In the Guardian, Inayat Bunglawala addresses the recent decision by a British asylum and immigration tribunal to allow Geert Wilders, an extremist Dutch politician facing trial in the Netherlands for discrimination and inciting hatred, to enter the UK:
Tomorrow’s planned visit to the UK by the far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders follows an appeal that overturned a banning order issued by then home secretary Jacqui Smith earlier this year. It marks a humiliating defeat for the Home Office, who had defended their ban saying that Wilders’s presence in the UK would not be “conducive to the public good”. By contrast, the asylum and immigration tribunal who heard Wilders’s appeal ruled that it was more important to protect freedom of speech and said that there was no evidence that a previous visit to the UK by Wilders had caused problems.
Wilders is without question a rabble-rouser—he has provocatively referred to the Qur’an as a “fascist book” and likened it to Hitler’s Mein Kampf—but surely it makes more sense to allow him in to the UK while making clear that he will be prosecuted if he breaks any of our laws.
Read the full article here.