Nadiya Hussain withdraws from arms-backed event
Nineteen-year-old Quaker Anya Nanning Ramamurthy had previously written to the cookery star urging her to withdraw.
The Great British Bake Off star Nadiya Hussain pulled out of a careers event for young people after teenage peace campaigners pointed out it was sponsored by multinational arms firm BAE Systems.
The celebrity was due to talk at 10:30am on 28 November for the three-day World Skills UK Live online event, but the organisers made a sudden change two days earlier after the event had begun. Nadiya Hussain’s name was later replaced with June Sarpong.
Nineteen-year-old Quaker Anya Nanning Ramamurthy had previously written to the cookery star urging her to withdraw and quoting Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) figures that, since the start of its attacks on Yemen, ‘BAE has sold at least £15 billion in arms and services to the Saudi military’. Others contacted Nadiya Hussain on social media while young people also sent questions objecting to the sponsorship via the chat box throughout the three days. According to the Peace Pledge Union, these were deleted by the organisers.
Anya Nanning Ramamurthy said: ‘I strongly welcome Nadiya’s withdrawal from World Skills UK, which is yet another example of the appalling, manipulative tactics used to militarise young people in Britain. I am glad that Nadiya has stuck to her caring and thoughtful values in rejecting involvement in this unethical event.’
The event was portrayed as a general careers event for young people, yet out of the twenty-four scheduled sessions, ten of them were run by arms companies or parts of the armed forces.
