Bye, Sweetie!

Don't let the door yp Heathrow hit you on the way out, and good riddance!

A Palestinian student who said she was 'full of pride' after Hamas launched its attack on Israel claims the Home Office has revoked her visa on the grounds of 'national security'.

Dana Abuqamar, 19, a law student at the University of Manchester, attended a pro-Palestine protest just one day after Hamas carried out its October 7 attack. During the demonstration, Ms Abuqamar, president of Manchester Friends of Palestine, was filmed saying she was 'really full of joy' and 'proud that Palestinian resistance has come to this point'.

Excellent news, and very gratifying to see that they don't always drop the ball at the Home Office.  

She has now claimed that the UK Government has 'violated her human rights' by rescinding her student visa on the 'baseless' accusation that she is a 'risk to public safety'. The Home Office told MailOnline it does not comment on individual cases and it remains unclear precisely what revoking the visa means for the teenager's future in Britain.

Hopefully that she doesn't have one.  

In a new video released this week, Ms Abuqamar confirmed she would be appealing the decision and said her remarks in October, which were publicly condemned by policing minister Chris Philp, had been misrepresented. 'My words were taken out of context and they were framed as me supporting harm to innocent civilians, which is completely false and completely untrue,' she told the Middle East Eye.

They didn't need to be 'framed' as anything, it's patently obvious what they were.  

She added: 'It's an outrageous claim that the Home Office is making by deeming me a national security threat. I am a 19-year-old who has done nothing but go to school and advocate for social justice and try and be an asset to my community. 'So saying I pose a threat to national security is a completely baseless claim.'

Whether it is or not, we don't need you here, we don't want you here, so home you go where you can spout racist rhetoric all day long, should you choose.  

But She Did Indeed So Choose….

A colleague supporting Kiguru’s appeal, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of Home Office reprisals with her own visa, said: “They imply Doseline chose to leave her daughter. The hostility of that reasoning, which can only come from a place of racism and misogyny, took my breath away.”

If she didn't choose to do it, who else did it for her?

She first came to Bristol in 2021 as a research associate on a £1.3m EU-funded project on literary activism in Africa. Her field work required her to spend large amounts of time in Kenya, so the family decided it was not necessary to uproot her daughter. However, when she was offered a permanent lecturer position, she committed to starting a new life in the UK with her daughter. Her husband, who is also an academic, cannot look after his daughter because he travels a lot for research, but hopes to move to the UK.

 Sounds like a calculated plan to get the whole family here to me, and perhaps to the Home Office as well.

Madhu Krishnan, a professor of African, world and comparative literatures at Bristol University, said: “The decision to separate a young child from her mother under such spurious grounds is an act of unthinkable cruelty, of which we have sadly become familiar in recent years.” She described Kiguru as a “world-leading scholar” and said her loss would be “strongly felt” if this drove her out of the UK.

I think we could live without a professor of world literature quite well.