By Giorgia Vittorino It has been two years since the Windrush scandal came to public attention in 2018. The scandal, which surfaced during Theresa May’s administration, resulted in hundreds of Caribbean immigrants falling victim to unjust immigration enforcement, with many being detained and deported. Those who had arrived in the UK between 1948 and 1973,…
Category: Current Affairs
Uighur genocide: What, why and how is this happening?
By Polly Pye In an interview with BBC’s Andrew Marr last weekend, the Chinese ambassador to the UK yet again denied any mistreatment of the Uighur population by the Chinese government. Despite being presented with leaked footage of Uighurs, chained, blindfolded and being led onto trains, China’s UK ambassador unconvincingly argued that the footage formed…
How are climate activists still fighting the good fight amidst coronavirus?
By Lucy Robinson Pre-coronavirus, climate activism had been in the midst of a seismic shift. The movement was developing momentum day by day and activists were taking over the world with their offline campaigning and protesting. From over 13,000,000 people marching for Fridays For Future, to Extinction Rebellion shutting down Oxford Circus, climate activism had…
Is Elon Musk turning us into robots?
The news broke this week that tech guru and philanthropist, Elon Musk, has decided to create an innovative brain implant that has the ability to stream music directly into our brains. Musk states that his new Neuralink start-up is in the midst of developing a brain-computer interface that will be inserted directly into the brain like…
Statelessness, forgiveness and a fair trial: Shamima Begum is returning to the UK to fight for her citizenship
Today, the Court of Appeal ruled that Shamima Begum, the London schoolgirl who left the UK to join the Islamic State back in 2015, should be allowed to return to fight for her British citizenship. A threat to the nation, or a reformed woman? In 2019 when Begum attempted to return to the UK the response…
Cultures have celebrated gender nonconformity and non-binary identity for centuries
Today July 14th celebrates International Non-Binary People’s Day, an occasion to raise awareness about and organise around the issues faced by non-binary people around the world. Transphobes across the globe often turn to history to justify their belief that there are two genders. A traumatising onslaught of variations of “not in my day!” often maligns…
The latest on Pornhub’s sex trafficking allegations
Everybody’s favourite porn site? Or is the friendliness just a veneer? Pornhub was created in 2007 and has supposedly allowed illegal and exploitative content to exist on the site ever since. Christian anti-sex trafficking organisation Exodus Cry has created a mass campaign to bring this issue to light. *trigger warning for mentions of rape, sexual…
Trump’s self-imposed brain drain: why immigration bans do not “free up jobs”
By Harriet Habergham It’s an innate sense of self-preservation that makes it easier for humans to blame others rather than themselves when things go awry. Whilst this may assuage temporary feelings of embarrassment, in the long run it changes nothing. Whatever caused the problem remains unchanged. Time and time again, this has been the case…
Glasgow stabbings reveal how the UK fails asylum seekers
By Iona Holmes Just a few weeks ago, reports concerning the appalling conditions that asylum seekers were being subjected to in Glasgow hotels started to trickle through media outlets. When a stabbing occurred at the city’s Park Inn Hotel on the 26th June, the news instantly hit the headlines. Following some initial misreporting, the facts…
Raab vs rights: What is going on with the UK’s new human rights sanctions?
On Monday, our beloved foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, dropped a bombshell of new human rights sanctions comprising of asset freezes and travel bans against human rights abusers in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Myanmar and North Korea. According to Raab, the sanctions will target 25 Russians involved in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, 20 Saudis involved in…