British Prime Minister David Cameron is to look into claims that US officials prevented a British Muslim family of 11 from flying to Disneyland for a planned holiday.
The issue is sensitive because US Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has called for a temporary ban on Muslims visiting the US due to concerns about extremist attacks.
Stella Creasy, a member of the opposition Labour Party, on Wednesday said that US officials gave no explanation for refusing to allow her constituents to board a flight from Gatwick Airport on Tuesday last week, so she wrote to Cameron seeking his intervention.
She said there is “growing fear” among British Muslims that aspects of Trump’s plans are coming into practice, even though they have been widely condemned.
A top Muslim group said cases like this appear to be related to religion and are worrying for British Muslims.
Mohammed Zahid Mahmood said he and his family — two brothers and their nine children — were told nothing except that they were not allowed to travel to the US, despite having previously obtained clearance.
“We were the only family that was of Asian, Muslim, sort of appearance and it seemed a little bit embarrassing that only we were taken out [of the line to board],” he told the BBC.
Cameron’s office said on Wednesday that he would investigate the matter. He had earlier characterized Trump’s policy as “divisive and wrong.”
A US Customs and Border Protection spokesman said the “religion, faith or spiritual beliefs of an international traveler are not determining factors” when deciding if a person can travel to the US.
The spokesman said people can be denied entry for a variety of reasons, including health-related issues, prior criminal convictions, security concerns or on miscellaneous grounds.
Ajmal Masroor, a London-based imam and broadcaster, said he received similar treatment when trying to travel to the US for business.
He said that a US embassy official prevented him from boarding a flight on Thursday last week and told him his business visa had been revoked. He said he had never had any problem traveling on that visa before.
“I asked him why, repeatedly, and he said: ‘You must have done something wrong,’ without any explanation,” Masroor said.
He said he feared that US officials were singling out Muslims.
“This is absolutely discrimination. It is not acceptable and playing into the hands of the terrorists,” Masroor said.
The Muslim Council of Britain also said the last-minute denial of boarding privileges without explanation is distressing for Muslims.
“There is a perception that such decisions are being made due to the faith or political activism of individuals,” the council said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema