Aamer Anwar✊🏾🏳️‍🌈#BlackLivesMatter Profile picture
Defence & Public Inquiry Solicitor, Media, Lawyer to Scottish #COVID19 Bereaved Families, former Rector Glasgow Uni 01414297090 office@aameranwar.com

Mar 25, 2020, 19 tweets

Our analysis of the #CoronavirusBill passed by Parliament ‘Why believe a party which wanted to abolish Human Rights Act, decimated the NHS now trusted with ‘policing’ the greatest crisis to hit the UK since WW2’ thread👇🏽 aameranwar.co.uk/news/the-war-o…

These laws will not happen in isolation, there has been little practical concern for the poor, the vulnerable, prisoners, immigration detainees, those on zero hour contracts, the self-employed, those renting or those being forced to come to work.

...the option of cutting services where they are already desperately needed only to transfer them to fighting a pandemic which may not have an end for some time. At the same time we are expecting a Conservative Govt to protect our NHS when they have been decimating it for years.

We know in the days ahead there will be huge turmoil, riots have started to take place in prions where both the incarcerated and prison officers are terrified of being in a giant Petri dish or rather a burning house whose doors and windows are bolted shut.

Emergency declarations based on COVID-19 outbreak should not be used as a basis to target particular groups, minorities, or individuals. It should not function as a cover for repressive action under the guise of protecting health…& should not be used simply to quash dissent.”

Govt advisers will have final say. Have we forgotten how quickly ‘science changed’ after doctors &scientists attacked Govt. Chief Science Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance who said“key things we need to do” is to “build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune...”

This Bill will give police and immigration officials the power to detain without any evidence if they suspect we are infected. How exactly will the Immigration Service tagged with the label ‘racist’ along with police officers ensure that their actions do not discriminate?

Despite a brutal indictment by Windrush Inquiry of the Home Office’s total disregard regard for the rule of law, they are about to be given powers no different to those of a Police State.

We have seen no mention in this Bill of what steps are being taken at Immigration Detention Centres or Prisons to protect staff and detainees/prisoner from what can be described as a ‘hotbed for the Coronavirus’. Riots have been reported in Scottish prisons already..

If within the next 24 hours both the Scottish Government and UK Government fail to act, then they will be guilty of ‘state sanctioned murder’. It’s a race against time in our communities but that also applies to our prisons which are now an epicentre for this silent killer.

hospitals can’t have ‘carte blanche’ indemnity, one only needs to look to the catalogue of scandals that took place at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow to understand that the Government can not just hand over ‘blanket indemnity’,

Mental Health provision is desperately needed throughout the UK, the fact that an individual can now be detained indefintely or released into the community on the basis of one medical opinion is a recipe for disaster, the wrong diagnosis and potential abuse of power.

Can we trust a Government mired in corruption and nepotism to use such financial powers legitimately and impartially, or will it be another excuse for the rich to profiteer at our expense?

Will investigative section to be used as a cover to curtail freedom of expression &access to critical information? We are ‘sleepwalking’ into a Chinese scenario where the state withheld critical information from the public on coronavirus, whilst detaining people for reporting...

For years successive Governments have tried to use the ‘War on Terror’ to bring in greater surveillance powers but have been stopped from doing so in the name of democracy.
There is no detail or any real judicial oversight of what the police and state will be able do to access

There is no explanation as to why in this new war, they need to hack our computers and phones or intercept our digital communication. To allow them permission to do so with no scrutiny at all means they can access all our personal and sensitive data.

We are now limited to gatherings of 2, £ such draconian laws are necessary if we are to contain a massive number of deaths, but once again there is no clarity of whether this law could be used at end of the pandemic and of course whether it is used specifically to fight the virus

Power to cancel elections? How convenient, what if opinion polls in a year’s time shows the Government has totally lost the confidence of the people, do we really believe that Boris Johnson will put democracy before his own self-interest?

Legislate in haste, repent at leisure- 24th March 2020 #coronavirus

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