UK Home Office revokes visa of Palestinian student after protest speech ( www.middleeasteye.net )

The UK government has revoked the student visa of a Palestinian student who lost relatives in Gaza after she spoke at a demonstration at the University of Manchester.

Dana Abuqamar, a law student who heads the Friends of Palestine Society at the University of Manchester, said the UK government revoked her visa on “national security” grounds, after claiming she was a risk to public safety.

“The claim they are making is baseless and violates my rights as a resident here in the UK. My legal team has lodged a human rights appeal against this decision to revoke my student visa in my last and final year as a law student,” Abuqamar said, speaking to Al Jazeera English, confirming that her visa had been revoked.

Last year, Abuqamar revealed that she had lost at least 15 relatives in Gaza after the Israeli army bombed a three-storey building in the besieged enclave.

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

This from the "Free Speech" party.

The GE couldn't come sooner.

phoneymouse ,

UK sucks

ReallyKinda ,

But in a response to her visa application, the Home Office told Ashkar that it had been denied on the grounds that granting it would "harm the public interest", without giving any further reasons or explanation.

saltesc ,

Last year, Abuqamar faced criticism for comments she made at a pro-Palestine rally where she said, "We are full of pride, we are really, full of joy at what has happened”, following the 7 October Hamas-led attacks on Israel.

protist ,

Yeah imma need to see the words in the speech surrounding that sentence before I can draw any conclusions. That could be taken wildly out of context for all we're presented with here.

Even in a worst case scenario, why now and not last year?

saltesc ,

They've been in the news quite a few times, the quoted portion mentioned being the most infamous event so far. And governments like the UK generally don't do things that could be very easily defeated in a civil court.

Lemmy's extreme-left news posts are often as bad at telling the truth as Reddit's extreme-right ones. Propaganda comes in all flavours, so if something doesn't make sense, it probably is hiding some truth.

protist ,

They've been in the news quite a few times, the quoted portion mentioned being the most infamous event so far.

Source for the context that's missing here?

And governments like the UK generally don't do things that could be very easily defeated in a civil court.

I don't agree with that at all. The Tories have been running roughshod over precedent left and right and spinning up all sorts of legal battles

Lemmy's extreme-left news posts are often as bad at telling the truth as Reddit's extreme-right ones.

I don't get how you're relating this to this news story

saltesc ,

Can you please Google these questions for yourself? It seems a lot to ask of others, and on yourself to type up such a lengthy comment when you could just paste their name into a search engine and hit Enter.

ickplant ,
@ickplant@lemmy.world avatar

I googled it and found nothing. Can you provide a source for your claim? I’m not saying you are wrong but you claim it’s super easy to find, and it’s not.

saltesc ,

Really? I see pages of articles directly about her, things related to her, and even petitions for and against her.

That's a shame. Maybe better luck next time.

clara ,

ok, here's the context. (click here)

the source of this file, regrettably, is the daily mail. broken clocks and all that. i will link the "article" that the video file was from, but you will need a hazmat suit going in, for both the cookies/trackers and low quality writing

here's that source now. (click here)

for posters below saying they couldn't find this, i understand it. we all get different search results, it's possible you all got hugboxed and were unable to find the clip as a result

also, i don't care to discuss the topic, i only wanted to link the source, because you were all struggling with it. i like finding sources :)

have a nice day 🥰

juicy ,

So she expressed an ugly emotion. Is the UK going after people who celebrate Israel's war crimes against the Palestinians? A US politician called for Gaza to be nuked. It's reprehensible, but free speech gives him the right to say stupid and even evil things with out fear of government persecution. There is a mutual hatred between many Israelis and Palestinians, but the hammer only comes down when Palestinians give voice to that hatred. Israelis and their partisans say whatever they want without consequence. And good. Free speech. But get rid of the double standard.

InformalTrifle ,

Free speech is not without limits in the U.K.

I think someone supporting terrorist atrocities is lucky to get away with just losing a visa.

theacharnian ,
@theacharnian@lemmy.ca avatar

Don't be silly, nobody is taking away UK government officials' visas.

InformalTrifle ,

I see what you did there, good one.
But I meant these ones, these acts she’s celebrating: https://thisishamas.com

And they are rightfully designated a terrorist organisation in the U.K.

Linkerbaan OP , (edited )
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

Except if you advocate for literal Genocide that's fine of course. In fact you can give weapons to the people committing Genocide.

You can walk around with Genocidal I <3 israel banners proudly advocating for Nazism.

Only the people resisting cannot be advocated for.

InformalTrifle ,

There’s no genocide

InformalTrifle ,

Important context. Good riddance

echodot ,

That's a fairly standard response from the home office when they don't want to do something.

It's amazing they can tell it's against the public interest, because a cursory glance at the polling numbers would seem to suggest the opposite. They must be very smart.

z9t377ankd ,

Pic looks like shes not walking with very polite people

Psychodelic ,

Bad bait

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