Saturday, December 12, 2015
A petition on the UK government’s website, calling for US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump to be barred from entering the country, has now passed a half-million signatories becoming the most-popular petition ever posted on the site. The signatories include a majority of UK MPs.
The petition was originally submitted late November by campaigner Suzanne Kelly from Aberdeen, preceding Trump’s remarks which prompted the overwhelming response. Kelly, saying her attention was drawn due to concerns over Trump’s golfing developments in the area, noted, “I never in my wildest dreams imagined it would get so many signatures”. Locally, Robert Gordon University have stripped an honorary degree from Trump, and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon removed him from the GlobalScot network of business ambassadors.
Following the tycoon’s call for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, an NBC/WSJ survey found the majority of adults in the United States disagree with him. The remarks also prompted global criticism of Trump.
London mayor Boris Johnson said the demand made him “unfit to hold the office of the president of the United States”. French Prime minister Manuel Valls stated on Twitter, “Mr. Trump, like others, fuels hatred […] our only enemy is radical Islamism.” The director of the American university in Cairo’s Kamal Adham Center for Television and Digital Journalism, Hafez Al Mirazi, said: “What we are getting now is really terrible […] Stuff that only the Ku Klux Klan and others would say.” Kassem Allie, from the Islamic Center of America, accused Trump of evoking fear “reminiscent of Nazi Germany”.
In contrast, a humorous petition calling on NASA to “send Donald Trump into Space and Leave Him There” on the change.org site has exceeded 30,000 signatures. Autumn Boehle from Michigan, who started the petition last Wednesday, says, if the petition garners sufficient signatures, she will provide a link where people can: “donate to make this happen. It wont be cheap, but it will be worth while.”
The petition to ban Donald Trump from the UK, having passed 100,000 signatures, is now eligible for debate in the House of Commons.