History > 2007 > UK > Racism (II)

As he arrives in Britain,

DNA pioneer breaks his silence

on racism row

Published: 19 October 2007
The Independent
By Steve Connor,Cahal Milmo and Amol Rajan

James Watson, the Nobel laureate who shocked the world with his views on race and intelligence, has defended his position in an exclusive article for The Independent today in which he seeks to justify his theory that there is a genetic basis behind differences in IQ.

Dr Watson, who helped to unravel the structure of DNA more than 50 years ago, apologises for any offence that he caused when he suggested in an interview at the weekend that black Africans were less intelligent than Westerners.

But he restates his position that studying genes may help to understand variations in intelligence. In his interview with a Sunday newspaper, Dr Watson said he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really". He was quoted as saying his hope is that everyone is equal but that "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true".

Dr Watson says in his article today that he has never been one to shy away from stating what he believes to be true, however unpalatable that may be.

"This has, at times, got me in hot water," he says. "Rarely more so than right now, where I find myself at the centre of a storm of criticism.

"I can understand much of this reaction. For if I said what I was quoted as saying, then I can only admit that I am bewildered by it. To those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly. This is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."

However, Dr Watson goes on to suggest that genes may account for many behavioural traits, including intelligence and even criminality. "The thought that some people are innately wicked disturbs me," he says. "But science is not here to make us feel good."

Without referring directly to the subject of racial differences, Dr Watson once more invokes the idea that Darwinian natural selection has led to differences in behavioural ability between people from different geographical regions of the world. "We do not yet adequately understand the way in which the different environments in the world have selected over time the genes which determine our capacity to do different things," he says. "The overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity.

"It may well be. But simply wanting this to be the case is not enough. This is not science. To question this is not to give in to racism. This is not a discussion about superiority or inferiority, it is about seeking to understand differences, about why some of us are great musicians and others great engineers."

Dr Watson, a former president of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, arrived in the UK this week as part of a book tour but his speaking engagements are in disarray after the Science Museum cancelled a lecture by him planned for today.

The controversy spread to America yesterday, as the board of trustees at Cold Spring issued a statement saying they were "bewildered and saddened" by his comments. "Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory does not engage in any research that could even form the basis of the statements attributed to Dr Watson," it said.

Dr Watson is due to appear at the Centre for Life in Newcastle this weekend. Organisers distanced themselves from his views but insisted that it would still go ahead. Linda Conlon, chief executive of the centre, said: "It promises to be a robust and unmissable discussion and many people have expressed interest in it."

Meanwhile, the organisers of the Festival of Ideas in Bristol, where Dr Watson is due to give a speech next week, said they were waiting for an explanation from the Nobel Prize-winner for his remarks before deciding whether to go ahead with the sell-out booking.

Andrew Kelly, co-ordinator of the festival, which is a series of discussions with leading intellectuals, said: "A review of the event is pending a statement from Dr Watson. Once he has made his statement we will decide about the event."

Dr Watson's comments provoked a furious reaction from students at Cambridge University and led to a heated row between student groups who disagree over whether he should retain his platform at the Cambridge Union on Tuesday.

"His comments are part of an overtly political campaign which tries to justify and excuse the plight of black people in the world today," said Junior Penge Juma, a Black Student Campaigns officer.

Mr Juma is planning a protest to mark Dr Watson's entry into the Union building on Tuesday. He will be joined by members of other minority student groups, including women's groups and the Jewish Society.

Meanwhile, organisers at Edinburgh University, where Dr Watson is scheduled to appear on Monday evening alongside Dr Ian Wilmut, the scientist behind Dolly the Sheep, refused yesterday to rule out cancelling his appearance. A spokesman said the organisers were "consideringthe issues raised as a result of this matter" and would make a decision in due course.

Dr Watson's remarks in The Sunday Times have also sparked a political furore. David Lammy, the Skills minister, said his comments were deeply offensive and would provide oxygen to the British National Party.

    As he arrives in Britain, DNA pioneer breaks his silence on racism row, I, 19.10.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3075664.ece

James Watson:

To question genetic intelligence

is not racism

Published: 19 October 2007
The Independent

Science is no stranger to controversy. The pursuit of discovery, of knowledge, is often uncomfortable and disconcerting. I have never been one to shy away from stating what I believe to be the truth, however difficult it might prove to be. This has, at times, got me in hot water.

Rarely more so than right now, where I find myself at the centre of a storm of criticism. I can understand much of this reaction. For if I said what I was quoted as saying, then I can only admit that I am bewildered by it. To those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief.

I have always fiercely defended the position that we should base our view of the world on the state of our knowledge, on fact, and not on what we would like it to be. This is why genetics is so important. For it will lead us to answers to many of the big and difficult questions that have troubled people for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

But those answers may not be easy, for, as I know all too well, genetics can be cruel. My own son may be one of its victims. Warm and perceptive at the age of 37, Rufus cannot lead an independent life because of schizophrenia, lacking the ability to engage in day-to-day activities. For all too long, my wife Ruth and I hoped that what Rufus needed was an appropriate challenge on which to focus. But as he passed into adolescence, I feared the origin of his diminished life lay in his genes. It was this realisation that led me to help to bring the human genome project into existence.

In doing so, I knew that many new moral dilemmas would arise as a consequence and would early on establish the ethical, legal and societal components of the genome project. Since 1978, when a pail of water was dumped over my Harvard friend E O Wilson for saying that genes influence human behaviour, the assault against human behavioural genetics by wishful thinking has remained vigorous.

But irrationality must soon recede. It will soon be possible to read individual genetic messages at costs which will not bankrupt our health systems. In so doing, I hope we see whether changes in DNA sequence, not environmental influences, result in behaviour differences. Finally, we should be able to establish the relative importance of nature as opposed to nurture.

One in three people looking for a job in temporary employment bureaux in Los Angeles is a psychopath or a sociopath. Is this a consequence of their environment or their genetic components? DNA sequencing should give us the answer. The thought that some people are innately wicked disturbs me. But science is not here to make us feel good. It is to answer questions in the service of knowledge and greater understanding.

In finding out the extent to which genes influence moral behaviour, we shall also be able to understand how genes influence intellectual capacities. Right now, at my institute in the US we are working on gene-caused failures in brain development that frequently lead to autism and schizophrenia. We may also find that differences in these respective brain development genes also lead to differences in our abilities to carry out different mental tasks.

In some cases, how these genes function may help us to understand variations in IQ, or why some people excel at poetry but are terrible at mathematics. All too often people with high mathematical abilities have autistic traits. The same gene that gives some people such great mathematical abilities may also lead to autistic behaviour. This is why, in studying autism and schizophrenia, we believe that we shall come very close to a better understanding of intelligence and, therefore, of the differences in intelligence.

We do not yet adequately understand the way in which the different environments in the world have selected over time the genes which determine our capacity to do different things. The overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity. It may well be. But simply wanting this to be the case is not enough. This is not science.

To question this is not to give in to racism. This is not a discussion about superiority or inferiority, it is about seeking to understand differences, about why some of us are great musicians and others great engineers. It is very likely that at least some 10 to 15 years will pass before we get an adequate understanding for the relative importance of nature versus nurture in the achievement of important human objectives. Until then, we as scientists, wherever we wish to place ourselves in this great debate, should take care in claiming what are unarguable truths without the support of evidence.

The writer, a Nobel prizewinner for his part in unraveling DNA, is chairman of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the United States

    James Watson: To question genetic intelligence is not racism, I, 19.10.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article3075642.ece

Leading Article:

Inhumanity, hypocrisy,

and a policy that shames Britain

Published: 05 October 2007
The Independent

The Government's policy for removing asylum-seekers is under the spotlight as never before. We report today chilling allegations of brutality by immigration officers against deportees. And yesterday the Home Office asked the Law Lords to overturn a Court of Appeal ruling concerning the fate of three asylum-seekers from Darfur.

The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal had originally decreed that the three men should be sent back to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, because there was no likelihood that they would be persecuted on their return. That ruling was subsequently struck down by the Appeal Court, which ruled that, although it agreed with the Home Office that there was no risk of persecution, terrible conditions in the refugee camps around the capital made it inhumane to order their resettlement there.

The Appeal Court was wrong about the risk of persecution. Compelling testimony gathered by the Aegis Trust charity demonstrates that Darfuri asylum-seekers who have been returned to Khartoum have been tortured by the Sudanese security services. The Immigration Minister, Liam Byrne, has ordered a review of UK deportation policy in response to this evidence. But that has not stopped the Government's challenge to the Court of Appeal ruling going ahead. And the Home Office has pointed out that the act of instituting a review is no guarantee that policy will change.

It would be an outrage if the Law Lords were to rule in the Home Office's favour. But the fact that the case has even been brought is already a terrible indictment of the Government. Last week, Gordon Brown stood up at the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth and condemned the Sudanese government for its treatment of the people of Darfur. But, at the same time, his ministers were trying to deliver refugees back into the clutches of that very regime. It is impossible to believe that Mr Brown does not know what is going in his Government, so his refusal to intervene must be taken as evidence that he agrees with what the Home Office is doing. Hypocrisy of this sort is one of the reasons people are so disillusioned with party politics.

No one disputes the facts. Since 2003, some 85,000 people have been killed in Darfur as part of a policy of ethnic cleansing by the Sudanese government. A further 200,000 have died from hunger and disease. More than two million have fled their homes. Khartoum's policy has been described as "genocidal" by the former US Secretary of State, Colin Powell. And yet our own Government persists in attempting to send people back to this nightmare. It is an insult to our intelligence for ministers to argue that Darfuris can be safely deported to Khartoum at the same time as they are condemning the Sudanese government for causing a humanitarian crisis.

It is by no means just Sudanese refugees who are on the receiving end of the Government's hypocrisy. A number of Burmese refugees face the threat of deportation, even as the ruling junta represses brutally mass protests in that country. Last month Mr Brown refused to attend an EU-African summit unless the Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe, is barred from attending. But Mr Brown's Home Office has been blithely sending refugees back to Zimbabwe. Asylum-seekers have also been deported to Iraq.

What lies behind this inhumanity? The Government wants to boost the deportation figures so it can win plaudits from the right-wing press for being "tough" on matters of immigration. The treatment of those who have fled here under threat of death in their home country, or merely in search of a better life, shames our government. It also shames Britain.

    Leading Article: Inhumanity, hypocrisy, and a policy that shames Britain, I, 5.10.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article3028690.ece

British guards

'assault and racially abuse' deportees

Published: 05 October 2007
The Independent
By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
 

Hundreds of failed asylum-seekers deported from the United Kingdom have been beaten and racially abused by British escort teams who are paid to take them back to their home countries,

The scale of the alleged abuse has been uncovered in a joint investigation by The Independent and a group co-ordinating the representation and medical care of failed asylum-seekers.

A dossier of 200 cases, collated by doctors, lawyers, immigration centre visitors and campaign groups over the past two years, has unearthed shocking claims of physical and mental mistreatment of some of the most vulnerable people in our asylum system.

Many of the claims include allegations of physical and sexual assault and racist abuse which took place during the long journey from Britain to their home countries.

One of the cases of alleged abuse is that of Armand Tchuibeu, a Cameroon national who claimed asylum in the United Kingdom in February 2000. His application was refused last year. He was then arrested and prepared for removal.

On 29 January 2007 he was collected from Tinsley House removal centre in East Sussex by four escort officers who drove him to Heathrow to catch a 9pm flight to Cameroon, as pictured on the front page from CCTV footage inside the van.

He claims handcuffs were applied to his right arm. Mr Tchuibeu says he told the guards that there was no need to handcuff him as he had no intention of obstructing his removal. But he alleges that officers started to manhandle him and, while his arms were held, one of the officers punched him in his ribs and on his neck and told him words to the effect "You will go to your fucking country today, we will fucking show you what illegal people deserve in our country". Another officer is alleged to have held his head down so they could apply a leg strap.

Eventually, Mr Tchuibeu convinced the escort officers he had been injured and the deportation was aborted. Mr Tchuibeu was taken to the Hillingdon Hospital where he was examined and treated. His knee was placed in a cylinder cast which he wore for four weeks.

Mr Tchuibeu, who is being represented by the London solicitors Birnberg Peirce, is now bringing a civil claim for assault against the security company.

The authors of the 200-case dossier accuse the Government of turning a blind eye to the abuse in order to meet arbitrary targets for the forced repatriation of asylum-seekers.

They say some of the cases they are investigating are worse than the torture and abuse the refugee suffered before making their asylum claim in this country.

In nearly every case, the allegation of mistreatment is made against private security contractors employed by the Government to carry out enforced removals of asylum-seekers.

Mr Tchuibeu appears to be far from an isolated case.

Milton Apollo Okello, 25, who was tortured by the Ugandan security services, claims that, after his asylum claim was rejected, he was frogmarched on to a plane and tied to his seat by British guards.

But when word came through that he had won an eleventh-hour reprieve, Mr Okello claims he was taken to a van and beaten and racially abused. Mr Okello said: "The driver opened the sliding door and I was pushed into the middle of the seat. Two of the officers got on one side of me and the others came in on the other side. Officer A then punched me hard in the face and he said "These black monkeys don't want to go back to their country ..."

A 24-year-old man who escaped to Britain after being imprisoned and tortured in the Republic of Congo claims that when he refused to sign a document presented to him by his escorts, three of them forced both hands backwards. One of the escorts is said to have told him: "This is the key to going home."

A doctor who later conducted an examination of Mr A, wrote: "The fourth metacarpal of the left hand has undoubtedly suffered a fracture. This is highly consistent with excessive use of force during or after a failed attempt to remove him from the UK."

Dr Frank Arnold, a volunteer doctor with the Medical Justice Network, who has examined more than 100 detained asylum-seekers, says many of the injuries suffered during removal are not taken seriously enough by the British immigration authorities.

He said: "Some of these injuries have been so bad that police officers who saw them appear to have been genuinely shocked. But it is my experience that medical staff who examine asylum-seekers when they are taken back into detention have greatly underestimated the severity of the injuries, including fractures and nerve damage from forcible traction on handcuffs."

In the past two years government figures show that 1,173 attempts to remove failed asylum-seekers, such ase Mr Tchuibeu have failed.

The majority of those are due to the disruptive behaviour of the detainee on board the aircraft or because of an eleventh-hour judicial intervention. But others fail because of injuries suffered or the deterioration in the physical or mental health of the asylum-seeker during the removal process.

Last month Mr Tchuibeu was returned to the Cameroon. After a police investigation, no one has been charged with an offence. The company denies the allegations of brutality made against its staff.

A spokesman for the Border and Immigration Agency which contracts the security companies to help carry out the removals said: "Any allegations of misconduct are thoroughly investigated and all allegations of physical and racial abuse are referred to the police."

Three security firms are on the Government's approved list for the forced removal of failed asylum-seekers. They are Group4Securicor, International Training Academy and GEO, an American company

A spokesman said Group4- Securicor was aware of complaints made but said they had never been proven – adding the company would condemn any such action. GEO and International Training Academy both declined to comment.

Terror of Flight 101: An echo of Orwell

The flight leaves Heathrow airport's Terminal Four, every Wednesday bearing the number KQ101. The echo of George Orwell's Room 101 is unhappily appropriate. On this Kenya Airways jet, many asylum-seekers' worst nightmares do come true. KQ101 is the deportation flight chartered by the British Government to return refugees to Africa. According to human rights groups, this flight carries out the most Africa-bound removals of unsuccessful asylum applicants to the UK. It has also become a flight that has attracted allegations of abuse by guards. From Nairobi the detainees are flown all over Africa where they are handed over to security and immigration authorities.

Last night the Home Office said it had a number of contracts with airlines for scheduled and charter flights which involved the removal of failed asylum-seekers. A spokeswoman from Kenya Airways confirmed it had a contract with the Government to fly failed asylum seekers to Africa. "We have not received any complaints about these flights," she said.

    British guards 'assault and racially abuse' deportees, I, 5.10.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article3028727.ece

Beaten, bleeding

- and then returned in a wheelchair

Published: 05 October 2007
The Independent
By Robert Verkaik

They came for Beatrice in the middle of the night, an immigration officer, three security guards and a male doctor.

From Yarl's Wood detention centre, in Clapham, Bedfordshire, they led the 29-year-old failed asylum-seeker into a waiting car, drove her to Southampton airport and hurried on to the plane.

She sat quietly in the end row in handcuffs and leg bindings. But when she complained that she was not feeling well she claims was told by one of the escorts: "If you do not go quietly we will beat you." Another is alleged to have said: "I'm very sorry but I have to do it, if we don't bring you to Cameroon they won't pay us."

She started to protest. "They are forcing me," she shouted to the other passengers. The doctor and the female security guard forced her head down into her knees, and covered her head with a jacket. Another escort clamped his hand over her mouth and kicked her legs.

As they moved into the airport at Paris, where she was to transfer to another flight, she saw two French policemen, panicked, and tried to run, but was tripped by an escort and fell. A French policeman knelt on her lower back, and a British escort on her shoulders. She struggled and was "kneed" in the groin so hard blood that poured from between her legs. On the flight to Cameroon, she suffered five panic attacks. By now her condition had attracted the attention of the other passengers, one of whom was a British policeman visiting Cameroon. When the plane touched down the policeman and two other passengers reported Beatrice to Cameroon immigration.

Witnesses claim the airport manager was visibly shocked when she saw Beatrice slumped between the shoulders of two of the escort team. The manager asked them to let Beatrice walk alone without support but Beatrice immediately collapsed on the floor.

She was told by a Cameroon immigration officer: "Normally you would go to the Cameroon prison. But if you died in prison, they would blame it on the Cameroon authorities. If you come back without psychiatric medication, and without injury, we can send you to the prison. Also you have no one to pay for treatment in Cameroon."

At this point the escort team is alleged to have offered to pay $300 to the immigration authorities, but this was refused. At 11pm on 28 August Beatrice was put in a wheelchair and flown back to Britain.

When Beatrice arrived at Heathrow she was immediately taken by ambulance to Hillingdon Hospital, where she was treated for severe genital bleeding and multiple bruising over her body. A psychiatrist said she was "traumatised by events". Beatrice remains at Yarl's Wood waiting for the Government to begin her removal process again.

Beaten, bleeding - and then returned in a wheelchair, I, 5.10.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article3028716.ece

Emma Ginn:

'It is easy to abuse

when a victim is out of sight'

Published: 05 October 2007
The Independent

For most of us, airports are exciting. We are usually off to a sunny beach, a family reunion or a business meeting – fidgeting in the check-in queue, desperate not to miss our flight. But, for the minority of passengers who are kept out of sight of the tourists and business travellers, airports are terrifying. They are desperate not to get on the plane. These are the unnamed, "invisible" people that the Immigration minister, Liam Byrne, gleefully referred to on Newsnight last week, saying: "We remove someone every eight minutes." Unbelievably, there are targets on deportations to satisfy voters that the Government is taking a robust line against the "illegals" apparently flooding the country.

Deportees include asylum-seekers who have been tortured and endured perilous journeys to Britain, only to be locked up here. They may fear further persecution once a plane lands "back home". Others, however, have never been "back home" and were born and raised here.

Deportees are taken from oppressive immigration removal centres to airports in blacked-out vans. Brutal "immigration escorts" from private companies often drag the desperate deportee across the runway as he or she screams in terror, then bundles them on to the aircraft in restraints. As the cabin crew advises willing passengers to sit back and relax, the unwilling may be covered by a blanket, with held down between their legs by their escort. They may be warned not to jeopardise the escort's "bounty" payment, which the Home Office calls "overtime".

Accounts of what escorts do to earn their "bounty" is scant. They are allowed to use "reasonable force" but what is "reasonable"? A prison ombudsman's team watched a video of control and restraint techniques used on a female detainee. They reported: "An officer twisted her neck and kept twisting her wrists and swore at her while another officer put his/her hand in her mouth so she could not breathe." However, the team concluded: "It was clear that everything was done in line with proper procedures."

It is easy to abuse when the victim is deported out of sight, out of mind. How can you complain from Congo if you are in hiding, in a prison cell, or a coffin ?

The Government does not monitor the safety of its deportees. Silence makes us complicit. Air crew who witness abuse of their passengers should intervene, get the deportee off the plane and complain to their employer. Customers should challenge airlines to refuse forcibly to deport asylum-seekers, however handsomely they are paid for doing the Government's dirty work.
 

Emma Ginn works for the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns

    Emma Ginn: 'It is easy to abuse when a victim is out of sight', I, 5.10.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article3028726.ece