Thread

GASLIGHT, v: to manipulate by psychological means causing a person to doubt their own sanity.

This is a thread about an ongoing limb of the #WindrushInjustice that isn’t well reported + remains under the radar as a result: passport confiscation. @WindrushLives [1/21]

There is a contingent of Windrush victims that we don’t talk about. They are British-born, British passport-holding Black people with Windrush parentage, who have had their British passports *taken away* by @ukhomeoffice for the legally valid reason of [*crickets*]. [2/21]

In the next 5 tweets, you will see the unbelievable story of Carl Nwazota. This will be the most shocking and enraging 10 minutes of your day, for a number of reasons which we’ll go into down thread. Please give this your undivided attention. [3/21]

In part 1, Carl explains how this started - he applied to renew his British passport in 2001. (NB: a quick note on the intersection of race and nationality - if you’re white, I, a Brown woman in this instance, invite you to consider whether this might happen to you.) [4/21]

From here on, you are about to witness a pattern of gaslighting so viciously and thoroughly brazen that it ought to supplant the accepted definition of the term. @ukhomeoffice actions are often described as Kafkaesque. This is something much, much worse. @WindrushLives [5/21]

One of Sajid Javid's more half-baked attempts at doing right by the Windrush generation was the Vulnerable Persons Team, a unit which was set up to provide emergency help to victims in crisis. We @WindrushLives understand Priti Patel has disbanded it. Not that it did much. [6/21]

What he’s saying in the previous flags up another intersection. We’re aware of 2 cases where people of African Windrush parentage have been marginalised in this way. Carl’s African name + lack of British passport = outcast status in the UK, in the 2010s. [7/21]