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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sri_lion" data-source="post: 1351117" data-attributes="member: 4103">Britain and the shameful virginity testsWhen various British diplomats, MPs and other professionals are condemning the human rights record of Sri Lanka, it is pertinent to ask them about their own record on this subject. Perhaps they may have forgotten the shameful virginity tests that the British Government carried out on women from Asian and African countries at Heathrow Airport just 3 decades ago.Many Asian and African women who arrived to marry Asian or African men living in Britain were subject to tests at Heathrow Airport, to find out whether they indeed were virgins! If they failed the virginity tests, they were told, “Go back young lady. You are not a virgin. According to the custom prevailing in your countries, a woman’s virginity should be intact until the wedding night. So we can’t allow you to enter Britain.” So immigration authorities became great moralists as well!Were these tests carried out on Caucasian women arriving to marry men living in Britain? Certainly not. So the immigration authorities were practicing nothing but racism.The Guardian newspaper in its issue dated February 1, 1979 published an account of the harrowing experience of an Indian woman when her virginity was tested at the Heathrow Airport. “I have been feeling very bad ever since. I was very embarrassed and upset,” she has said.In a report entitled “From England—with Love,” by the staff of Portrait of India, a division of India Heritage Research Foundation says, “This…was a heinous act passed under immigration law for full three years, 1979-1982 when Mrs. Margaret Thatcher a ‘noble woman and Iron Lady’ was the Prime Minister of England and another ‘noble lady Queen Elizabeth’ was the Head of State.”Hannana Siddiqui, writing in the Feminist Review (Volume 64. April 2000) points out, “Our campaign against virginity testing of Asian women at Heathrow Airport were framed in terms of criticizing racist immigration practices against minority communities rather than violation of black women’s bodies by the racist state.”So this is the country that is pontificating to countries like Sri Lanka as to how to uphold human rights!<a href="http://www.asiantribune.com/?q=node/9465" target="_blank">Source</a></blockquote>

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