03-08-2022, 03:19 PM
By Sana Noor Haq, CNN
Updated 1723 GMT (0123 HKT) August 2, 2022
The UK government's Home Office has admitted for the first time to forcibly deporting Chinese sailors who served in the nation's merchant Navy during World War II, in the latest stain on the country's migration department.
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some sailors had married and had children with women in the English city of Liverpool, and were deported without being able to tell their families where they were going. Many never heard from their husbands or fathers again. The report said that language used to justify the deportations were "racially inflected and prejudicial."
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Chinese sailors were targeted because their presence in Liverpool "was seen as disruptive,"
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Some were coerced into leaving by being denied employment.
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"This report paints a damning picture of the British treatment of Chinese seafarers in Liverpool, with families brutally ripped apart despite their service to our country during the war," Johnson said in a statement shared with CNN. "It leaves no doubt that the Chinese community received racist and coercive treatment at the hands of the state, where White foreign nationals were treated with far more compassion and respect. These events are a stain on our history and unfortunately there are still many parallels with the way minoritized and migrant workers are treated in our country today."
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"The report finally debunks the myth parroted by successive British governments that these repatriations were all voluntary. The conspiracy between the state and the shipping companies to maintain a cheap pool of labor along racial lines is in many ways the story of empire, and the story of Liverpool."
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/02/uk/ch...index.html
Updated 1723 GMT (0123 HKT) August 2, 2022
The UK government's Home Office has admitted for the first time to forcibly deporting Chinese sailors who served in the nation's merchant Navy during World War II, in the latest stain on the country's migration department.
......
some sailors had married and had children with women in the English city of Liverpool, and were deported without being able to tell their families where they were going. Many never heard from their husbands or fathers again. The report said that language used to justify the deportations were "racially inflected and prejudicial."
......
Chinese sailors were targeted because their presence in Liverpool "was seen as disruptive,"
......
Some were coerced into leaving by being denied employment.
......
"This report paints a damning picture of the British treatment of Chinese seafarers in Liverpool, with families brutally ripped apart despite their service to our country during the war," Johnson said in a statement shared with CNN. "It leaves no doubt that the Chinese community received racist and coercive treatment at the hands of the state, where White foreign nationals were treated with far more compassion and respect. These events are a stain on our history and unfortunately there are still many parallels with the way minoritized and migrant workers are treated in our country today."
......
"The report finally debunks the myth parroted by successive British governments that these repatriations were all voluntary. The conspiracy between the state and the shipping companies to maintain a cheap pool of labor along racial lines is in many ways the story of empire, and the story of Liverpool."
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/02/uk/ch...index.html