Corporation says Krish Kandiah’s criticism of senior Tory not appropriate for faith-based radio segment
The BBC has apologised and retrospectively edited a segment of Radio 4’s Thought for the Day after the head of a refugee foundation described comments by Robert Jenrick about asylum seekers as “xenophobia”.
The remarks by Krish Kandiah, a theologian who heads the Sanctuary Foundation, prompted an angry response from Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary. The BBC said it had removed “some of the language used” by Kandiah from a version posted online, saying it was not appropriate for the faith-based radio segment.
However, Alf Dubs, a Labour peer who came to the UK as a child refugee, said he believed xenophobia was an accurate description of Jenrick’s comments in the Mail on Sunday last weekend in which Jenrick said the arrival of asylum seekers on small boats made him fear for his daughters’ safety and that he would not want them as neighbours.
Speaking on Wednesday’s episode of the Today programme, Kandiah quoted from the Mail on Sunday. “[Jenrick] said: ‘I certainly don’t want my children to share a neighbourhood with men from backward countries who broke into Britain illegally, and about whom we know next to nothing.’ These words echo a fear many have absorbed. Fear of the stranger. The technical name for this is xenophobia.”
