The Home Office and secretary of state have plumbed new depths with the decision to exclude Siyabonga Twala from the country, leaving him in limbo in Turkey (Suella Braverman refuses plea of man barred from UK to be reunited with son, 23 July).
The law used to bar Siyabonga was designed to block dangerous criminals from entering the UK. To deploy it against a person who has a spent conviction for a minor crime, who had not offended before or since, who grew up in the UK, raised a family in this country, had a job and a home, needs to be called out for what it is: institutional racism. Compare this with the many stories of middle-class or celebrity drug-taking that we see on a regular basis.
The 1999 Macpherson report described institutional racism as: “The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping…”
The Windrush generation is still being criminalised and victimised by the Home Office. Compensation for the state-sponsored miscarriage of justice is still not flowing. Victims have died before their claims have been settled. Yet the home secretary has found time to intervene to leave a nine-year-old boy without his father.
Dr Wanda Wyporska
CEO, Black Equity Organisation
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