YOUR report "Asylum seekers jailed for four months" (September 3) shows what a barbarous country we are becoming.
Seven people seeking asylum in this country "after suffering torture and persecution" are jailed for four months for working in a pizza factory, after having had their benefits and legal aid stopped.
What possible justification is there for this kind of persecution? It puts public servants like Judge Warnock in an invidious position as he cannot refuse to apply the law, however unjust it might be. I am not surprised he allowed his discomfort to show when he said the defendants were "fundamentally honest people" and should serve only half their sentences.
These people are desperate. As for their using forged documents simply to obtain work, what else do you expect them to do? It is all too clear what is happening: in order to cut down on the number of asylum seekers, people who have genuinely fled persecution are increasingly adjudged not to have done so by officials acting under government pressure who have little knowledge of the situation in the country concerned.
It is high time the Prime Minister took his much advertised Christianity more seriously. At the moment it looks perilously like a mere fashion statement.
Malcolm Pittock
St James Avenue
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