We Need To Talk About This.

In July 2024, Mohammed Haroon Jabbar (“D”), a recent arrival from rural Pakistan, sexually assaulted an underage individual (“V”), while it was known that V was both vulnerable and intoxicated. D admitted the offence vis-à-vis The Criminal Code 1872 (“the Code”) and The Sexual Offences and Obscene Publications Act 2021 (“the Act”) during a conversation with another inmate and while on a telephone call to a family member. As a non-native resident of the Isle of Man, D, a restaurant worker, apparently did not believe he had done anything wrong. Nevertheless, D was convicted of four offences in total: (i) one count of assault by penetration (section 5 of the Act); (ii) three counts of sexual activity with a child (section 12 of the Act), and was sentenced to over six years in prison, along with an indefinite sexual harm prevention order and exclusion from the island for a minimum of five years. This case is harrowing for multiple reasons: (a) it showcases the disparity in thinking between indefinite residents of the island and recent arrivals from rural areas from certain countries, including Pakistan; (b) the lack of criminal record-keeping of certain countries, including Pakistan, means that it is almost impossible to deduce an individual’s criminal record or history with their application to enter and remain in the island; and (c) the alternative modes of acceptability within the normative, moral, framework of different cultures and countries. It is the responsibility of the government and the relevant departments which handle entries into our island to ensure they are aware of the laws, customs, religion, culture, and broader society, of our island, rather than minimising the potential detriment caused to those affected by such occurrences, including V. Further, it is crucial to ensure that those entering the island are actively taught about what is legally acceptable and what is not. By not doing so, the dichotomy of our current modes of peace and what the resultant may be with vast entries into the island, in order to give complete efficacy to the government’s plan to drastically increase the population of the island, means that our future society and safekeeping of vulnerable persons may be threatened. Currently, the island is an extremely safe place, in comparison to other parts of the world, and indeed the British Isles. However, if this increase in populace is not safely managed and monitored, it may threaten the safety and wellbeing of many of the most vulnerable persons who reside in the island, along with creating further division amongst those immigrants who are already peacefully residing here. Alternatively, it may be said that job roles which are not ‘qualifying roles,’ such as restaurant workers or bartenders, should not be recruited from outside the British Isles, or the European Union. This is because the cultural framework of both are similar, as opposed to those entrants who may come from distinctively different backgrounds, potentially disrupting the status quo. This point is not made out of ostracism or xenophobia; rather, it is to ensure that the safety of the island is maintained to an extremely high standard, which is what we have come to know and love about it. (It would be foolish to maintain that all cultures are equivalent and equally morally compatible with the life we live on this island, or indeed in Europe, when it clearly is not; for instance, freedom of speech and expression is greatly curbed in certain countries, along with the human rights of LGBT+ individuals, as in countries such as Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. These competing moral frameworks mean that it is a choice to be made by the government to ensure our safety for the years to come, which is of paramount importance to all individuals who reside on the island.)