Tasneem Ali spoke on behalf of Stop the War Scotland at the rally following the STUC’s 2019 St Andrew’s Day Anti-Racist March

Here’s the text of her speech.

Lets take a quick look at the world we live in today.

After years of the war on terror promising to make our world safer,  we find the world a much more dangerous place, whole regions devastated, more than a million killed, a whole generation scarred, millions more displaced from their homes, racism on the rise and migration on the increase.

Victims of war leave their war torn countries, destroyed and polluted by greedy companies who get rich by making massive profits from selling weapons of war to dictators. Here in the Uk, the Westminister government supports and subsidises  wars around the world, with Scotland contributing to around 30% of the economic industry associated with this trade in death.

Innocent men, women and children are forced to leave their lands to go to refugee camps, through no fault of their own, where they live a demeaning life of handouts.

If they are lucky enough to come to one the the western countries, instead of security, they find hostility and fear as far right governments fuel hatred amongst our communities.

We live in a world where our so called leaders make false promises, making communities believe they are working for the people when actually, their vision is to keep us occupied with daily struggles, while they to use their powers to manipulate laws for their own materialistic gains.

And its not like we here in Britain don‘t get affected,

We have had to live with fueling of hate, especially towards our diverse Muslim community, right from the top.

Former Prime Minister David Cameron, in one of his many hateful speeches about
Muslims and extremism , he most famously proposed that Muslim women
(specifically) should learn English to help tackle extremism stereotyping us as “traditionally submissive”.

He might have learned a lesson or two if he came to meet our Muslim women’s group!

Boris Johnson continues this hate fueling and has made Islamophobic comments about Muslim women that he has never apologised for.

The Tory party deny Islamophobia within their party and do not take reports seriously.

Along with eroding our public services, NHS, Education and services for women and children with over 10 years of Austerity,  the Tories hold racist and dangerous views towards minority groups in Britain.

Boris Johnson has no clear policies but is willing to change his views just to advantage his career at the expense of the people of the UK.

He is making alliances with “Muslim-Ban” Trump who has shaken hands with Modi of India despite Modi being previously banned from USA for his crimes in Gujerat.

On the 3rd and 4th of December NATO will mark its 70th anniversary with a Heads of State Summit in London. With Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan set to attend this gathering of the world’s largest nuclear-armed military alliance.

Stop the War is working with other anti-war groups to ensure that there is large-scale opposition in London as they meet together with solidarity protests in Scotland.

We have to make a stand against this relentless move to the Far right in politics across the world.

And we can start right here in Scotland as we stand together, hand in hand to show that racism, discrimination and prejudice has no place in Scotland, or anywhere else in the world, and demand equality, fairness, and justice for all.

And we can start right now, we must use our votes on December 12th as we say

Tories Out!

And here’s the video