It looks like the UK government is now effectively collaborating with death squads in Basra: set ‘em up, knock ‘em back and leave Moqtada’s boys to deliver the coup de grace:
More than half the Iraqi interpreters who applied to come to live in Britain have had their applications rejected, drawing accusations that the Government is “wriggling out” of its promise to help former Iraqi employees.…Safa, 28, one of the rejected interpreters who worked for the British for more than two years, received a letter from the Locally Employed Staff Assistance Office in Basra which said: “We have considered your case very carefully but we are sorry to inform you that, because your service with the British Forces was terminated for absence, you do not meet the minimum employment criteria for this scheme.”
Safa told The Times that he had never resigned but had been forced to stop working after receiving two bullets and a written death threat at his house in Basra in April.
Dan H adds:
His case could quite easily be verified by ringing round the Army officers with whom he says he served, and checking his story. There is no indication that the Government has done this, and now his case is in the bin.I can tell you about another of the bureaucratic obstacles being put in the way of at-risk former Employees. I’ve been forwarded a copy of the standard reply sent to all ex-employees asking for help. I’ll reproduce it in full later. It says, among other things, that ex-Employees applying for asylum may have to wait until 2009.
It’s supposed to be part of the bureaucratic art to be able to determine the wishes of your political masters without them being made explicit. And if the percentage of people failing the criteria for admission to the UK is that high and the whole process takes that long, it follows that these criteria were designed with failure in mind. At least we know now why the government didn’t make actually being in danger of assassination the sole grounds for asylum, even though this obviously comes under the heading of “having a well founded fear of persecution.”
I mean, what the fuck is going on here? Extracting Iraqi employees from Basra is the right thing to do, it’s a simple thing to do, it’s a cheap thing to do and it’s a popular thing to do. All the bases are covered. Maybe they're paralyzed with shame or something. Perhaps they want to bury their mistakes, or at least have them left by the side of the road with a couple to the back of the head. Does the boy Miliband think that he’ll only be taken seriously as a minister if he pulls off some kind of depraved bureaucratic chicanery?
What this also means that everyone who took part in the campaign – who publicized it or signed the petition or wrote to their MP – has been forced into complicity with a scheme designed to give people in fear of their lives false hope: a kind of mock execution in reverse. Unless, that is, we do the same again and start rolling the rock up the hill once more. In particular, it’s a good opportunity to ask your MP to sign Lynne Featherstone’s updated EDM 401. Once more into the breach…
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