newfhouse
pleb
Someone bring me the smelling salts please. Rees Mogg is not absolutely right to agree with this but for once he’s not completely wrong either.
View: https://twitter.com/jacob_rees_mogg/status/1613823611856474112?s=61&t=pkU7y99CvduW6zBeJS_0Sw
COMMENT
JUDITH WOODS12 January 2023 • 5:00pm
Shamima Begum is living in limbo at the al-Roj camp in northern Syria CREDIT: Sam Tarling
We need to talk about Shamima. Much as most of us would like to forget the existence of the east London schoolgirl, a new 10-part BBC podcast, The Shamima Begum Story, has reminded us that she is still alive, still our problem, still engaged in a legal appeal to win back her citizenship.
Indignation directed at the BBC for having the temerity to give the now 23-year-old so much air time is a deliberate misdirection.
The Tory MP for East Worthing and Shoreham, Tim Loughton, a former children’s minister, has stated that it’s not clear why Begum joined Islamic State as a teenager and remains sceptical about “what forces brainwashed her”.
“I think most people will say that, frankly, we owe her nothing,” he fulminated. “She got herself into this mess and, frankly, it’s down to her to work out how she’s going to get out of it.” But the truth is, she can’t. She has been rendered stateless and to suggest she has options is fatuous.
Begum lives in limbo at the al-Roj camp in northern Syria, run by the Syrian Democratic Forces, which she describes on the podcast as “worse than prison” because there is no release date in sight.
But regardless of what she did, regardless of the fact that in 2019, she was dramatically stripped of her British citizenship and banned from entering Britain, she remains our moral responsibility.
Begum was 15 when she left this country along with her school friends Kadiza Sultana, 15, and Amira Abase, 16. We’ve all seen the grainy black-and-white CCTV footage taken at the barriers of an Istanbul bus station.
From the podcast, we learn there were “people online telling us and, like, advising us on what to do and what not to do”, with “a long list of detailed instructions”, including what cover story to use if they were caught. The girls were also told to “pack nice clothes so you can dress nicely for your husband”.
From the outset they knew they were destined to marry IS fighters, despite their tender years.
Begum was a good girl – they all were. An A-grade student who went to mosque and obeyed her parents. There was no room for any sort of rebellion in her life – so, instead of staying out late and acting up as teenagers do, she took a wrecking ball to her life. By way of preparation, the prospective Jihadi bride stocked up on sweets. “Mint Aero, mint chocolate, like a lot,” she says on the podcast. “You can find a lot of things in this country, but you cannot find mint chocolate. It’s a tragedy. Tragedy.”
It’s hardly a mature, nevermind an emotionally intelligent, remark in the context of joining a bloodthirsty death cult, and it will doubtless do her legal appeal no good. But the sheer banality of it signals a lack of guile – a troubling failure to grasp the seriousness of her situation. That is surely worth interrogating further.
We know the girls travelled to Turkey and from there crossed the border into Syria, where Shamima was married to 23-year-old Dutch Isis fighter, Yago Riedijk, days after arriving. She spent four years in Syria and had three children by Riedijk, two of whom died of disease or malnutrition. A third, born after her capture by Western-backed forces died of pneumonia.
Both of her British school friends died in the conflict. Riedjik is now being held in a Kurdish-run prison in Syria. According to interviews from 2021, he still believes in the eventual establishment of a Caliphate and would like to resume married life with Begum. For her part, she is hard to gauge. She is self-contained, closed off and displays none of the tears and histrionics we expect – indeed demand – from female victims.
Initially, when she was tracked down by reporters, she wore conservative dress and made no attempt to show remorse, to condemn IS as a terror group, to beg and plead to be allowed to return home, as we felt she should.
Instead she seemed hard, verging on implacable. Four years on, she is in Western dress, hair uncovered, expressing regret.
She says she understands the public see her “as a danger, as a risk, as a potential risk to them, to their safety, to their way of living”, but adds: “I’m not this person that they think I am.”
We’re not the only country grappling with the fallout from the IS regime. France has refused to repatriate suspected foreign fighters from Iraq and Syria, instead leaving it up to Baghdad to prosecute them. Germany conducts its own criminal prosecutions and has a programme in place to deradicalise and reintegrate those who have returned.
Leaving a stateless Shamima Begum to live out her days in a refugee camp might seem like a fitting punishment but it is a dereliction of duty. She was born in Britain. She was legally a child when she joined IS. She should be prosecuted here, not be subject to trial by the media.
That’s why we need to talk about Shamima. Making an example of her is a spineless copout.
View: https://twitter.com/jacob_rees_mogg/status/1613823611856474112?s=61&t=pkU7y99CvduW6zBeJS_0Sw
COMMENT
Making an example of Shamima Begum is a spineless copout
Leaving her to live out her days in a refugee camp might seem like a fitting punishment, but it is a dereliction of our moral dutyJUDITH WOODS12 January 2023 • 5:00pm
Shamima Begum is living in limbo at the al-Roj camp in northern Syria CREDIT: Sam Tarling
We need to talk about Shamima. Much as most of us would like to forget the existence of the east London schoolgirl, a new 10-part BBC podcast, The Shamima Begum Story, has reminded us that she is still alive, still our problem, still engaged in a legal appeal to win back her citizenship.
Indignation directed at the BBC for having the temerity to give the now 23-year-old so much air time is a deliberate misdirection.
The Tory MP for East Worthing and Shoreham, Tim Loughton, a former children’s minister, has stated that it’s not clear why Begum joined Islamic State as a teenager and remains sceptical about “what forces brainwashed her”.
“I think most people will say that, frankly, we owe her nothing,” he fulminated. “She got herself into this mess and, frankly, it’s down to her to work out how she’s going to get out of it.” But the truth is, she can’t. She has been rendered stateless and to suggest she has options is fatuous.
Begum lives in limbo at the al-Roj camp in northern Syria, run by the Syrian Democratic Forces, which she describes on the podcast as “worse than prison” because there is no release date in sight.
But regardless of what she did, regardless of the fact that in 2019, she was dramatically stripped of her British citizenship and banned from entering Britain, she remains our moral responsibility.
Begum was 15 when she left this country along with her school friends Kadiza Sultana, 15, and Amira Abase, 16. We’ve all seen the grainy black-and-white CCTV footage taken at the barriers of an Istanbul bus station.
From the podcast, we learn there were “people online telling us and, like, advising us on what to do and what not to do”, with “a long list of detailed instructions”, including what cover story to use if they were caught. The girls were also told to “pack nice clothes so you can dress nicely for your husband”.
From the outset they knew they were destined to marry IS fighters, despite their tender years.
Begum was a good girl – they all were. An A-grade student who went to mosque and obeyed her parents. There was no room for any sort of rebellion in her life – so, instead of staying out late and acting up as teenagers do, she took a wrecking ball to her life. By way of preparation, the prospective Jihadi bride stocked up on sweets. “Mint Aero, mint chocolate, like a lot,” she says on the podcast. “You can find a lot of things in this country, but you cannot find mint chocolate. It’s a tragedy. Tragedy.”
It’s hardly a mature, nevermind an emotionally intelligent, remark in the context of joining a bloodthirsty death cult, and it will doubtless do her legal appeal no good. But the sheer banality of it signals a lack of guile – a troubling failure to grasp the seriousness of her situation. That is surely worth interrogating further.
We know the girls travelled to Turkey and from there crossed the border into Syria, where Shamima was married to 23-year-old Dutch Isis fighter, Yago Riedijk, days after arriving. She spent four years in Syria and had three children by Riedijk, two of whom died of disease or malnutrition. A third, born after her capture by Western-backed forces died of pneumonia.
Both of her British school friends died in the conflict. Riedjik is now being held in a Kurdish-run prison in Syria. According to interviews from 2021, he still believes in the eventual establishment of a Caliphate and would like to resume married life with Begum. For her part, she is hard to gauge. She is self-contained, closed off and displays none of the tears and histrionics we expect – indeed demand – from female victims.
Initially, when she was tracked down by reporters, she wore conservative dress and made no attempt to show remorse, to condemn IS as a terror group, to beg and plead to be allowed to return home, as we felt she should.
Instead she seemed hard, verging on implacable. Four years on, she is in Western dress, hair uncovered, expressing regret.
She says she understands the public see her “as a danger, as a risk, as a potential risk to them, to their safety, to their way of living”, but adds: “I’m not this person that they think I am.”
We’re not the only country grappling with the fallout from the IS regime. France has refused to repatriate suspected foreign fighters from Iraq and Syria, instead leaving it up to Baghdad to prosecute them. Germany conducts its own criminal prosecutions and has a programme in place to deradicalise and reintegrate those who have returned.
Leaving a stateless Shamima Begum to live out her days in a refugee camp might seem like a fitting punishment but it is a dereliction of duty. She was born in Britain. She was legally a child when she joined IS. She should be prosecuted here, not be subject to trial by the media.
That’s why we need to talk about Shamima. Making an example of her is a spineless copout.
