Braverman the Afghanistan "Evacuation" & Human Rights

I watched the Channel 4 documentary "Evacuation" last night. It was shocking, despite the fact that I had followed the withdrawl from Afghanistan on the news at the time. Hearing the first hand accounts of professional soldiers was heartrending & very difficult to stomach. How they live with the memories they must have I simply don't know.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/evacuation

That is juxtaposed, in my mind, with Suella Bravermans alarmist Washington speech about the need for human rights reform because, according to her, immigrents are an "existential challenge" to countries. 

The UK is on the UN Security Council & helped to shape international law, including the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights). Braverman was suggesting that the conservatives might decide to leave that agreement. The ECHR was created in 1951 so is more than 70 years old. The world has changed. It may well be that the convention needs to be brought into the 21st century. 

We live in a world of mass continental population movements due to war, discrimination, poverty, climate change... Maybe there needs to be a discussion about where the boundary between persecution and discrimination is & what we should do about it. What we shouldn't do is throw the baby out with the bathwater - Literally. "Evacuation" showed the impact of the withdrawl on so many babies & children & the impact that had on the soldiers forced to do a job most of us would have been totally unable to do with any humanity.

Humanity seems to be in short supply in our world today. Yes there are things wrong with the United Kingdom. Yes many people are struggling now to have the basics - food, warmth, a home, a job, good health...But we generally don't live with an existential threat, we aren't in fear of our lives, we don't suffer appalling discrimination as do women & gay people in many parts of the world. We can mostly get by. We have a temperate climate, clean water, freedom of speech, rule of law....We are lucky to live in the UK.

The extreme right wingers of our world would do well to really think about what they would do if they lived in Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Yemen or any of the numerous countries really suffering today. If we lose our ability to empathise we lose our humanity. Ultimately no amount of political power can replace that. There will be a reckoning ultimately.