Helena Dollimore’s record as MP for Hastings & Rye tells a consistent, if disturbing, story in Parliament, on social media and in rare written responses to constituents.

But before laying this out, it is necessary to recall some key facts.

MORE THAN 20,000 CHILDREN

In January 2024, the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), found that there was a case that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. It ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to stop acts of genocide and take “immediate and effective measures” to allow aid into Gaza.

In July 2024, the ICJ ruled that Israel was guilty of both unlawful occupation and the crime of apartheid. It found that Israeli policy imposed and “serve[d] to maintain a near-complete separation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem between the settler and Palestinian communities”, including separate roads and legal systems.

In November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts” in Gaza.

Since then, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, two of Israel’s leading human rights organisations (B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel), and the world’s leading association of genocide scholars, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, have all declared that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza.

In September 2025, Ms Dollimore’s former employer, Save the Children, reported that “At least one Palestinian child has been killed every hour on average by Israeli forces in Gaza over nearly 23 months of war, with the number of children killed now surpassing 20,000.”

Moreover, notwithstanding the so-called “ceasefire”, Israel’s genocide in Gaza is still ongoing.

Indeed, according to Amnesty International, Israel is “still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, without signalling any change in their intent”.

LEGAL OBLIGATIONS ON GENOCIDE

These facts carry clear legal obligations for the UK government. So what is Helena Dollimore doing? Since her election to Parliament in July 2024, Ms Dollimore has consistently refused to acknowledge that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza – or that her government is obliged to take all necessary steps to prevent it, choosing instead to follow the ‘party line’ blindly.

In May 2025, she effectively counselled delay, claiming that while the UK was “fully committed to upholding international law” it was “important that the international courts are left to rule [on] where international humanitarian law is breached”.

Yet as Tufts University’s Alex de Waal – who has 40 years of experience as a humanitarian worker and expert on famine – noted in July 2025: “The Genocide Convention is, first and foremost, a convention to prevent genocide. The question of whether there is or is not genocide is secondary to the question of whether Israel and other states that are party to the Genocide Convention are fulfilling their obligations to prevent genocide. They are not doing so.”

UK ARMS SALES

In a June 2025 poll, 57% of the British public supported a full arms embargo on Israel, with only 13% opposed. In stark contrast, Ms Dollimore has consistently refused to back an end to UK arms sales to Israel or to do anything to hold her government accountable for these ongoing transfers, notwithstanding the UK’s legal obligations to stop these exports and the clear evidence that these arms have been used to carry out war crimes against Gaza’s population.

In July 2025, she even claimed (on Facebook) that “Our Government has suspended arm sales” – failing to mention that only a small minority (less than 10%) of export licences had actually been suspended.

Unlike other Labour MPs, she also failed to object to the supply of crucial components for the F35 fighter aircraft – which continued despite the ‘suspension’ – formed the single largest and most important part of the UK’s arms trade with Israel. Indeed, without the continuous supply of spare parts from the UK, as well as other producer countries, it would have been impossible for Israel to have kept using the F-35s to bomb Gaza. In July 2024, an F-35 was used to drop three 2,000lb bombs in an attack on a so-called ‘safe zone’ in Al-Mawasi – an area of Gaza that has Council-backed friendship links with Hastings – killing 90 people.

SANCTIONS

Given the above, it is perhaps unsurprising that Helena Dollimore has also failed to acknowledge that Israel is guilty of apartheid or to call for any meaningful sanctions on Israel.

For example, she was not one of the 84 parliamentarians – including some Labour MPs – who wrote to the Foreign Secretary David Lammy in July 2025, calling for an arms embargo, a ban on all trade with illegal Israeli settlements, targeted sanctions on on all individuals and entities complicit in Israel’s occupation, and a full review of UK-Israel relations to ensure that no support is being given to violations of international law.

REPRESSION

It’s not true, however, that our MP has been completely inactive on all Gaza-related matters. Indeed, Ms Dollimore has dutifully backed her government’s repression of campaigners who’ve been opposing Israel’s genocide, most notably by voting in July to ban the nonviolent protest group Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act.

The resulting restrictions on free speech – there is now only one legally-permissible answer to the question “Do you support Palestine Action?” – have already led to 2,700 arrests of entirely peaceful protestors and led to Amnesty International launching its first-ever Urgent Action (UA) regarding the right to protest in the UK.

More recently, Ms Dollimore has refused to join fellow Labour MPs in signing any of the Early Day Motions calling on the Justice Secretary to “to engage urgently with the legal representatives of the pro-Palestinian activists who are on hunger strike in UK prisons” (the final four hunger strikers only concluding their strike on 15 January (three) and 26 January (one) after gaining concessions.

She now looks set to vote in favour of the government’s planned restrictions on ‘repeat protests’. This measure is being brought in because of the embarrassment that the peaceful mass protests against Israel’s genocide – protests which have included mass Jewish participation – have caused to this government.

EMPTY WORDS

Helena Dollimore and her supporters will doubtless point to public statements in which she has highlighted “the desperate need to get more aid into Gaza”, condemned the “awful” suffering of civilians in Gaza and the targeting of aid workers, and stated her support for a two-state solution as evidence of her good intentions.

However, these and similar words ring very hollow given her government’s failure to impose any meaningful form of sanctions on Israel and her ongoing refusal to challenge this failure. As her fellow Labour MP Richard Burgon has noted: “Israel is committing war crime after war crime. We don’t need more empty words from the Government calling on Israel to do the right thing. We need tough action to force Israel to end its atrocities against the Palestinian people. That means ending all arms sales and imposing widespread sanctions on Israel – just as were rightly imposed on Russia over Ukraine.”

Further information here: hastingspalestinecampaign.org

At the closing protest rally at 8am on Monday, camp organisers, the Hastings & Rye Palestine Solidarity Campaign (HRPSC), had been hoping to appeal to workers to refuse to handle military equipment bound for Israel that they believe will be used to commit war crimes. However, only a handful arrived that morning to walk past the campaigners; the rest appeared to have been given leave to avoid any engagement.

According to the American Friends Service Committee, a charity of Quaker origins based in Pennsylvania which makes a study of the arms trade, “General Dynamics supplies the Israeli military with a wide variety of weapons, including various bombs. The company’s technologies are also integrated into Israel’s main weapon systems, including fighter jets and armored combat vehicles … For years, these weapons have repeatedly been used against Palestinian civilians, resulting in numerous casualties as well as mass destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, and water and electric systems.”

An arms embargo on Israel is supported by a wide range of NGOs, including Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Oxfam and Save the Children. In a UK poll conducted in April this year, 68% of those surveyed said they would support a ban on arms sales to Israel. A majority of supporters from all of the major political parties would support such a ban, with even 56% of Conservative voters agreeing. Yet neither Labour nor Conservative leadership has made any such call.

The intention was to use the last weekend before the general election to demand “that our politicians put an end to Britain’s complicity in genocide and stop companies like General Dynamics from arming Israel”. The camp included a debate between representatives of the Muslim Greens and the local Workers Party candidate for Hastings and Rye, Phil Colley, about how people concerned about Gaza should vote next Thursday. It also involved talks on the global arms trade; workshops on non-violent direct action and protest rights; and music from Jude Montague, Allie K Stewart and Sam Brown.

One attendee Emily Price, who came with her six-year-old daughter Scarlet, said: “I can’t believe that within two miles of my daughter’s school they are making things to kill children in Gaza. I felt we had to be here to show this is not being done in our name.”

Three local residents – Laurie Holden, Thomas Delves and Clem McCulloch – will stand trial at Hastings Magistrates Court on 27 August on charges of aggravated trespass at a previous HRPSC rally outside the General Dynamics factory in February. All have pleaded not guilty.

A huge welcome mat was placed at the Hastings Museum and Gallery and the Hastings Borough Council Offices to show support for people seeking asylum. 

The 5ft by 3ft mat inscribed “Refugees Welcome” was placed on Friday 14 July 2023 to show support to people fleeing conflict and persecution. Hastings Community of Sanctuary (HCoS) and local Amnesty International UK (Amnesty) supporters gathered with several councillors including leader Paul Barnett and deputy leader Maya Evans. 

The UK government’s latest immigration bill aims to shut down the UK’s asylum system and is damaging to refugee rights globally. Following the UK Court of Appeal’s recent and vital ruling that the government’s plan to send people seeking asylum on a one-way trip to Rwanda is unlawful, Amnesty is calling for the government to scrap the current immigration bill speeding through Parliament. 

Amnesty and Community of Sanctuary activists highlight the numerous unjust issues in the asylum system that need to be abandoned – from the draconian immigration bill to the chronic backlog of cases that need to be processed, and the use of former military barracks and de-commissioned cruise ships that the government plans to use for people fleeing violence and persecution.

Despite the government’s divisive policies and rhetoric, local Amnesty members and Hastings Community of Sanctuary made it clear that Hastings welcomes people fleeing conflict and persecution.

The negative comments and headlines from ministers are being used to distract from the urgent need to decide people’s asylum claims fairly and efficiently, which the UK government is still failing to do.

The impact and harms of the latest immigration bill will fundamentally undermine the UK’s asylum system, damage refugee rights globally and is a blatant breach of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention which the UK played an important part in creating.

Amnesty International Hastings & Rye joins Hastings Community of Sanctuary in calling “for a just and fair asylum system based on human rights, the UK’s international obligations and treating asylum-seekers as human beings, respecting their humanity and dignity. We believe that detention camps are not the answer. We believe in Communities, Not Camps.”

By Pal Luthra

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori were released on 16 March 2022 by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s CEO, said: “Nazanin and Anoosheh should never have been detained in the first place – they were both jailed on trumped-up national security charges, a familiar tactic in Iran…the Iranian authorities have acted with calculated cruelty, seeking to wring the maximum diplomatic value out of their captivity.” Amnesty International supporters and members up and down the country had campaigned hard to free British-Iranian nationals.

Two Left Behind

Nazanin, a 44-year-old mum and charity worker spent six years in jail and Anoosheh Ashoori, a 68-year-old retired engineer was held for four years as a hostage by the Islamic Republic of Iran. But we were disappointed and saddened that Morad Tahbaz, a 66-year-old British national and conservationist and Mehran Raoof, a 65-year-old British national and activist were not released.

When the welcome news of the release of Nazanin and Anoosheh broke, Morad’s family was bitterly disappointed that he was not on the plane with them. Instead, Morad was placed under strict house arrest for two days before being returned to prison, where he remained until his recent furlough. Morad spent 7 days on a hunger strike to protest what happened to him. His family have said he was left behind by the UK government and is urging immediate intervention to get him home.

Mehran Raoof continues to be arbitrarily detained in Evin Prison. He was arrested on 16 October 2020 and is serving a 10-year prison sentence. He has been held in prolonged solitary confinement for months at a time, in violation of the absolute prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment. He is a prisoner of conscience and must also be immediately and unconditionally released.

An Appeal From Hastings

The newly formed Amnesty International Hasting & Rye team wrote to our MP Sally-Ann Hart on 3 and 16 November last year asking her to make the most urgent representations, on our behalf, to the Secretary of State to call on Iranian authorities to release Morad and Mehran so they can rejoin their families. Through her, we requested the Secretary of State to work closely with the UN, EU, G7 and other international channels to hold Iran to account, and to secure Mehran’s and Morad’s permanent release and departure from Iran.

We in Amnesty International Hasting & Rye team are extremely disappointed by the response that the UK government is not taking proactive steps to secure the permanent release and departure of British citizens held hostage in Iran.

Alicia Kearns, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and Conservative MP for Rutland and Melton expressed her frustration in a BBC Radio 4 interview on 26 November: “Iran has shown that it will happily arrest anyone with dual citizenship. If I was a British foreign dual national in Iran I would absolutely be leaving because the evidence is they will use them in any game of chess they can and use brutal repression. I would encourage anyone from the west to leave as safely as they can.”

Righteous Uprising

The recent popular uprising in Iran was sparked by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa (Zhina) Amini on 16 September 2022. Mahsa was arbitrarily arrested by the “morality” police for not complying with the country’s discriminatory compulsory veiling laws.

Nationwide protests led by women and girls under the rallying call ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’, quickly mushroomed to include broader grievances against a government steeped in decades of impunity and human rights violations. Iran’s security forces have responded to protests with violence.

At least 516 protesters have been killed with impunity so far, including 70 children, and 19,262 others arrested, according to the foreign-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). Most of these children were killed due to security forces unlawfully firing live ammunition at their heads, heart or other vital organs. It has also reported the deaths of 68 security personnel. In a new phase of this crackdown, Iranian authorities continue to carry out mass killings, arrests, enforced disappearances and torture of dissidents, but are now using the death penalty as a tool of political repression.

As of 15 December 2022, Amnesty International identified 26 individuals at risk of execution in connection with nationwide protests. Moshen Shekari was executed on 8 December, and on 12 December Iran executed Majidreza Rahnavard. Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Mohammad Hossein were executed on 7 January. This immoral violence is ongoing.

A letter to Government

We in Amnesty International Hasting & Rye team wrote to Sally-Ann Hart MP on 27 December expressing our horror at the execution of Mohsen Sherkari and Majidreza Rahnavard and that 26 individuals were at risk of execution. We strongly believe that the death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. Amnesty opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception – regardless of who is accused, the nature or circumstances of the crime, guilt or innocence or the method of execution.

We urge Sally-Ann Hart MP to show support for women and girls standing up for their human rights in Iran and help those at risk of execution in connection with the nationwide protests. She should:

1. Write a letter to Iran’s Head of Judiciary (Mr Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei) via Iran’s Embassy in the UK demanding: (i) the convictions and death sentences against the 26 individuals named by Amnesty be quashed; (ii) anyone charged with a recognisable criminal offence be tried in proceedings that meet international fair trial standards, without recourse to the death penalty, and (iii) independent observers from embassies in Iran be granted access to capital trials connected to protests.

2. Contact the Foreign Secretary to raise our concerns about the situation in Iran. Following the UK’s commitment to human rights and support of human rights defenders, request that the UK’s British Embassy in Iran send independent observers to the capital trials connected to protests. The current UK Ambassador to Iran should consider personally requesting access to the named individuals who have been sentenced to death including access to their legal files.

3. Help to sound the alarm by making a public statement in support of those at risk of execution in Iran for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.

See her reply below.

Alicia Kearns, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee has called for sanctions against Tehran to be announced every day after any protester was executed by the Iranian regime. Britain’s MI5 Chief Ken McCallum on 16 November, last year said that Iran poses a major security threat for the United Kingdom as it uses “coercion, intimidation, and violence to pursue its interests. Iran projects a threat to the UK directly, through its aggressive intelligence services. At its sharpest, this includes ambitions to kidnap or even kill British or UK-based individuals perceived as enemies of the regime,”

Ken McCallum’s warning became a reality as we learnt today (12 Jan) the recent execution of British-Iranian dual national Alireza Akbari, the ex-deputy Iranian defence minister, who was arrested in 2019 and convicted of spying for the UK, which he denied.

This is a clear indication that all British nationals in Iran are now a much greater threat. No one should be left behind to be used as a pawn by the Iranian regime.

The regime is imprisoning and killing the protestors to silence them and instil fear in the general public. They need the world to take notice and be their voice.

Therefore, we urge Sally-Ann Hart, our MP, to stand with British citizens illegally detained and held hostage by Iran and oppose all state executions by the cruel, undemocratic and autocratic Islamic Iranian regime.

Amnesty International Hastings & Rye team can be contacted by email amnestyhastingsrye@gmail.com or Facebook https://tinyurl.com/9rs24x2y

Reply from Sally-Ann Hart

Dear Amnesty International Hastings & Rye team,

Thank you for contacting me about the protests in Iran.

Let me begin by expressing my deep sadness over the death of Mahsa Amini following her arrest for alleged dress code violations. Her death was a shocking reminder of the repression Iranian women and girls face. My thoughts are with the friends and family of Mahsa Amini.

Likewise with Mohsen Shekari and Majidreza Rahnavard, they are tragic victims of a legal system in which disproportionate sentences, politically motived trials, and forced confessions are rife. My thoughts are with their respective friends and families and all the other victims who have lost their lives at the hands of the Iranian security services since.

I can assure you, in no uncertain terms, that the UK stands firmly with the people of Iran who are bravely calling for an end to the sustained repression of the rights and voices of women and girls by the Iranian regime. The use of violence in response to the expression of fundamental rights, by women or any other members of Iranian society, is wholly unjustifiable.

HM Government (HMG) has called on Iran to respect the right to peaceful assembly and release unfairly detained protesters. The UK has also appealed to Iran, including by way of the United Nations (UN), to put an end to this appalling state-led violence and to carry out independent, transparent investigations.

The fact-finding mission established by the UN Human Rights Council and relating to the protests that began on 16 September is a welcome start, and the UK will work with partners to ensure it delivers for the Iranian people. Indeed, acting bilaterally and in coordination with the international community, the UK has been robust in its efforts to hold the Iranian regime to account.

So far, the UK’s response has included: summoning the most senior Iranian official in the UK; announcing coordinated sanctions on Iranian officials leading the violent repression of protests, including sanctioning the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran’s so-called ‘Morality Police’ in its entirety; and issuing a joint statement with our European partners calling on Iran to stop the violence and listen to the concerns of its people. These actions send a clear message to the Iranian authorities that they will be held to account for their violation of human rights, the repression of women and girls, and the shocking violence they have inflicted on their own people.

Going forward, I can assure you that HMG will continue to raise human rights at all appropriate opportunities with the Iranian Government and take a stand with the international community against Iran’s tragic human rights record.

A member of my team has written to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to pass on your concerns, and they will be in contact as soon they receive a response.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact me.

Yours sincerely,

Sally-Ann Hart.

Member of Parliament for Hastings and Rye

House of Commons, Westminster, London, SW1A 0AA

sallyann.hart.mp@parliament.uk. 0207 219 6775

A personal perspective from Pal Luthra

On Monday 5 September, I took part in a ‘Stop Rwanda’ protest in Hastings on the promenade below Warrior Square with 150 or so concerned locals.  I did so because I strongly believe that the planto remove asylum-seekers to Rwanda is morally and ethically repugnant.  There were similar protests across the country.  

On the same day legal proceedings by the Public and Commercial Services union, Care4Calais and Detention Action were starting in the High Court, challenging the home secretary’s plan. The decision on the legality of the policy will not be known until mid-October. Even then there is a chance that it will
end up in the Supreme Court. However, we gathered not simply to mark the start of legal proceedings but to show our solidarity and compassion, to reconfirm our shared belief in kindness, tolerance, equity, justice and fairness.    

I am a proud citizen of the United Kingdom, a first-generation immigrant as were my parents. My parents and grandparents were made refugees after the partition of India in 1947. Now, this is the country which I call home.
It is a country in which we rub along and we mostly tolerate and celebrate differences and are kind, welcoming and compassionate. I strongly believe that asylum seekers seeking sanctuary in our country deserve our compassion, our empathy and our protection – not expulsions and deportations.  

One lesson we can learn from history, from the first and second World Wars, the partition of India, Amin’s exclusion of East African Asians, the breakup of Yugoslavia, the bloody siege of Sarajevo, armed conflicts in Rwanda, DRC and Burundi, repression in Hong Kong, the troubles in North Ireland, the war in Iraq, Libya, Syria and now in Ukraine, is that we are not immune and that we too can fall victims to the ravaging forces of human folly. After all, we are one race, the human race.   

The Rwanda plan aims to offshore and transport asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing. If found to be genuine, they will not be brought back (as the term processing implies). They will be offered a chance to settle in Rwanda or to be deported to the country they were escaping from.  They will be barred from entering the UK. They will not have the right of appeal in UK law. They will not have access to British courts. In exchange for Rwanda receiving the deportees, the UK will pay the country about £120 million for operating the program.

This idea is inspired by the infamous and widely criticised offshore detention centres used by the Australian Government on the islands of Nauru, and Manus in Papua New Guinea. Not only men, but also women and children are held in this abusive regime which has resulted in death, suicide attempts, lasting physical and mental health damage, human rights violations, child and sexual abuse, and a considerable cost to the public purse. Israel made a secret plan between 2014 and 2017 with Rwanda under which several thousand Sudanese and Eritrean asylum-seekers had to choose between immigration detention in Israel or “voluntarily” agreeing to be deported to Rwanda. Many of those offshored to Rwanda struggled with lack of documentation, destitution and poverty, and have mostly left the country and attempted to return to Europe.

To me, Rwanda’s offshoring plan represents the moral and ethical bankruptcy of our government. It epitomises a lack of political imagination by a succession of home secretaries and a continuum of the infamous hostile environment policy. I am ashamed that our political leaders want to introduce such a cruel, inhumane and degrading offshoring plan. I’m ashamed that our government think that this is a way to treat human beings and divide us by scapegoating asylum seekers. It is a crime against our shared humanity.

I am not at all religious but I think that our religious leaders have exposed the immorality of the Rwanda plan more than any of our political leaders. The Archbishop of Canterbury said that the plan to send asylum seekers, arriving at
our shores seeking sanctuary, to Rwanda is  “subcontracting our responsibilities” and is “the opposite of the nature of God”. The Archbishop of York said it was distressing to “find that asylum seekers fleeing war, famine and oppression from deeply troubled parts of the world will not be treated with the dignity and compassion that is the right of every human being, and instead of being dealt with quickly and efficiently here on our soil will be shipped to Rwanda”. 

The Roman Catholic Bishop Paul McAleenan, speaking on behalf of the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales said that the Rwanda policy was “shamefully illustrative” of ‘’the loss of sense of responsibility for our brothers and sisters’’. And “With greater force, we insist that asylum seekers are not commodities for profit, nor are they problems to be rejected and deported by the government.” 

Several Jewish religious leaders have also condemned the plan, “Such proposals also bring to mind unpleasant memories of the overseas internment of Jewish refugees in the second world war. This policy was a grave error: we urge the government to learn from this historic mistake, uphold international refugee law and ensure all those seeking safety in the UK are treated with dignity and respect. If the government is serious about preventing small boat crossings, it should act to introduce safe and accessible routes to sanctuary in the UK.”  The Chief Rabbi has also expressed concern and defended the Archbishop’s right to intervene on the Government’s Rwanda policy. 

Zara Mohammed, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain said: “This scheme has drawn condemnation across the board. All united in their belief that the scheme runs counter to our values of being welcoming to those in need. We are told that the scheme is supposed to stop the people smugglers. Instead, many have warned that this will only embolden these criminals seeking to exploit people willing to take desperate measures. Earlier we raised concerns that this scheme would be discriminatory. That has been borne out by reports that the first deportees would have been those from Muslim countries fleeing persecution. I call on our leaders and those in the media who hold sway to rethink their rhetoric. We should go beyond policies that appeal to the lowest common denominator and uphold our values of celebrating diversity and being welcoming of all.”

People are taking dangerous unsafe channel crossings because this government has shut down all other safe and legal routes to seeking asylum in this country. The Nationality and Borders Act passed in April this year outlaws asylum seeking in this country by individuals escaping and fleeing war, famine and oppression. The only way one gets asylum here is through a government-approved resettlement scheme. I hope that we can all agree with  Bishop Paul McAleenan, “Crime is defeated by confronting the perpetrators not by punishing victims. This scheme will increase the difficulties of those hoping for a new beginning and it does nothing to address the problems which cause people to flee their homes.”  He added, “Those seeking refuge in the UK should be provided with safe routes for travelling, have the opportunity to tell their story, be listened to and have their cases assessed justly. We keep in mind that there is no illegal asylum seeker; to claim asylum is a human right.”

We, in the Hastings Community of Sanctuary, urge you whatever your faith or none to join with us to oppose the Rwanda offshoring plan because it is morally and ethically wrong and inhumane. Together, we can say loud and clear: refugees are welcome here.

• Pal Luthra is a member of Hastings Community of Sanctuary and Amnesty International. For more info
visit: hastings.cityofsanctuary.org and www.amnesty.org.uk

Garry Ettle, Amnesty Inter-national Country Coordinator for Israel/Palestine, will present the findings of the major new study – four years in the making – while SOAS Palestine Society President Yara Derbas will speak about resistance to apartheid. The event is to be chaired by Hastings and Rye Palestine Solidarity Campaign chair, Katy Colley.

Left to right: Garry Ettle from Amnesty International; Yara Derbas from SOAS Palestine Society

Katy says: “Amnesty Inter-national’s report is an important step forward in accepting the reality of what is happening in Palestine today and calling things by their proper name. Apartheid is a crime against humanity and has no place in our world. I am old enough to remember the anti-apartheid movement in the UK that helped to bring about the end of apartheid in South Africa. It’s time we did the same for Palestine.

“We invite everyone to find out why Amnesty International has come to this historic conclusion, one shared by most major international human rights organisations, including those within Israel itself.”

The meeting: Israeli Apartheid: Reality and Resistance, will be in the seafront room at the White Rock Hotel at 3pm on Saturday 2 July, followed by free refreshments and the opportunity for guests to learn more about both organisations.

Pal Luthra, on behalf of the Amnesty International Kent and East Sussex Network, said: “We’re so pleased to be working with Hastings & Rye PSC on bringing the findings of this comprehensive investigation to the local community. Hastings has a reputation for being compassionate, socially conscious and engaged and it feels more important than ever to be working alongside our friends and partners in our shared fight for social justice, freedom and equality for all.”

• Details for the event can be found on Facebook or by emailing Hastings & Rye Palestine Solidarity Campaign  info@hastingspalestinecampaign.org

• To read the report from the last HRPSC meeting on Gaza visit @HastingsRyePalestineSolidarityCampaign on Facebook.