Edinburgh Refugees, LGBTQ+ Activists, and Students Protest Home Secretary’s “Border Hardening” Rhetoric

A crowd made up of refugees, LGBTQ+ activists, students, and concerned citizens, gathered in solidarity at the UK Government Building in Edinburgh on Wednesday to protest Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s recent call to reform the UN Refugee Convention.

“Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades,” Braverman told an exclusive audience at a right-wing think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, in Washington D.C. on September 26th. She questioned whether the UN Refugee Convention was “fit for our modern age.”

Protesters suggested that both Braverman’s recent speech, and general rhetoric, is an attempt to fearmonger and deflect attention away from the mistakes the Tory government has made which have led to the cost of living crisis. “It’s an attempt to scapegoat domestic issues onto a foreign party that’s easier to hate,” said one of the protesters, Judith, who is a university student.

Rania Obead, a refugee living in Edinburgh, told the throng of peaceful protesters that the Tories are once again “trying to divide” vulnerable groups during the cost of living crisis. Braverman said that the high influx of refugees was placing unsustainable financial strain on the British taxpayer.

The UK is currently facing its highest rates of inflation in almost five decades, according to a research briefing in the House of Commons Library, and rent, food, and energy prices have skyrocketed beyond what many can comfortably afford with their disposable incomes. One protester, Shiv, who works with people who are struggling to make ends meet, said that while she “can understand people feeling like there’s not enough to go around,” she urges people “not to listen to the lies that are being peddled by millionaires who depend on you buying in.”

The global cost of living crisis can be traced back to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic, according to economist Jayati Ghosh and Oxfam humanitarian
coordinator Margaret Mueller respectively. However, Brexit is “the major factor responsible for the inflation differential between the UK and its European peers,” wrote Dr. Brij Behari Dave.

The UN Refugee Convention defines a refugee as a person “unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” Braverman hopes to raise the bar to qualify as a refugee, as she reasoned that the definition, as it currently reads, qualifies far more people today than it did when the treaty was first enacted.

Braverman suggested in her speech that LGBTQ+ people and women use their identities to
“shop” for an economically desirable country. “Being gay, or a woman, and fearful of
discrimination” does not adequately qualify someone to seek refuge in the UK, she said.

Only 1% of all asylum applications in the UK were formed on the basis of sexual orientation in 2021, according to Home Office National Statistics.

“Incredible isn’t it that such a tiny tiny portion of the population could possibly pose such a
terrible threat to society?” asked Leslie Cunninghamn, a trans man and activist, to the crowd.

Signs in the crowd also opposed Braverman’s Illegal Migration Act, and Migration and
Economic Development partnership with Rwanda, which she lauded in her speech as
“groundbreaking.” Under the Illegal Migration Act, if a refugee is to come to the UK via an
unsafe or illegal route, they will be detained and deported to their home country or to a safe third party country. Rwanda is the only third party country which has agreed to this policy of externalisation. The legality of the act will be determined by the UK Supreme Court later in 2023.

Braverman pledged to “continue to prioritise policies of deterrence and border hardening,” to which one protester, Alix, responded that “we’ll keep coming out to oppose it all.”

The protest was organised by City of Sanctuary Edinburgh, a part of the City of Sanctuary
network which aims to welcome people seeking refuge across cities in the UK.