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More than 130 refugee and human rights organisations have called on Keir Starmer to stop using language that demonises migrants, after he made controversial remarks before an international people-smuggling summit.

The criticisms are contained in a letter to the UK prime minister, coordinated by the campaign coalition Together With Refugees. It has been sent to the prime minister in response to comments he made before the Organised Immigration Crime Summit on 31 March, where more than 40 countries came together in London to focus on tackling organised immigration crime including people-smuggling gangs.

Starmer said: “But we all pay the price for insecure borders – from the cost of accommodating migrants to the strain on our public services. It is a basic question of fairness.”

In an open letter to the prime minister, the organisations say: “Now is not the time to play into the hands of those seeking to build them-and-us division between local communities and refugees. It is the time to move away from the hostile politics, racist rhetoric and demonising language of the past and unite our communities for a different way forward.”

The 136 signatories are from a range of organisations across the UK including City of Sanctuary UK, Choose Love, Freedom from Torture, One Strong Voice, Rainbow Migration, Refugee Action, Refugee Council, Safe Passage International, Scottish Refugee Council, Welsh Refugee Council and the Public and Commercial Services Union.

The letter states: “You told us this week that immigration ‘is a basic question of fairness’. We agree. But the searing experiences of last summer, when hate-filled mobs tried to burn down hotels hosting asylum seekers, make it clear that the path to fairness is not to be found in those pitting local communities against refugees seeking safety from persecution and war.”

The letter also responds to the summit’s focus on targeting smuggling gangs, saying: “Rather than the border security summit’s focus on expensive new ways to disrupt people smugglers, often making the journey more dangerous for refugees, the government should be looking at safe routes for refugees to get here without risking their lives.”

Tim Naor Hilton, the chief executive of Refugee Action, said: “We need the prime minister and his government to be brave and ditch the divisive language that scapegoats migrants, including refugees and people seeking asylum.

“Hostile policies and rhetoric risk fuelling more of the racist, Islamophobic and anti-immigrant riots that tore through our communities last summer.

“The government must use language that focuses on unity and community resilience, and develop a new asylum system that is grounded in rights and justice.”

Nico Ndlovu, a signatory and the representative of the lived experience campaign group One Strong Voice, said: “The prime minister’s words this week make no recognition of our suffering and why we desperately need to find safety, or our contribution to this country, its economy and culture.

“It’s painful to hear him add his voice to this kind of hostile rhetoric. Rather than this summit’s narrow and expensive focus on people smugglers we need a proper vision for the asylum system, with a plan that is fair, compassionate and well managed.”

The letter calls for a new plan for refugees that is compassionate and well managed including fair, rapid decisions on their application for asylum, and the chance to rebuild their lives, stronger global cooperation to tackle the root causes that force people to flee their homes and safe routes for refugees.

A government spokesperson said: “As the prime minister made clear, there is nothing compassionate about turning a blind eye to the vile gangs who ruthlessly exploit vulnerable people and trade in human misery. This is why we have launched an unprecedented global fight against these criminals to secure our borders as part of our plan for change.”

A war crimes complaint against 10 Britons who served with the Israeli military in Gaza is to be submitted to the Met police by one of the UK’s leading human rights lawyers.

Michael Mansfield KC is one of a group of lawyers who will on Monday hand in a 240-page dossier to Scotland Yard’s war crimes unit alleging targeted killing of civilians and aid workers, including by sniper fire, and indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, including hospitals.

The report, which has been prepared by a team of UK lawyers and researchers in The Hague, also accuses suspects of coordinated attacks on protected sites including historic monuments and religious sites, and forced transfer and displacement of civilians.

For legal reasons, neither the names of suspects, who include officer-level individuals, nor the full report are being made public.

Israel has persistently denied that its political leaders or military have committed war crimes during its assault on Gaza, in which it has killed more than 50,000 people, most of them civilians. The military campaign was in response to Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which more than 1,200 people, also mostly civilian, were killed and a further 250 taken hostage.

Mansfield, who is known for his work on landmark cases such as the Grenfell Tower fire, Stephen Lawrence and the Birmingham Six, said: “​If one of our nationals is committing ​an offence, we ought to be doing something about it​. Even if we can’t stop the government of foreign countries behaving badly, we can at least stop our nationals from behaving badly.

“British nationals are under a legal obligation not to collude with crimes committed in Palestine. No one is above the law.”

The report, which has been submitted on behalf of the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and the British-based Public Interest Law Centre (PILC), covers alleged offences committed in the territory from October 2023 to May 2024 and took six months to compile.

Each of the crimes attributed to the 10 suspects, some of whom are dual nationals, amounts to a war crime or crime against humanity, according to the report.

One witness, who was at a medical facility, saw corpses “scattered on the ground, especially in the middle of the hospital courtyard, where many dead bodies were buried in a mass grave”. A bulldozer “ran over a dead body in a horrific and heart-wrenching scene desecrating the dead”, the witness said. They also said a bulldozer demolished part of the hospital.

Sean Summerfield, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, who helped compile the dossier, said it was based on open-source evidence and witness testimony, which together presented a “compelling” case.

“The public will be shocked, I would have thought, to hear that there’s credible evidence that Brits have been directly involved in committing some of those atrocities,” he said, adding that the team wanted to see individuals “appearing at the Old Bailey to answer for atrocity crimes”.

The report says Britain has a responsibility under international treaties to investigate and prosecute those who have committed “core international crimes”.

Section 51 of the International Criminal Court Act 2001 states that it “is an offence against the law of England and Wales for a person to commit genocide, a crime against humanity, or a war crime”, even if it takes place in another country.

Raji Sourani, the director of the PCHR, said: “​This is illegal, this is inhuman and​ enough is enough. The government cannot say we didn’t know; we are providing them with all ​the evidence.”

Paul Heron, the legal director of the PILC, said: “We’re filing our report to make clear these war crimes are not in our name.”

Scores of legal and human rights experts have signed a letter of support urging the war crimes team to investigate the complaints.

The UK’s foreign secretary has criticised Israeli authorities for denying two Labour MPs entry into the country and deporting them.

Yuan Yang and Abtisam Mohamed were rejected because they were suspected of plans to “document the activities of security forces and spread anti-Israel hatred”, according to a statement from the Israeli immigration ministry cited by Sky News and Politics UK.

Yang, who represents Earley and Woodley in Berkshire, and Mohamed, the MP for Sheffield Central, both flew into Ben Gurion airport from Luton with their aides, according to reports.

The foreign secretary, David Lammy, said in a statement on Saturday: “It is unacceptable, counterproductive, and deeply concerning that two British MPs on a parliamentary delegation to Israel have been detained and refused entry by the Israeli authorities.

“I have made clear to my counterparts in the Israeli government that this is no way to treat British parliamentarians, and we have been in contact with both MPs tonight to offer our support.

“The UK government’s focus remains securing a return to the ceasefire and negotiations to stop the bloodshed, free the hostages and end the conflict in Gaza.”

Since renewed military operations last month ended a short-lived truce in its war with Hamas, Israel has pushed to seize territory in the Gaza Strip in what it said was a strategy to force militants to free hostages still in captivity.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said 1,249 people have been killed since Israel resumed intense bombing last month, bringing the overall death toll since the war began to 50,609.

The 7 October 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war resulted in 1,218 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

An Afghan woman who risked her life to defend human rights in her home country before fleeing to the UK has been told by the Home Office it is safe for her to return after officials rejected her asylum claim.

Mina (not her real name) worked for western government-backed projects and was involved in training and mentoring women across Afghanistan, which left her in grave danger even before the Taliban took over in 2021.

“I assumed my asylum claim would be granted – I am from Afghanistan, I’m a woman, I worked with western governments,” said Mina. “The refusal was an absolute shock. Now every day I fear being sent back to my home country. Having a normal life here looks like a dream for me. I’m really suffering mentally.

“When I was working with western government projects I received security training about how to respond if I was caught up in a bombing or a kidnapping. Every day I was a few minutes or a few seconds away from bomb blasts.

“My heart beat so fast when I had to pass the checkpoints. Every morning when I said goodbye to my family to go to work I thought it might be the last time I saw them,” she said. “Some of my colleagues just disappeared. The Taliban changed the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to the Ministry of Vice and Virtue – proper, systematic elimination of women.”

The Home Office has previously generally accepted protection claims from women like Mina who could be targeted by the Taliban because of their high-profile work empowering women and who have provided evidence of their work with western government projects.

But in the most recent data for the last three months of 2024 immigration statistics show 26 Afghan women had their claims rejected. Overall 2,000 Afghan asylum seekers had their claims refused, an increase from 48 in the same quarter of 2023. The grant rate for Afghan cases has gone down from 98.5% in the last quarter of 2023 to 36% in the last quarter of 2024.

The 2025 Human Rights Watch report into Afghanistan documents a serious deterioration in the rights of girls and women and an increase in risks to their safety.

Although Mina explained in her Home Office asylum interview of the dangers she faced in Afghanistan because of the work she did a Home Office decision maker who rejected her claim, concluded that: “It is considered that you do not face a real risk of persecution or harm on your return to Afghanistan on the basis of your claimed adverse attention by the Taliban.”

The refusal letter adds: “You likely have a great support network due to your occupation.”

However many of those Mina worked with prior to the Taliban takeover are either in hiding or have fled the country and these support networks have largely been destroyed.

“There are no compassionate factors in your case that warrant a grant of leave to remain outside the immigration rules,” the letter states.

“When I arrived here I felt safe,” Mina said. “I thought I would have a chance to live. In Afghanistan I had not been considered a human. I learnt to ride a bicycle here, something I was not allowed to do in my country. I was really full of hope that my life would change. But someone pressed pause on my life. I hope someone will press play again.”

Her solicitor Jamie Bell of Duncan Lewis said: “It is shocking that 26 Afghan women were refused asylum in the last quarter. However this is a particularly upsetting case where the Home Office states that a woman who risked her life defending women’s rights in Afghanistan would not be at risk on return. The UK should be proud to offer protection to an individual like her. This refusal letter is offensive to all those who defended western values in Afghanistan and who ought to be offered protection when they cannot safely return.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “It is our longstanding policy not to comment on individual cases.”