Compensation claims evaluated partly on race.

The case of 83-year-old Diana Elias has drawn attention to the racist attitudes of the ministry of defence.

Diana was born in Hong Kong to Indian and Iraqi parents who both had British citizenship and held British passports.

At age 17, Elias was singled out along with other Britons living in Hong Kong by the Japanese for internment in the Stanley prisoners Camp. She spent four years in the camp and the ordeal exacted a high price on the health of her entire family.

In November 2000 the government announced a £167m compensation scheme for British civilians interned by the Japanese during the Second World War with each receiving £10,000 as a 'debt of honour'.

Several months after details of the scheme were published, the government decreed that claimants should show a 'blood link' with this country, disqualifying up to 2,400 whose forebears worked and lived in the Far East, often for the Armed Forces or the colonial administration.

The UK government however have told Diana that although she was interred because she was British she is in fact not quite British enough, arguing that she has no 'ancestral connection' to the land of her passport and is therefore not eligible for compensation from the government.

Diana says, 'what this 'blood link' means is that being British is not good enough. You only count if you were born here in the UK, or your family originates from here. If not, then you are another type of British. A type of British whose suffering and rights do not matter one bit. I was born British. I have always been British. My grandparents were British. My father was British and so was my mother. I can remember my father taking great pride in the fact he was British and so was his family. And I was proud to be British. I still am.'

Diana has been campaigning for the past five years to get the UK government to change its mind. This week the Court of Appeal is to decide whether the government was justified in deciding that to qualify as British an individual must have a 'blood link' through birth or ancestry.

The court's verdict will reignite the debate on British citizenship, raising fresh questions over Britain's relationship with the Commonwealth and also threatens to embarrass the MoD amid accusations of racism.

An internal government memo revealed during the case suggested that a person's right to compensation was evaluated partly on race. Written in July 2001 by the former head of the MoD's Veterans Agency, it states: 'It is true to deny we are being racist, but we are in fact including race as deciding factor as part of our eligibility criteria.'

Although Diana did receive £10,000 compensation after she took a separate case to the Parliamentary Ombudsman who ruled the compensation scheme was afflicted by 'maladministration', she is still pursuing the case as the policy based on race, she claims, is perverse.

'I realised it would discriminate in a way that is racist,' said Diana. 'I did not need to go to court to realise that. One of my brothers Charlie, was refused under the same bloodlink rule. He died soon afterwards, considered a second-class type of British by his own country.'

Click here to read the whole article:

View this months news:

View other news:

Source:observer.guardian.co.uk