 |
|
|
Asylum Seekers | 17-02-04
Their lips are sealed
As public resentment of asylum seekers reaches fever
pitch in Britain Neil Hodge
finds asylum seekers forced to sleep on the streets - and to protest.
ON 21 May last year Abbas Amini stood in front of the mirror, looked at his gaunt, haggard face and then pushed a sewing needle and thread through his lips, forming five tight stitches. Steadying himself against the pain, he then bunched up his right ear and pushed the needle through the lobe and top of his ear and tied the thread. He did the same again on his left. All that remained now were the eyes. Within minutes the lids of each had been shut with a solitary stitch. It would be eleven days before a nurse would be allowed to cut them away. It was three days before anyone even noticed what he had done.
|
As his protest ended and the Home Office was forced to accept his refugee status, Sam Azad of the International Federation of Iranian Refugees read out a poem that Abbas had written explaining the reasons for his actions: 'He sewed up his lips so he could speak out. He sewed up his eyes to make others see. He sewed up his ears to make others hear. You whose eyes, ears and mouth are free can hear and speak out.'
A political poet and partisan, Abbas fled from prison in Iran in August 2001, leaving his wife and two children behind. He had little choice. He had just served ten years of a 22-year sentence which he says was handed down because of his opposition to the Government. He fled to Turkey and from there managed to smuggle himself over to Greece, where he stayed for eight months. He then hid on a boat going to Italy and took a train to France, locking himself in the toilets for most of the journey north. He reached England by strapping himself to the bottom of a truck going through the Channel Tunnel. In Dover he gave himself up to the authorities and claimed asylum.
After two years of living in Nottingham and just seven months after being granted leave to remain, Abbas is now trying to arrange for his family to stay but he has had no word of whether this will be possible. He lives on his own in a flat in Sneinton, near the centre of Nottingham, and has been told by his doctor that he has post-traumatic stress disorder - as is the case with many asylum seekers - and should not work. He is only 33 years old.
Now here he was, sitting at a table in the church hall, helping to write a 'thank you' note to the vicar. The thanks was for allowing about 30 people, half of them asylum seekers and refugees, to fast for 48 hours between 8pm on Friday, 9 January, to 8pm the following Sunday in the premises of St. Peter's Church in Nottingham city centre. They were protesting against the treatment of asylum seekers in Nottingham and throughout Great Britain. The fast had been organized by the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum (NNRF) to raise public awareness about the destitution thousands of asylum seekers in Britain face because of the country's immigration laws.
In particular, they were protesting against Section 55 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act which came into force on 8 January last year. Under this, asylum seekers cannot expect financial support unless they can satisfy the Home Office that they applied for asylum 'as soon as reasonably practical', which in reality means within three days of entering Great Britain.
The government hopes that these draconian measures will slash the number of people coming into the country every year to claim asylum. The problem with that logic is that most asylum seekers do not know that they are fleeing to Britain until the lorry doors are opened. All they know is that they have paid to be smuggled to a 'safe country'. It could be anywhere in the European Union.
The vast majority of those asylum seekers taking part in the fast were Kurdish, having arrived in Britain under similar circumstances. They typically make their way to a Turkish port, sleeping down by the harbour for a few days waiting to meet lorry drivers willing to take risks - and up to $20,000 to transport a family to a safe country. They then spend up to 11 days crammed in the back of a truck with perhaps a dozen others hoping to start a new life. They are never told where they are being taken or given any guarantees that they will get there. Because Kurdish people are regularly denied ID cards and passports from their home countries, crossing the border illegally is often their only option.
Around one in five asylum seekers is turned down for financial assistance, and the numbers being refused rose 50 per cent between April and September last year. In the East Midlands - one of the nine regional offices dealing with asylum subsistence - for example, Home Office figures show that just 5,040 out of a total of 43,580 asylum seekers are being given financial assistance. And there are no safe figures for how many asylum seekers there might be in Britain that have not registered their application and are therefore living on their own means, but it is certainly many times the total number receiving state money.
Many asylum seekers wait years for their claims to be processed. Without sufficient - if any - financial aid, many are now forced to live rough and rely on handouts to survive. Gary Freeman, a member of the NNRF and one of the organizers of the fast, said that a local church recently issued 69 food parcels to asylum seekers in the city who otherwise faced starvation One such was sleeping in recycling bins, he said.
There is no shortage of similar stories. A Kosovan asylum seeker in his fifties in Nottingham recently had his support taken away and he now sleeps in a corridor in a housing agency at night. The staff allow him to sleep there as he has a serious mental illness. A Palestinian asylum seeker has been forced to sleep rough in allotment sheds because he is ineligible for financial support under Section 55. An Iraqi asylum seeker has received no financial support for the entire nine months that he has been based in Nottingham. His only possessions are the same set of clothes that he arrived in.
The endless wait
But even those asylum seekers in receipt of aid are not free from problems.
Waiting in limbo for years in the hope of a positive adjudication, many suffer
from stress, psychological problems and illness through poor diet and living
conditions.
Ibrahim, a Turkish Kurd, was one of the oldest of the fasters. He arrived in England three years ago and moved to Nottingham in 2002 after spending a year in London. He lives north of the city centre in a house in Hyson Green with his wife and four children. He says that he was forced to leave Turkey because he was being persecuted by the Turkish police for being a Kurd and allegedly paying money and giving shelter to Kurdish guerrillas in eastern Turkey. His claim for refugee status was refused over a year ago, but his wife's claim has yet to be heard.
Mazlum, another Turkish Kurd whose younger daughter was born here nearly two years ago, has also had his application for refugee status turned down but remains here because of bureaucratic wrangling. The adjudicator overseeing his case denied him leave to remain as a refugee, but said that he should be treated for his post-traumatic stress disorder before being returned to Turkey, caused through severe torture at the hands of the Turkish police, prison guards and army, as well as the difficulties of trying to prove his claim. The Home Office then stepped in and said that it was not within the judge's powers to recommend medical treatment, and so the whole process is set to start again. He has been living in Nottingham for three years so far.
Double standards
Mazlum, Ibrahim and others are puzzled at how the British Government can criticize
the human rights records of countries like Turkey for their treatment of Kurdish
minorities, while refusing to accept their oppression once they arrive pleading
for asylum. An Iraqi Kurdish man called Jasim who was awarded refugee status
and leave to remain in June 2001 told me: 'The main countries where asylum seekers
are coming from, such as Iran, Iraq, Turkey and China, are well known here for
their human rights abuses and the UK Government has criticized these regimes.
If the Government knows about these abuses, why is it then so difficult to grant
these people refugee status?'
The local MP John Heppell did not respond to the NNRF's request for support, but Alan Simpson, Labour MP for Nottingham South, visited the fast. He wrote in the NNRF's notebook: 'Called in to pledge support and solidarity. Overwhelmed by two things: the numbers and optimism of those doing the fast, and the terrible, terrible details of how those hit by Section 55 have to survive on a day-to-day basis. It is an affront to our common humanity.'
NOTE: Cheques for donations towards the destitution fund are payable to NNRF and should be addressed to the Treasurer, NNRF, 118 Mansfield Road, Nottingham, NG1 3HL. If you are a taxpayer, please signify that you would like to reclaim Gift Aid.
Neil Hodge is a
freelance journalist based in Great Britain.
It's time to Act & Resist!
See also: NI
Issue 350 Refugees: The
case for open borders especially
and these recent articles:
Refugees' credit group success, Lebanon (#345-2002 May p3)
Basic obstacle to Middle East peace (#343-2002 Mar p3)
Plight of Afghan refugees in Australia (#343-2002 Mar p8)
No refuge likely for Afghani refugees (#340-2001 Nov p16)
Palestinian's passionate study of lost village (#336-2001 Jul p3)
Photos by Bhutanese refugees in Nepal (#334-2001 May p7)
Asylum seekers abused in Australian camp (#332-2001 Mar p6)
Migrant in the mirror: our own past made flesh (#327-2000 Sep p34)
New signs of popular democracy in South (#324-2000 Jun p20)
Secrets of Aceh's hidden war, Indonesia (#318-1999 Nov p14)
Albania's Kosovar refugee crisis (#317-1999 Oct p31)
ni | home | contact
us