Josh Fenton-Glynn MP, Ellie Chowns MP, Rachel Blake MP & Yuan Yang MP outside Westminster Meeting House, following worship. Photo: Courtesy of Yuan Yang.
Fellow MPs support deported pair
Yuan Yang has received support from seventy parlimentarians at Westminster Hall
The Quaker MP who was deported from Israel received a show of support last week in a photo call of more than seventy parliamentarians at Westminster Hall.
Yuan Yang, Labour MP for Earley and Woodley, and Abtisam Mohamed, Labour MP for Sheffield Central, were detained and barred from entering the country earlier this month. It was the first time that a British MP had been banned from Israel.
Standing to cheers, Yuan Yang told the gathering that she had understood the risks of travelling in the region but ‘did not anticipate the risks of detention and deportation by a British ally… If my experience has proved anything, it is that what we say in this chamber matters’.
Hamish Falconer, MP for Lincoln and minister for the Middle East, called the travel ban ‘unacceptable’ and said the MPs had initially believed they were going to be detained overnight without their phones. They were eventually released after he and David Lammy, foreign secretary, intervened by speaking to their Israeli counterparts. ‘All members should therefore be worried about what this decision means and the precedent it sets,’ he said.
Yuan Yang recently attended Westminster Meeting House for worship to show support after the police raid. ‘I’m so glad we did,’ she posted on social media. ‘I’ve missed the silence. I shared greetings from Reading Meeting.’
