Britain’s duplicity on human rights

Dear Editor,

The British continue to carry out the illegal practice of involuntary movement of black people to satisfy Britain’s selfish immediate needs.

The present plane transporting Jamaicans for deportation from the UK is a cruel case of double jeopardy. If individuals had committed crime and paid the penalty, why deport them as a second punishment that was not part of the original judgement of the court? But that is not the total picture of Britain’s duplicity on human rights.

The present generation of Jamaicans are the descendants of those who were forcibly abducted from their home in Africa, transported in abominable conditions on British ships to land on foreign soil where they toiled as enslaved people to satisfy Britain’s insatiable financial demands.

Hawkins, Drake, and others were bestowed with British honours for the role they played for Britain’s successes in the slave trade, unmindful of the price paid by the destruction of the humanity of black people for near 400 years of British colonial rule. Will the captain and the flight crew of this plane of shame be similarly rewarded?

When Britain needed help to restore the country that was almost entirely devastated by Nazi Germany, they turned to the Windrush people for help — the descendants of the original abductees from Africa, who are the fathers to the present deportees. Now that these Windrush descendants are not wanted in the UK, they are to be dropped off where Britain left them on the trip from Africa. This is how the Persian poet cynically puts it: Where men are treated like pieces on a checker board of nights and days the British moves and plays, then one by one back in the closet lays.

Britain has never accepted responsibility to compensate the victims of their crime against humanity in the Caribbean, so they repeat the abuse with impunity while we stand around and wait. Who will help us sing the redemption song?

Frank Phipps frank.phipps@yahoo.com