4 ms·

Let's see how the authorities react to such hostage-taking. If they do nothing quickly then, yes, it is a very bad thing for the country notoriety

• pfdietz 7y ago
  It would be an act of war against the UK.
  • Silhouette 7y ago
    It feels like that ought to be inflammatory and hyperbolic, but honestly, I was wondering the same thing myself last night. If you're the British government, and your citizens who are legitimately in a foreign country, travelling on valid passports and doing nothing wrong, are being forcibly detained, and if the local authorities are not stepping in to try to resolve the situation in some reasonable way, how do you treat that situation? On the one hand, you presumably want to be diplomatic when dealing with another nation. Certainly you don't want to escalate any potentially violent stand-off unnecessarily. On the other hand, the basic facts are that those are your people and they're in trouble through no fault of their own. Isn't your first responsibility to protect them and get them safely home if need be? At some point, there will inevitably be a very serious discussion about how far you need to go to do that, and that discussion will consider deploying scary people with weapons in another country, which most certainly is an act of war.
    • Symbiote 7y ago
      If this isn't resolved, staff from the British Embassy will show up, and the local police will probably think again — or be instructed by the national police or their government.
      • Silhouette 7y ago
        There was a vague reference to Embassy staff becoming involved in some way in at least one of the reports I read earlier today, but it wasn't clear exactly what happened.