you become a traitor you cannot just return to pick up your life if things don't work out how you want or carry on your traitorous activities within the uk.

Floisme · 07/06/2021 08:55

Begum's husband is several years older than she is so I assume he was an adult when he
made his decision. Had Begum also been an adult when she left Britain I wouldn't feel the same sense of responsibility - not sympathy - towards her. But she was 15: not old enough to legally leave school, marry or join the armed forces. If you're not old enough to fight for your country then I don't think you're old enough to betray it either.

CrumpetyTea · 07/06/2021 09:03

Even if she had been an adult and even if she had been a male fighter I still think she is british - good or bad - i don't think citizenship (by birth) is something you should be able to lose.

ExitChasedByABee · 07/06/2021 12:07

@CrumpetyTea I think it was supposed to be a deterrent, but it’s definitely a slippery slope and just shows to ethnic minorities that they’re not on an equal footing because they have “somewhere else they can go” based on their heritage and in Shamima’s case that’s Bangladesh.

Lysistratathereindeer · 07/06/2021 12:10

She does not have any other citizenship though: her father might be Bangladeshi but she is not. By stripping someone of citizenship with the excuse that they have the "potential" for citizenship elsewhere, you're essentially creating two classes of people, those descended from immigrants and those with all four grandparents born in the UK.

Look at Jack Letts: even though he's always had Canadian citizenship, it took much longer for his British citizenship to be removed. And look at his parents: they were both convicted of funding terrorism, but his Canadian father is still living in the UK with no threat of deportation. Why?

ExitChasedByABee · 07/06/2021 13:21

@Xenia Is she really a citizen of Bangladesh? Or did she choose to become one after being stripped of her British citizenship?

According to this, you don’t automatically get dual citizenship.

What you shared was actually interesting to read. Also if you had read what you just shared:

It shared the court judgement, but then goes on to say:

This was despite the court accepting that conditions in the Al Roj camp would amount to a breach of her right to protection against torture, inhuman or degrading treatment — if she could rely directly on the European Convention on Human Rights, which she cannot. Ms Begum’s solicitor, Daniel Furner of Birnberg Peirce, said that “the logic of the decision will appear baffling, accepting as it does the key underlying factual assessments of extreme danger and extreme unfairness and yet declining to provide any legal remedy”.

It also says:

Was Shamima Begum left stateless?

This is an important question because someone who is British from birth cannot be deprived of their citizenship if they would be left stateless: section 40(4) of the British Nationality Act 1981. In effect, that means that citizenship deprivation can only be deployed against the children of immigrant parents. Those who have inherited another nationality from their parents have less protection against deprivation.

The government argued that Ms Begum, who was born in the UK to Bangladeshi parents, is a citizen of Bangladesh. Proving that is a matter of Bangladeshi nationality law, a hopelessly complicated field. Each side produced an expert witness with opposing takes on how Bangladeshi citizenship is transmitted to children of Bangladeshi heritage born outside the country’s borders.

ExitChasedByABee · 07/06/2021 13:27

Also, @Xenia I must thank you for those two links that you shared. I’m still skim-reading the article in the second link, but I don’t think it supports what you think it does:

Such heightened political discourse as to who is or is not deemed a threat to national security deepened the formation of a two-tier citizenship system (Macklin 2015; Trimbach and Reiz 2018). Intensifying this system in the name of securitization established a method to legally alienate citizens: citizenship revocation (Dobrowolsky 2007; Macklin 2014; Zedner 2016). Practising citizenship revocation under the guise of national security was comprehensively pioneered by the United States following 9/11 through changes in legislation,6 and Britain quickly followed suit.

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