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Petition launched against Jeenah visa denial

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A petition has been launched by the Concerned Africans Forum (CAF), in response to the British Home Office’s decision to deny a visa to the Afro-Middle East Centre’s executive director, Na’eem Jeenah. The prominent academic was due to attend a conference just outside of London, hosted by the European Council on Foreign Relations. His visa application, submitted in October 2014, was denied on the grounds that his exclusion from the U.K. would be “conducive to the public good on national security grounds”.

The petition, revealed during a press briefing on Tuesday, has garnered over 200 signatories both locally and abroad. It has since been sent to British Home Secretary, Theresa May in the hopes of challenging the arbitrary refusal of the Home Office to grant Jeenah entry to the country.

“Na’eem has had no connections to any terrorist organisations. In fact, he has spoken out against terror,” CAF chairman Dr Essop Pahad told VOC Drivetime.

The move comes barely a week after renowned South African author, Ishtiyaq Shukri, was detained and deported from London’s Heathrow Airport. Making the case more concerning is that Shukri holds permanent U.K residence, which was subsequently revoked despite his wife being a British national.

“We think that not only is this a symptom of a growing problem of tightening U.K. immigration laws, but there is also a wider context of people with Islamic religious backgrounds now deliberately being profiled,” added Dr. Garth Le Pere, a representative of the CAF.

Dr. Le Pere said they were challenging the denial on the basis that it “defies logic”, and that the British Home office failed to apply its collective mind when making the decision. This was especially evident when taking into account that Jeenah had submitted all the necessary documents required for the visa, including a valid passport and letters of invitation. He was fearful the move could set a precedent for any future attempts to travel abroad.

“Not only will it affect his ability to conduct his professional work in the U.K, but it will have a ripple effect to the common intelligence pool shared across the European Union, as well as in the United States,” he suggested, adding that they were seeking to dramatize a growing number of incidents of profiling in this regard.

Further complicating Jeenah’s application was the that fact that all South African visa’s to commonwealth countries, specifically the U.K., were suspended in 2008 due to S.A. temporary passports being deemed east to forge. Although the matter has since been resolved with local government doing away with temporary passports as well as tightened existing security on regular passports, it has been suggested that Jeenah has fallen foul of this ruling.

While CAF remaining in waiting for a response to their petition and request to review the case, Dr. Le Pere said that they would take the matter up further if the visa was still denied. This would come in the form of approaches to the Department of Home Affairs, as well as the Department of International Relations and Cooperation. VOC (Mubeen Banderker)


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