How British do you need to be?

The Court of Appeal will this week decide if Diana Elias, an 83-year-old widow who was held in a Japanese internment camp during the war, should be denied compensation on grounds of her nationality. Although she was considered British enough to suffer the awful experience of internment at the hands of the Japanese during WWII the government insists she is not quite British enough to be eligible for compensation from the government.

The Court of Appeal will decide whether the government was justified in deciding that to qualify as British an individual must have a 'blood link' through birth or ancestry. Elias was born in the British Empire and has always held a British passport, but the fact that her parents were Indian and Iraqi prompted the Ministry of Defence to claim she did not qualify for a payment scheme for individuals held in Japanese prisoner camps. To receive the payment, the victim's parents have to come from Britain.

Diana Elias is adamant that she has been discriminated against for racial reasons. 'What this "blood link" means is that being British is not good enough. Being interred because you were British is not good enough. You only count if you were born here in the UK, or your family originates from here. If not, then you are another type of British.. I was born British. I have always been British. I was proud to be British. I still am. One of the things that makes me proud to be British and to make this country my home is that people of different races, origins and backgrounds have mixed here and made a success of that. There could not have been more of a mix at my 80th birthday party, but almost all of us were British.'

Elias, was born in Hong Kong. Aged just 17, she was interned in the Stanley Camp. She still remembers being herded into a truck in the dead of night. She spent four years in the camp and the ordeal exacted a high price on the health of her entire family. 'I wake up in the middle of the night, with those thoughts still in my head. It is hard to get back to sleep.'

In November 2000 the government announced a £167m compensation scheme for British civilians interned by the Japanese during the Second World War with each receiving £10,000 as a 'debt of honour'. Several months after details of the scheme were published, the government decreed that claimants should show a 'blood link' with this country, disqualifying up to 2,400 whose forebears worked and lived in the Far East, often for the Armed Forces or the colonial administration.

Last summer Elias did receive £10,000 compensation after she took a separate case to the Parliamentary Ombudsman who ruled the compensation scheme was afflicted by 'maladministration'. She is not now looking for any further recompense from the government, but is still pursuing the case as the policy based on race, she claims, is perverse. The judge is expected to comment on the responsibility of the state to treat its citizens equally.

Diana
Elias