deportation | ukwatch.net

Britain's terror laws have left me and my family shattered

Ellie Keen — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:48:21 +0000

The UN’s committee on human rights has just published a report criticising Britain’s anti-terror laws and the resulting curbs on civil liberties. For many commentators the issues raised are mostly a matter of academic abstractions and speculative meanderings. For me, it is anything but. These laws have destroyed my life.

On May 14 I was arrested under section 41 of the Terrorism Act – on suspicion of the “instigation, preparation and commission of acts of terrorism”: an absurdly nebulous formulation that told me nothing about the sin I had apparently committed. Once in custody, almost 48 hours passed before it was confirmed that the entire operation (involving dozens of officers, police cars, vans, and scientific support agents) was triggered by the presence on my University of Nottingham office computer of an equally absurd document called the “al-Qaida Training Manual”, a declassified open-source document that I had never read and had completely forgotten about since it had been sent to me months before.

Rizwaan Sabir, a politics student friend of mine (who was also arrested), had downloaded the file from the US justice department website while conducting research on terrorism for his upcoming PhD. An extended version of the same document (which figures on the politics department’s official reading list) was also available on Amazon. I edit a political magazine; Rizwaan regularly sent me copies of research materials he was using, and this document was one.

Within hours of my incarceration I had lost track of time. I often awoke thinking I had been asleep for days only to discover it wasn’t midnight yet. My confidence in the competence (and motives) of the police ebbed away. I found myself shifting my energies from remaining cheerful to remaining sane. In the early hours, I was often startled by the metallic toilet seat, crouched in the corner like some sinister beast.

For days on end, I drew cartoons and wrote diary entries in the margins of Mills and Boon novellas. I spent hours reciting things to myself: names of Saul Bellow characters, physics Nobel prize winners, John Coltrane albums, anything to keep the numbness away.

I’m constantly coming across efforts being made to give detention without charge the Walt Disney treatment: the crushing weight of solitary confinement is painted as a non-issue; the soul-sapping nothingness of the claustrophobic, cold cell is portrayed as a mild inconvenience. Make no mistake: the feeling that one’s fate is in the hands of the very people who are apparently trying to convict you is, without doubt, one of the most devastating horrors a human being can ever be subjected to. It is (to misquote Carl von Clausewitz) the continuation of torture by other means.

“Those who have nothing to hide, have nothing to fear,” goes the tautological reasoning of the paranoia merchants calling for harsher, ever more draconian “security” measures – as we saw throughout the 42-days debate. They should read Kafka: nothing is more terrifying than being arrested for something you know you haven’t done. Indeed, it is the innocent who suffers the most because it is the innocent who is tormented the most. The guilty calculates, triangulates, anticipates. The innocent doesn’t know where to start. The answers and the questions are absolute, unbreachable, towering conundrums.

I underwent 20 hours of vigorous interrogation while entire days were being completely wasted by the police micro-examining every detail of my life: my political activism, my writings, my work in theatre and dance, my love life, my photography, my cartooning, my magazine subscriptions, my bus tickets.

Aspects of my life that would have been seen as commendable in others were suddenly viewed as suspect in my case for no apparent reason other than my religious and ethnic background. I was guilty of being that strangest of creatures: a Muslim who reads; who studied engineering yet writes about Bob Dylan; was a vocal opponent of the Iraq war yet owns all of Christopher Hitchens’ writings; admires Terry Eagleton yet defends Martin Amis; interviews Kazuo Ishiguro, listens to Leonard Cohen, goes to Radiohead concerts, all of which became the subject of rather bizarre questioning.

This is not all: outside, lives are shattered, jobs are lost, marriages are destroyed, minds are damaged, friends and families are traumatised – often irrevocably so. My parents, whom I wasn’t allowed to call, could barely get any sleep throughout the ordeal. Many of my Muslim university friends were, and still are, worried about being targeted themselves. For most of my loved ones, despite my innocence, nothing will ever be the same again. I’m now jobless, facing destitution and threatened with deportation from the country I’ve called home for nearly half my life.

Immense pressure is exerted on law enforcement agencies by their political mandarins to produce “results”: pressure to produce a higher number of arrests but also the corollary, more dangerous, impulse to justify them at any cost. Naturally, through a perverted but pervasive circularity in the logic, lack of evidence becomes the very justification for requesting “more time”. The government claims that checks and balances will ensure extensions to detention periods are based on verifiable and compelling arguments. I beg to differ: in my case, the judge was simply bullied by streams of technospeak until she had no option but to grant extra time.

Fighting terrorism is a serious matter and needs to be tackled in a serious way – not through empty gimmicks sustained by fear-mongering and alarmist rhetoric. The real danger is that we are witnessing a slide from the essential purity of habeas corpus into a Britain where the innocent are detained until proven guilty.

Hicham Yezza, an activist and writer, was released without charge after six days in custody, immediately rearrested on immigration charges and issued with a removal order to Algeria, after which he was held for a further 27 days; he is still awaiting a conclusion to his deportation case
www.freehicham.co.uk

Kamal Begi: deportation

Ellie Keen — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 23:42:38 +0000

Kamal Begi, a Brampton Manor student, and his uncle have lost all their appeals for asylum and are under threat of deportation, despite having lived in the UK for over six years. When they arrived in January 2002, they were granted leave to remain for a year and then later refused indefinite leave to remain.

Kamal says that his father and one uncle were murdered by the Taliban and he was threatened by having a gun held to his head. His family decided that, for his own safety, he needed to leave. The family is Hazara, a Shia grouping which has, allegedly, been subjected to ethnic cleansing by the Taliban. Kamal left his mother and three younger brothers to travel with an uncle by a tortuous route through many countries to arrive in the UK and seek asylum.

Kamal, who joined his local Brampton Manor School in East Ham, London in September 2003, is now leaving Year 11, having taken his GCSEs. He is expected to do well and has been accepted by Newham 6th Form College where he plans to take his ‘A’ levels and later hopes to go to university and read business studies and information technology.

The school has already collected over a thousand signatures on a petition for him to stay which was handed to Lyn Brown MP at the House of Commons on 24 June.

Below we publish excerpts from letters written by fellow students campaigning for Kamal’s right to stay.

‘I have known Kamal for 5 years and as long as I have known him for he has not caused any trouble in or outside school … All he has ever done since he has come to this country is try and work hard to the best of his ability … please do not make him another statistic in Afghanistan … I and a lot of other people will be devastated if you take him away from us.’

‘He is a peaceful young boy with a chance to better his life in this country, he has built bonds with so many people including me. I have known him for 5 years now and would like to know him for the rest of time.’

‘He has always stood beside me when I was in trouble … the best memory of him was when we were in central London and we got lost, it took us 2 hours to find our way back. While I was panicking Kamal was keeping me calm.’

‘Me and Kamal have a very good memory. We both had some history.’

‘What’s the point him going back now. There’s war going on in his country, his life is in danger there.’

‘I started new and I never had friends. Kamal was my first friend. I never got along with no one. He was my first friend in Brampton Manor … he inspires people. If Kamal leaves then nothing will be the same without him.’

‘This person is always willing to go an extra mile to achieve best results. Kamal is an inspiration to the community and many children look up to him … He always used to help me. In maths lessons he was like my personal teacher … in ICT we used to have a laugh between ourselves.’

‘Kamal has been a close friend of mine for five years. He has helped me out in difficult situations and resolves things for me. When I need help on any of my work he tells me what to do and also helps other classmates. So here I am trying to say he is a great, loving and caring person so he should be allowed to stay … Our school has prepared a petition and of that doesn’t work out we are willing to go further because we won’t give up.’

Please support Kamal Begi’s campaign and sign the petition.

Outsourcing Abuse

Ellie Keen — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:46:36 +0000

Executive Summary

Background

Last autumn, 2007, stories hit the headlines about alleged assaults and beatings of asylum seekers by security guards employed by private companies contracted to run immigration detention centres or to escort detainees being moved between centres or when being removed from the UK.

In October 2007, an article in the Independent made reference to campaigners having a “dossier” of 200 alleged assault cases. The Home Office said the assault allegations were “unsupported assertions” and that if there was evidence of mistreatment they would expect it to be provided to them for investigation. In many cases, those alleging assaults had already lodged complaints, providing information to the Home Office and asking them to investigate, but where followed up by the Home Office, the complaints had largely been dismissed. The Complaints Audit Committee, set up to monitor the Home Office’s procedures for investigating complaints about the conduct of staff, informed us that there were about 190 complaints about alleged assaults in the previous 12 months.

In October 2007, we did not have permission from all those alleging the assaults to provide the Home Office with further information. We have since sought their permission where possible and now present findings from our dossier that has reached nearly 300 cases of alleged assault. Many additional allegations of assault have been reported to us that we simply have not had the resources to consider and therefore have not been included in the dossier. Because of this, coupled with the fact that other victims are fearful of coming forward, we feel our dossier is just the tip of the iceberg.

We have found an alarming and unacceptable number of injuries have been sustained by those subject to forced removals. This dossier provides evidence of widespread and seemingly systemic abuse of one of the most vulnerable communities of people in our society, who have fled their own countries seeking safety and refuge. The alleged assaults took place between January 2004 and June 2008. In addition to our findings, 48 detailed case studies are included in Part 2.

Key findings

In all cases in our dossier, what may have started off as ‘reasonable’ force1 turned into what we consider to be excessive force.
One asylum seeker ended up with his leg in a plaster cast and a woman was pushed through airports in a wheelchair after having allegedly been assaulted. The most common form of injury recorded resulted from inappropriate use of handcuffing, including swelling and cuts to the wrist, sometimes leading to longlasting nerve damage. Other injuries included bruising and swelling to the face and fractures to the wrists, ribs or ankles. Often psychological consequences resulted, such as the onset or exacerbation of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), panic attacks, suicidal feelings and depression.
66 % of alleged assaults were against men and 34 % against women.
48% of the assaults occurred at the airport before the detainee was placed on the plane and 12 % took place in the transport van on the way to the airport. 24% of alleged assaults took place on the aeroplane before take-off and 3% after take-off. 7% took place in the van back to the detention centre after the removal had already failed and 6 % took place within detention centres.
Allegations of assault were made by people from over 41 counties. Almost three quarters of these were from Africa. The most common nationalities of those being removed were Ugandan, Nigerian, Cameroonian, Congolese (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Jamaican.
There were 27 alleged incidents involving families, comprising a total of 42 children, 5 of whom are alleged to have been assaulted themselves.
Many of those assaulted made allegations of racism against the escort; there are repeated accounts of abusive language used such as “black bitch” and “black monkey, go back to your own country.”
Alleged assaults took place on scheduled airline flights, charter flights and military planes. Private jets have also been arranged to remove people from the UK. It is not known exactly how many airlines are contracted to carry out this task, or how much they are paid, but the costs run into millions of pounds each year.
Few asylum seekers are able to make a complaint or seek redress. The relevant procedures and legal process are complex and not perceived to be independent. There is evidence that asylum seekers lodging complaints are subject to harassment and further abuse. Many victims are already traumatised and see no option but to try to simply forget what has happened.
The authorities appear reluctant to investigate reported assaults which often happen behind closed doors, with no witnesses. Cell mates who witness assaults may be quickly moved to another centre or deported. CCTV evidence miraculously disappears or is conveniently obsured at the crucial moment. In most cases allegations of assault were not upheld following investigation, although in some cases, there were concerns about the inadequacy of the investigation.
There is evidence that the police do not take allegations seriously. In some cases where the detainee reported the matter to the police, counter allegations of assault were made against the detainee. In a number of cases, detainees who have complained have been charged and prosecuted, although none we are aware of have been convicted. A number of people alleging assault have been able to bring a civil action cases, some of which have settled out of court. We are not aware, however, of any security guards or their employers being prosecuted for any assault related offence under the criminal law. Our evidence suggests that immigration detainees do not have equal access to the law.

Summary

Asylum applications are a 14-year low, yet the proportional use of detention has increased 7-fold. The government is driven by seemingly arbitrary targets on deportation and has just announced a near doubling of detention centre capacity. “Mass deportations” may follow if the government puts into effect its announcement made in August 2007 to deal with 450,000 unresolved asylum cases within 5 years or less. The increased use of detention and target-driven deportations may lead to further injuries and assault allegations.

There have been numerous inquiries into alleged abuse of immigration detainees over the years but we see no improvement.

While the practice of using private companies for running detention centres and escorting of forced removals may contribute to a certain level of “see no evil, hear no evil”, our understanding is that the Home Office is aware of an unacceptable level of alleged abuse through its own complaints procedure.

We consider the evidence in this report reveals what may amount to state sanctioned violence, for which ultimate responsibility lies with the Home Office.

Link to complete report

Harriet Wistrich, Birnberg Peirce & Partners.
Dr. Frank Arnold, Medical Justice.
Emma Ginn, National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns.
Contact: info@medicaljustice.org.uk
Tel: 07786 517379

Brutality and Fear

Ellie Keen — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:27:34 +0000

The human costs of dawn raids

There are some statistics that the New Labour government makes sure the public know about. The constant rise in the number of police officers patrolling British streets for example; the number of arrests that these police officers carry out; or the relentless year by year increase in people incarcerated in prisons up and down the country. Another of these statistics is the number of people that are removed from the UK. The higher the figure, the better; and last year this statistic reached an all time high. Every eight minutes a person was removed, one way or another, from the country.

According to the Home Office, these numbers equate, quite simply, to a form of success: evidence that ‘strong controls are working’. So it is ironic that the means through which these figures are realised are shrouded in secrecy and misinformation. Dawn raids – or to use their official term ‘enforcement visits’ – are rarely discussed in the same self-congratulatory tones as the aims they supposedly achieve. And there is a reason for this. They are brutal. They rip people from their homes at the time that is least expected. And they tear families apart from each other; sometimes never to see each other again.

Dawn raids have emerged as a central facet of New Labour’s asylum and immigration policies, with little semblance of public debate. Statistics are not available to the public, yet what evidence there is suggests that dawn raids are carried out at rapid pace. Records of the number of dawn raids have only been made available since April 2005, but in the House of Commons in 2007, the Minister of State for Borders and Immigration explained that 8,100 ‘enforcement operations’ were carried out before 8 am in 2006. On average, that is roughly twenty-two dawn raids a day. Dawn raids are carried out explicitly for the purposes of detention and removal. Yet of these 8,100 conducted, only 2,009 led to arrests. A ‘success’ rate that equates to roughly one out of every four suggests that they are – from one perspective – an ineffective way of meeting government targets for ‘removing more failed asylum seekers than new anticipated unfounded applications’. Yet it is exactly these targets that continue to justify their use. Ensuring the former figure is higher than the latter is described as ‘public performance’ and according to Liz Fekete from the Institute of Race Relations, ensures that ‘[i]n the process, the fact that those who seek refuge…are human beings, not mere statistics, is lost’.

This reduction of people to statistics covers a horrifying level of abuse, harm, and fear. As stated above, dawn raids are particularly barbaric. They are carried out in the early morning – when people are most likely to be at home, asleep, and disorientated – apparently in ‘the interests of health and safety and to help minimise disruption’. But the reality of dawn raids suggests that health and safety is far down the list of priorities. For example, the 1993 raid on immigraion overstayer Joy Gardner led to her death, after she was placed in a body belt, had her wrists, thighs and ankles tied to handcuffs and belts, and thirteen feet of tape wrapped around her mouth to stop her making any noise.

Statistics for the number and nature of complaints made by people in relation to dawn raids are not available. But work by the Border and Immigration Agency Complaints Audit Committee gives some idea of mechanisms of redress. In their 2006/7 Annual Report the Complaints Audits Committee emphasised that 20% of records of complaints against BIA had gone ‘missing’ (although this was later reduced to 15%), and of complaints against arrest teams their audit sample showed that ‘none was handled in time’. Of overall complaints, those of criminal behaviour (some of which were assault) rose 7% from the previous year.

Where there is hope though, it rests within continuing actions of campaigners, many of whom are in the asylum process, who continue to display solidarity, raise awareness, and resist. In doing so, they emphasise not only their refusal to succumb to one of the fiercest tools available to the Home Office; but the wider polices in which these activities are concretely embedded.

Till Death or Deportation

Ellie Keen — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In a London hospital Mahmoud Abu Rideh lies in a critical condition from a hunger strike against the Control Order conditions which he has lived under for more than three years. Following an attempt on his life more than a month ago, he has been refusing food, and much of the time even ice cubes or water for 31 days. Wheelchair-bound, he is now coughing and excreting blood. Disillusioned with the injustice he has encountered in Britain, all Mr Abu Rideh requests is allowance to leave the UK and be deported to Syria, or for his Control Order to be lifted.

Background

A veteran of Israeli gaols, Mahmoud Abu Rideh is a stateless Palestinian. He came to the United Kingdom as a refugee from Jordan and was granted indefinite leave to remain in November 1998. His family, including his six children, are British citizens.

The illusory promises of security expected from the self-proclaimed champion of human rights were shattered when police forced their way into Mr Abu Rideh’s home in December 2001. Offering nothing but allegations that he was a threat to national security, police immediately transported him to HMP Belmarsh. Due to the impact of his detention on his mental health, he was later transferred to HMP Broadmoor. Mr Abu Rideh was finally released in March 2005, following the House of Lords ruling against his detention, but his return to home was the beginning of a new kind of imprisonment- control orders, under which he was subjected to telephone reporting three times every 24 hours, day and night, daily reporting in person to a police station, electronic tagging [at the outset], a 12-hour daily curfew, meetings outside the house and visits to anyone in the house prohibited except of persons cleared by the Home Office. He has witnessed his children endure the resulting isolation, scrutiny and pressure.

Lord Carlile, the government’s Independent Reviewer of anti-terrorist legislation has stated that Control Orders, which are reviewed on an annual basis, should not be used for longer than two years. Despite this, Mr Abu Rideh has been held under a Control Order for three years, and yet before the three years of Control Order existence he had already been interned for 3 and a half years indefinitely without trial. An emergency appeal against the Home Office’s recent refusal to modify his conditions was held in the High Court a week ago but the result is still awaited.

Mr Abu Rideh has never been questioned by the authorities, charged with any offence, nor have his solicitors been shown any evidence of why he is considered a security risk.

Psychiatrists’ reports over now seven years have shown Mr Abu Rideh to have become deeply paranoid, isolated and depressed. The Control Order regimes have driven several men beyond despair, to choose a return to a country where they are likely to be tortured, or to choose, like Mr Abu Rideh, to die. Appeals from his family, friends, religious authorities can no longer reach him. If his Control Order can be lifted as suddenly, and without explanation, as the one of Detainee ‘E’ was last week, his life would be saved.

TAKE ACTION FOR MAHMOUD ABU RIDEH NOW!

1. Write to the Home Office.
2. Write to Minister of Justice Jack Straw who promised to assist Mr Abu Rideh.
3. Sign our petition for Mr Abu Rideh at http://www.petitiononline.com/aburideh/petition.html
4. Send a message of support to Mahmoud and his family by emailing us at contact@cageprisoners.com or writing to: Cageprisoners, 27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3XX

See the Cage Prisoners site for sample letters

Between False Refuge and the Peril of Return

Ellie Keen — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Peace, or something like it, breaks out in Iraq. US-led foreign forces declare violence has tapered off to the lowest levels in years, thanks to additional troops, security cooperation with Sunni tribal leaders and erstwhile insurgents, and a tentative halt to the activities of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. An Iraqi government derided as sectarian and dysfunctional steps up to promote political accommodation and begins taking more responsibility for security and providing services. Stability takes hold, paving the way for about two million Iraqis who have fled the country to make their way home.
An uncertain future
The scenario outlined above can be, and is, disputed. Whether or how long a period of relative calm will last remains to be seen; Iraq's political future – including a long-term US military presence being negotiated in Baghdad and Washington – is itself an open question. But on the subject of refugees, a dangerous certainty now unites Iraq's government, the United States, and some Western countries, notably Britain, where Iraqis have sought a haven from the bloodshed that the US invasion ushered in. They are encouraging – and in the case of Britain, forcing – the return of Iraqi refugees on the grounds that the country is now stable enough to receive them. Politically attractive though this may be, it also contradicts international law prohibiting the forced return of anyone to territory where his or her life or freedom is threatened.

With prodding from Washington, the Iraqi government has renewed calls for refugees to return. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced at a recent summit on Iraqi reconstruction that his government would work to create conditions that facilitate return and provide financial incentives to Iraqis who return from abroad; the Ministry of Migration and Displacement subsequently announced that $195 million would be allocated to cover returnees' expenses.

Since 2005, Britain has returned failed asylum seekers to areas controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which administers the three northern governorates that are the most stable part of Iraq, on the grounds that the region is safe. On 11 June 2008, the Guardian reported that the UK Border Agency planned to expand its deportation scheme to include other parts of Iraq, recently detaining dozens of failed Iraqi asylum seekers for possible deportation, including some from areas not controlled by the KRG. If confirmed, this would harden a policy toward Iraqi asylum seekers that was unforgiving from the start.

A contradictory policy

Home Office correspondence leaked in March stated that failed asylum seekers will lose financial support unless they agree to a voluntary repatriation program under the auspices of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The repatriation procedure as described in this correspondence included a waiver absolving the deporting authority of any responsibility for what may happen following repatriation. The basis for deportation to the whole of Iraq has drawn strength from a ruling in the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT) earlier this year, narrowing the scope for protection against deportation under European Council directive 15©. The AIT's ruling found "neither civilians in Iraq generally nor civilians even in provinces and cities worst-affected by the armed conflict can show they face a ‘serious and individual threat' to their ‘life or person'...merely by virtue of being civilians."

Contradictions abound in the justifications for repatriating Iraqis to the north and elsewhere. The Home Office December 2007 immigration policy statement on Iraq explicitly rejects the opinion of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that relocation to central and southern Iraq is unsafe; yet failed asylum seekers who agree to voluntary repatriation are asked to absolve those who send them back from any responsibility for what may happen after they arrive. UK authorities express a strong preference that returns be voluntary; yet surveys of Iraqi refugees, including Human Rights Watch interviews with those who have returned, indicate that economic and administrative pressure nearly always figure prominently in even voluntary returns to Iraq.

To justify sending asylum seekers back, the asylum tribunal invokes and works to argue around a European Council directive aimed at preventing deportations back into armed conflict. That reading runs up against the UK's broad commitment, as a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, to the principle of non-refoulement: the agreement not to return refugees to countries where their lives or freedom are at risk.
Political expediency

There is, however, one depressing note of consistency that emerges from Britain's treatment of Iraqi asylum seekers. Like the United States, its senior partner in the invasion of Iraq, Britain appears willing to use the lives of refugees to bolster political arguments for success in Iraq – the US by admitting only symbolic numbers of refugees, the UK by returning asylum seekers to danger. Perhaps the desire to claim victory or at least validation in Iraq by citing diminished violence – though by any standard other than the carnage of recent years, Iraq remains an incredibly dangerous place – as evidence of stability that could support the return of refugees, has trumped other considerations.

These considerations should include the dire conditions facing approximately 2.7 million people who are internally displaced within Iraq; UNHCR estimates that more than a million of the internally displaced lack adequate shelter and food. The head of Iraq's parliamentary committee on displacement last month suggested that the committee should simply resign over what he called the government's inability to address the needs of the displaced and refugees.

The narrative of emerging security and stability in Iraq, should it develop into durable fact, would be welcome. Meanwhile, Britain, like the United States, bears particular responsibility toward the refugees whose flight originated in the chaos and violence that the invasion of Iraq has wrought. It can begin meeting that responsibility by acknowledging that those Iraqis who seek safety in Britain have legitimate fears about what awaits them at home.

Academic Freedom

Ellie Keen — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:21:59 +0000

AS NOTTINGHAM POST-GRAD FACES DEPORTATION AFTER FAILED TERROR ARREST

The story of the two Nottingham Uni students who were arrested on bogus terror charges two weeks ago has turned into a victimisation campaign against one of the arrestees. Hicham Yezza, one of two men arrested for downloading information about Al Qaeda from a US government website, is currently languishing in the Dover Immigration Removal Centre, where he is being threatened with deportation to Algeria. Originally he was booked on a BA flight on Sunday the 31st, before he had a chance to launch an appeal or work on a defence for himself. It was only when the students and staff at Notts Uni launched a full scale campaign for his release that the deportation order was delayed (one day before his deportation date).

Once Hich’s six day stint of interrogation under Terrorism laws was over, he was promptly re-arrested by immigration officials, accusing him of living and working illegally in the UK. Despite the fact that he’s been here, living, working & studying here for 13 years. And he hasn’t really kept a low profile, much of this time working as a magazine editor and popular on-campus activist.

A large part of Hich’s initial interrogation at the hands of anti-terror cops concerned his involvement with the Nottingham students’ peace magazine ‘Ceasefire.’ Cops are notoriously devoid of irony, otherwise it might have occurred to them to question the rationale behind busting peaceniks for terrorism. Police questioned Hich and his co-arrestee Riswan in detail about the funding for the mag (no doubt straight from Bin Laden’s Jihadi billions).

The cops have excelled at dubious and underhand methods. Confiscating 20 computers from the uni, they told the press that they extended the pair’s detentions because they had ‘further potential evidence.’ With the implication that there was something on the pair, what this meant in reality was that they hadn’t got the staff to search through all the computers.

It was the university staff that dobbed Hich in. Being the kind of guy who would go out of his way to help a mate, he offered to print out the (US government approved) Al Qaeda training manual because his friend Riswan hadn’t got enough credit on his university printing card.

Having initially stitched them up, Notts Uni have bent over backwards to help the police and repress freedom of speech on campus. A statement from the uni said that the AQ manual is ‘contentious,’ and ‘sensitive,’ and that only approved academics and students should have access to it. The idea that information that is legally and freely available should be restricted on campus seems to fly in the face of the traditional role of universities as places that encourage academic freedoms. (Fortunately, given the shitstorm that this case has produced, that doesn’t seem likely).

The Free Hich campaign isn’t planning on going away once they’ve have secured their man’s release. They’re already widening its scope to to become a broad-based civil liberties and anti-deportation campaign. Even as they campaign for Hich another Nottingham campaigner has been targeted by immigration authorities. Amdani Juma, a Burundian HIV-AIDS campaigner who has been involved in the free Hich campaign was picked up two days after he made an appearance at the free Hich demo on the 28th of May.

Hich’s case has turned into a ‘perfect storm’ of the state’s use of anti-terror and immigration laws used to repress a dedicated peace activist and critical writer. Many inside the campaign claim that Hich’s detention under immigration law is a last gasp attempt to claw back something after the terror arrests turned out to be nothing of the sort. However, whilst shying away from any suggestion of shapeshifting paedophile lizards (out of fear probably) us at SchNEWS sense the hand of conspiracy against an effective and popular critic of the Neo-Con/Neo-Labour ruling ideology.

www.freehichamyezza.wordpress.com

Snatch of the Day

Ellie Keen — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:01:42 +0000

As protests target refugee deportation dawn raids

“Following on from the successful day of action on UN International Migrant’s Day on 18th December last year, we want to maintain the pressure on the frontline agencies of so-called ‘Managed Migration’.”

Paul Johnson from the UK No Borders Network.

Protests against the forced removal of migrant families have been continuing (see SchNEWS 618), with a second ‘UK-Wide Day of Action Against Immigration Snatch Squads’ taking place last Thursday. The actions happened in the early hours in order to intercept snatch squads as they attempted to leave on dawn raids to forcibly take asylum seekers into custody for deportation.

Although activists found themselves being greeted by numerous police vans when they arrived at the Norman House removal centre in Portsmouth, campaigners in Newcastle and Cardiff had more success.

Protestors from the South Wales No Borders network successfully blockaded the Cardiff offices of the Border and Immigration Agency (BIA) from 5am, preventing snatch squads from leaving the building and holding a picket outside.

In North Shields, Northumberland, activists managed to blockade the car park of the Northumberland House reporting centre, while in Newcastle there were banner drops from key locations around the city.

The Leeds No Borders group made their move the following day with a demonstration outside the Waterside Court reporting centre. Leaflets were handed out to the staff and a stall was set up providing information about anti-deportation campaigns and the No Borders network. A ‘Free Shop’ was also set up and food and drinks were provided for those having to sign.

In Portsmouth however, activists had less luck and were pulled up by three van loads of coppers as they were approaching the Norman House removal centre. Their van was searched for articles used to commit ‘criminal damage’ under Section 1 of PACE (The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 – the one that gives cops all their stop’n‘search-for-no-particular-reason powers, and recently amended to mean that, in the event of arrest, the right to legal aid has now become the right to ring a call centre – see SchNEWS 618). All their D-locks, chains and arm tubes were confiscated.

Harsh Penalty

The Cardiff blockade was drawing attention to the recent deportation of Ghanaian woman Ama Sumani, who was being treated for cancer at the University Hospital of Wales when she was forcibly sent back to her homeland in January. With the necessary drugs for her treatment unavailable in Ghana, she died on March 20th – ironically just days after her family had learnt that fundraising on Ama’s behalf had raised £70,000. The Lancet medical journal called the removal “atrocious barbarism” and even rock guru Sting was up in arms.

The BIA was unmoved though, with its boss, Lin Homer, telling MPs that there was nothing important about Ama’s case that stood out from the pile of other deportations in her out-tray. Instead, Home Office minister Alun Michael put the blame on Ghana for not providing free medical care and told the public that the real question was, “whether it’s right for somebody who has no right to be in this country to be given medical treatment” – errr, if they’re dying of cancer Alun, here at SchNEWS towers we think that’s an unreserved ‘yes’.

Meanwhile Alun Michael’s sponsors in the boardrooms of the City of London continue to clobber Ghana with more than £2 billion of debt – four times the country’s annual health budget … but that’s another story.

Early Kick Off

Not content with picking on the terminally ill, the newly formed UK Border Agency also happens to snatch kids from their beds as part of the ‘managed system of migration’. Careful not to get a bad press for snatching children from the class room (or risk solidarity actions from other parents), BIA goons prefer to remove the family as a whole while the rest of the world snoozes in bed. But not everyone’s been sleeping – with further dawn actions in Glasgow and Newcastle keeping immigration offi cials fi rmly in the office and migrant families in their homes – at least for a little while longer.

Some of the migrants facing an early morning wrestle for their freedom already have UK passports. Often leave to remain in the UK is dependent on toeing the line and forced removals of people busted merely for a traffic offence have taken place. Even if you’ve got an appeal pending you can be sent to a detention centre pending ‘removal.’ The Home Office has not yet contracted out the removals system to the private sector, but to keep some of the expenditure ‘off the balance sheet’ – as party-donating corporations profi t from taxpayers money and provide revolving door jobs for their political chums – they have handed over the refugee detention centres to become a nice little earner for companies like Serco (See SchNEWS 545).

Amongst their huge portfolio of publicspirited contracts – from nuclear weapons to surveillance to offender tagging to waste management to railways (see SchNEWS 497) – Serco run detention centres including Colnbrook and Yarl’s Wood, which is currently home to hunger striking mothers in the centre’s ‘family unit’. Seven women, including two mothers still breastfeeding, have been starving themselves to highlight the brutality of the Serco regime and, in particular, the forced removal of a Burundian woman and her baby on 17th April. In their petition the women say, “They treat us like animals. We are claiming asylum, we’re not animals. They treat us as if we’ve done something terrible.” And shareholders get paid dividents from this line of work…

Can’t believe that UK plc snatches kids from beds and deports the terminally ill to certain death? No Borders are keeping up the pressure – why not get involved with your local group or set one up?

See www.noborders.org.uk for more

Gay Iranian Safe - For Now

Ellie Keen — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:19:33 +0000

In the latest protest aimed at preventing the UK from deporting 19-year-old Iranian Mehdi Kazemi to his homeland where he faces probable execution, 150 demonstrators braved hail, snow, and rain in London on Saturday, March 22, to rally outside 10 Downing Street, the official residence of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Protesters demanded that Brown’s government refrain from efforts to deport any gay and lesbian Iranians.

For the moment, at least, the Brown government has put its original deportation plans for Kazemi on hold, pending formal reconsideration.

The Kazemi case has attracted worldwide attention ever since the UK Home Office ordered him to be deported last year after his student visa expired. While in Britain, where he had been a student since 2005, Kazemi learned that his longtime boyfriend, Parham, who was the same age as him, had been arrested, tortured, and executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. In a lengthy e-mail to the Iranian Queer Organization describing his plight, Kazemi wrote, “If I return to Iran I will be arrested and executed like Parham.” (For background on the Kazemi case, read this reporter’s February 28-March 5, 2008 article, “ Another Iranian Tragedy”.)

After losing an internal Home Office appeal against his deportation, Kazemi fled the UK, first to the Czech Republic and then to Germany, before finally arriving, after weeks of peregrinations, in the Netherlands, where he was detained as an “illegal immigrant.” A Dutch court on March 3 ordered Kazemi returned to the UK, citing the European Union’s Dublin Regulation, under which asylum applications must be processed in the first EU country in which the petitioner made an official claim for legal recognition as a refugee.

A worldwide campaign to save Kazemi from deportation to Iran was spearheaded by the Italian human rights group Gruppo EveryOne, which also launched an online petition campaign on Kazemi’s behalf and mobilized other Italian human rights groups and the country’s Radical Party to lobby the European Parliament to take action. In the UK, the militant gay rights group OutRage! and a newly-formed committee called Gay Asylum led the fight on Kazemi’s behalf. None of the US gay rights groups, including the New York-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, made any public statement about Kazemi’s life-or-death struggle for freedom.

TV networks CNN, ABC in Australia, the BBC and Sky News in the UK, and Italy’s RAI have all carried stories on Kazemi, as have major newspapers, including the Independent, the Guardian, and the Times in the UK, Corriere della Sera and La Republicca in Italy, and El Pais in Spain.

On March 14, the European Parliament overwhelmingly approved a resolution on the Kazemi case that had been introduced with the support of 142 of its members and 62 members of the British House of Lords. The EuroParliament resolution pointed out that the Iranian authorities “routinely detain, torture, and execute persons, notably homosexuals” and that “Mehdi’s partner has already been executed, while his [own] father has threatened him with death.”

The resolution added that “the EU and its Member States cannot apply European and national laws and procedures in a way which results in the expulsion of persons to a third country where they would risk persecution, torture, and death, as this would amount to a violation of European and international human rights obligations.” The EuroParliament stressed that the EU directive regarding criteria for refugee status “recognises persecution for sexual orientation as a ground for granting asylum.”

The resolution “appeals to the Member States involved to find a common solution to ensure that Mehdi Kazemi is granted asylum or protection on EU soil and not sent back to Iran.” More broadly, it argued that “more attention should be devoted to the proper application of EU asylum law in Member States as regards sexual orientation.”

The resolution invoked the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits the removal of persons to countries where there is a serious risk that they would face the death penalty, torture, or other inhuman treatment, as well as the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Geneva Convention.

Within hours of the passage of the EuroParliament’s resolution, British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith issued a brief statement granting Kazemi a temporary stay of his deportation.

“Following representations made on behalf of Mehdi Kazemi, and in light of new circumstances since the original decision was made, I have decided that Mr. Kazemi’s case should be reconsidered on his return to the UK from the Netherlands,” Smith said.

Openly gay British MP Simon Hughes of the Liberal Democratic Party, who had campaigned on Kazemi’s behalf, told the UK’s Pink News, “I hope Mr. Kazemi will now come back to Britain [from the Netherlands] where arrangements are already in place for an urgent meeting with him, his family, specialist lawyers, and myself to prepare a new application to the Home Office.”

Hughes added, “It is becoming more and more clear that sending gay people back to Iran under the present regime is completely unacceptable.”

But it is not only young Kazemi who remains at risk for deportation to Iran. Another 12 gay and lesbian Iranians living in the UK also risk being sent back into the hands of the theocratic Tehran regime.

Prominent among them is 40-year-old lesbian Pegah Emambakhsh, who became a refugee in the UK in 2005 after her partner in Iran was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death by stoning. Her request for asylum was refused, and in August 2007 she was arrested in Sheffield and imprisoned to await deportation. But after a worldwide campaign on her behalf, she was released on September 11 last year while her appeal of the deportation order remains pending.

However, the Independent reported on March 7, Emambakhsh has lost her latest appeal.

“Ms Emambakhsh narrowly avoided deportation in August last year but only after her local MP, Richard Caborn, and other parliamentarians persuaded the Government to allow her to stay while further legal avenues of appeal were explored,” the British newspaper reported. “She says she was already on the way to Heathrow [Airport] when she learnt of her last-minute reprieve. But last month the Court of Appeal turned down her application for permission for a full hearing. Ms Emambakhsh said yesterday that she was ‘very disappointed’ by the ruling but planned to apply for a judicial review at the High Court. The Home Office has also agreed to consider fresh legal representations on her behalf.”

The UK was embarrassed when Emambakhsh was offered asylum by the center-left government of Italy’s Premier Romero Prodi, an implicit criticism of the British plan to deport her to Iran. Prodi acted after Gruppo EveryOne mobilized pressure.

Emambakhsh told the Independent, “I will never, never go back. If I do I know I will die.”

As the Independent noted in a March 6 article on the Kazemi case by the newspaper’s law editor, “The Home Office’s own guidance issued to immigration officers concedes that Iran executes homosexual men but, unaccountably, rejects the claim that there is a systematic repression of gay men and lesbians.”

At Saturday’s Downing Street demonstration, OutRage! leader Peter Tatchell denounced Brown’s Labour government for “failing LGBT refugees.”

“Asylum staff and adjudicators receive race and gender awareness training but no training at all on sexual orientation issues,” he pointed out. “As a result, they often make stereotyped assumptions – that a feminine woman can’t be a lesbian or that a masculine man cannot be gay. They sometimes rule that someone who has been married must be faking their homosexuality.

Tatchell went on to say, “The government refuses to explicitly rule that homophobic and transphobic persecution are legitimate grounds for granting asylum. This signals to asylum staff and judges that claims by LGBTI people are not as worthy as those based on persecution because of a person’s ethnicity, gender, politics, or faith.”

Moreover, Tatchell noted, “The Home Office country reports on homophobic and transphobic persecution are often partial, inaccurate, and misleading. They consistently downplay the severity of victimization suffered by LGBT people in violently homophobic countries like Iran, Nigeria, Iraq, Uganda, Palestine, Algeria, and Jamaica.

And, he said, “Cuts in the funding of legal aid for asylum claims means that most asylum applicants – gay and straight – are unable to prepare an adequate submission at their asylum hearing. Most solicitors don’t get paid enough to procure the necessary witness statements, medical reports, and other vital corroborative evidence.”

It’s clear that Kazemi, Emambakhsh, and the other Iranian LGBT refugees seeking asylum in the UK still have a difficult road ahead of them.

The online petition for Mehdi Kazemi, which can be signed at the bottom, is at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/UKMADHI/. The Iranian Queer Organization’s website is www.irqo.net. OutRage! leader Peter Tatchell’s website is http://www.petertatchell.net/. The website for Italy’s Gruppo EveryOne is http://everyonegroup.com. Doug Ireland can be reached through his blog, DIRELAND, at http://direland.typepad.com/direland

The Issue is Torture

Ellie Keen — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:31:34 +0000

Anyone who has spent, as I have, long hours over two years listening to Iranian tales of torture would know just how the controversy over Mehdi Kazemi’s asylum claim misses the point.

George Galloway says gays are not executed in Iran, just rapists. Peter Tatchell says Galloway spouts “Iranian propaganda“. Neither gets at the gist of Mehdi’s case, or of Britain’s broken obligations with regard to torture under international law.

Let’s start with the facts.

Homosexual conduct in Iran can get you the death penalty. Penetrative sex acts between men can bring death on the first conviction; non-penetrative activity, up to 100 lashes. Women earn floggings on the first three convictions; four strikes and you die.

Iran’s penal code requires four reiterated confessions, or the eyewitness testimony of four “righteous men”, to prove lavat, or sodomy. Yet judges are allowed to guess and infer. Moreover, police helpfully provide the witnesses: raiding a party in Isfahan in May 2007, they brought along four men, presumably righteous, to watch.

Torturing and killing gays is legal in Iran: you don’t need to view the bodies to prove it. International law bars Britain from returning people to the risk of torture. Britain must give gay Iranians asylum.

Yet despite this clarity, confusion hangs over the situation in Iran. Some activists, trying sincerely to help Mehdi, are helping the British government off the hook.

Peter Tatchell is wrong to assert, without real evidence, that gay men are routinely hanged in public; that mass “pogroms” have led to mass executions in recent years; or that fake rape charges are regularly tacked on to charges of consensual homosexual acts. Nor should anyone’s asylum case hinge on such claims. The last documented death sentences for consensual homosexual conduct in Iran were handed down in March 2005. It is not known whether they were carried out. Ramping up the allegations means accepting the government’s exaggerated standards of proof. And it can backfire – against people in Iran.

Europe and the US have seen a public campaign in recent years to identify executions – often random ones – in Iran as killings of gay men. Pictures of the horrific public hanging in Mashhad in 2005 of Ayaz Marhoni and Mahmoud Asgari – convicted, in all likelihood, of the rape of a 13-year-old boy while both were minors – spread virally round the world like a postmodern Pieta. Monstrous, yes: but there is no conclusive evidence that they were gay or that consensual homosexual acts had anything to do with their judicial killing.

In the months after that, campaigners in the US and Europe repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that hangings for rape in Iran were actually a “pogrom” against gay men. One US paper claimed four men were hanged for “being gay”. They turned out to have been convicted of the rape of a woman and three girls – 10, 7, and 8 years old.

Such mistakes can have dire consequences. In November 2007 in Kermanshah, Makwan Mouloudzadeh, 20, faced the death penalty on false charges of raping several boys seven years before. His accusers retracted their claims. No evidence suggested he had committed any crime under Iranian law.

However, European activists wildly seized on him as another “gay” victim. They organised a mass petition to Ahmadinejad for mercy for “the young Iranian gay”. Their pleas sent an inadvertent message: Makwan was innocent of one capital crime, but Europe believed him guilty of another. On December 5, Makwan Mouloudzadeh, probably neither gay nor a rapist, went to the gallows.

Why so much confusion? Why the need to find “gay” victims, even when it endangers a man already on death row?

Emotion makes discussion difficult. People asking what the evidence really is are likely to be called “apologists for Iran”. Britain’s slammed asylum door indeed breeds desperation. It’s crucial to remember, though, that the reason asylum authorities seek pretexts to reject gay Muslims isn’t “Iranian propaganda”: it’s home-grown propaganda stoking fears of Muslim immigration. Activists must combat racism in Britain, not just repression in Iran.

The most cogent answer, though, shows the failure at the heart of Britain’s policies on asylum – and torture. Home Office minister Lord West said of Mehdi: “We are not aware of any individual who has been executed in Iran in recent years solely on the grounds of homosexuality. And we don’t consider there was systematic persecution of gay men in Iran.”

In other words: no execution, no persecution. If you aren’t dead, you’re OK. This is a disastrous evasion of the UK’s responsibilities under international law.

Human Rights Watch has shown how Britain tries to redefine its obligations on torture, so it can send people back to states where they face grave risk. Usually it happens in the context of counterterrorism. But with gay Iranians, too, the government aims to change the rules, denying that legal torture is “persecution”.

The UK should recognise – as the Netherlands has done – that with a law prescribing death or torture for gay Iranians, they need not demonstrate the details of past persecution. Lift the burden of proof from Mehdi and his gay compatriots. End the threat of deportation.

Activists, though, must avoid playing the government’s torturous game. Don’t let the Home Office define torture down till a corpse on a gallows is the only proof that counts. Hold Britain to its real obligations. Otherwise, it will remain complicit in persecution.

A Savage Sanctuary

Ellie Keen — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:11:20 +0000

Last week I got an email, subject line “Iraqis leave voluntarily or starve”. The content was a circular from the case resolution directorate of the Border & Immigration Agency (BIA), the body responsible for asylum seekers. The subject line wasn’t the directorate’s – hardly the BIA’s turn of phrase. The circular says the BIA is writing to Iraqis on “hard cases support”, those refused asylum but for whom there is no viable route back to their home country. The catch is, to qualify for “hard cases support” – bed and board – they have to agree to return when the BIA considers it safe to do so. Leave or starve …

“The secretary of state,” reads the circular, “considers that travel to Iraq … is both possible and reasonable.” The secretary of state may be alone in failing to consider the implications of this. Even if you can get there safely, Iraq is clearly unstable and dangerous. Failure to respond to the BIA letter within 21 days, and demonstrate plans to return, will meet with forcible removal, although people can appeal. With almost 3,000 Iraqi hard cases, the exodus could be massive. And those refusing to leave will join hundreds who have arrived since the war, had their cases rejected and been left destitute in the UK.

Meanwhile, Iraqis who work for British government agencies in Iraq, and are in danger from compatriots who regard them as collaborators, are due to begin arriving In April. After lobbying by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and the Refugee Council, special arrangements were announced last year to resettle Iraqis employed by the UK administration in Iraq, particularly interpreters – and there is every reason to help them. But it throws the reality for other Iraqis seeking sanctuary in the UK into sharp relief.

There are three ways for Iraqis to enter the UK as refugees, the first two open to those arriving in April. Iraqis formerly employed by the British in “similarly skilled or professional roles necessitating the use of … English” are eligible to apply under the government’s Gateway scheme, with 500 places reserved for Iraqis this year. To qualify they must have left Iraq and be recognised by the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) under refugee convention criteria. Applications are then processed through the BIA.

The second way is to apply through what a Foreign Office official called “the easier scheme” for which there are “not so many checks and balances”. This applies only to people currently employed in Iraq by the Foreign Office, Department for International Development, British Council, or Ministry of Defence. The Foreign Office estimates that 280 employees and their dependants might be eligible. Under both schemes 351 Iraqis have so far been accepted to resettle or take financial compensation; 450 have been rejected, and 100 are still being processed.

The third way – and only way open to most – is to spend your life savings on a grim journey organised by people smugglers. Around 1,300 Iraqis claimed asylum in the UK last year. The rejection rate was 88%. Sweden, which refused to get involved in the Iraq war, took in 15,000 Iraqi refugees in 2007.

The BIA has no breakdown indicating where Iraqi asylum seekers are from, but most are thought to be from Kurdistan – to where they can be forcibly returned, and have been throughout the past five years.

The Foreign Office advises against travel to Kurdistan, citing two suicide bombings last year. Such danger is not exclusive to foreigners. The UNHCR does not recommend return anywhere in Iraq and a spokesman cites Turkish and Iranian incursions over the borders of Kurdistan as adding to the instability.

Recently I heard the story of a young Iraqi Kurd, an orphan forced into a violent marriage. Her husband abandoned her to the mercy of her violent father-in-law. She fled to the UK but was refused asylum, despite proof from a consultant gynaecologist that she had been raped. Destitute, she went into hiding. To return would mean the risk of being the target of an “honour” killing. Dashty Jamal, of the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees, describes Kurdistan as lawless and undemocratic. He gets regular reports of honour killings.

Kurdistan is deemed safer than the rest of Iraq, to which nobody is forcibly returned (though people return voluntarily). But is this to change? The case resolution directorate’s letter makes no distinction – returns are to Iraq.

Making concessions to a few hundred of those who have worked for the British in Iraq doesn’t make up for the cruelty of turning a blind eye to thousands of others who are destitute, locked up in detention centres, or being forced to return to chaos and bloodshed.

Mistreatment of asylum seekers must end

Ellie Keen — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 03:03:25 +0000

In the last week of Parliament, before the Christmas recess, I held the last debate in Westminster Hall on the subject of allegations of abuse of failed asylum seekers during the deportation process.

I have always had a number of reservations against the deportation of failed asylum seekers. The Home Office is notorious for getting asylum decisions wrong. Pushing to remove high numbers of asylum seekers risks sending people back to places where they are in danger. This is clearly illustrated by the fact that failed asylum-seekers are returned to countries known to be unsafe, like Iraq, the Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe.

The Foreign Office recommend that UK citizens do not travel to these countries. I have concerns over sending people back to their countries of origin when they have been in this country for many years and have settled their families here. And as Liz Fekete point out in her report The Deportation Machine, cows leaving the EU are better monitored than people are. It is near impossible to know that a person returned to their country of origin has reached safety.

However, my concern during the debate was to draw attention to the specific problems occurring during the deportation process. A case had been brought to my attention of a Cameroonian woman who alleged that during deportation she was assaulted by members of a private escort team contracted by the Home Office. Once she reached Cameroon she was so badly injured the Cameroonian immigration officials refused to allow her entrance to the country. The deportation was abandoned, she was flown back to Heathrow and immediately taken to hospital traumatised, and was treated for severe genital bleeding and multiple bruising.

While it would appear that this must be an isolated case, asylum rights organisations and groups that visit detention centres hear allegations of abuse every day. Back in 2004 the Medical Foundation published a report in which they argued that the use of gratuitous force and assaults on detainees were systematic within the deportation process. They showed how the UK’s obligation under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights means there is no justification to the use of unnecessary force during deportation. They made recommendations to the Home Office to improve the capacity for investigation abuses.

Needless to say three years later the Home Office still do not give automatic medical examinations for any individual who is the subject of a failed deportation attempt, they do not allow victims to stay in the country in order that allegations may be investigated properly and there are still questions to be asked about the quality of training removals officers receive.

The problem of mistreatment starts with the Home Office contracting out services to private security companies. At present, most of the deportation work is done by the infamous Group 4 Securicor. A rudimentary delve into the recent history of the company finds that the company’s management of a juvenile detention centre was criticised by the Youth Justice Board for its overuse of dangerous restraint techniques. Eight short-term immigration holding facilities managed by the company were condemned by the Chief Inspector of Prisons for being inadequate, inhumane and for holding detainees in facilities described by staff as ‘dog kennels’. The Inspector said that immigrants were treated ‘as though they were parcels, not people, and parcels whose contents and destination were sometimes incorrect’.

This does not seem to me to be a company competent in carrying out deportations and running immigration detention centres. There must be some relationship between under-trained, underpaid private security personnel and allegations of abuse. There must also be a relationship between the culture of targets that has infiltrated the deportations process and the way in which those being detained are treated. If we must deport people, we must put safeguards in place to ensure deportees are treated as people not parcels.

A People Without A Home

Ellie Keen — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 01:03:54 +0000

Earlier this month, there was a small but hugely significant demonstration outside Number 10 Downing Street, the home of the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

A group of islanders from the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean asked the government to stop preventing them from returning home. It is something they have been asking the British for forty years.

It was in 1966 that that the British started forcibly removing some 2000 islanders from their beautiful homeland of coral atolls that lies midway between Africa and Asia.

The British had just done a secret deal with the Americans, letting them use the main island, Diego Garcia, as a strategically-positioned airbase to counter the perceived Soviet threat for a period of fifty years. In return the British got access to American nuclear missiles at a greatly reduced cost. A non-negotiable part of the deal was the eviction of the local population at whatever the human cost.

So began yet another disgraceful episode in British foreign policy – an injustice that burns brightly to this day. Veteran investigative journalist, John Pilger, writing in his book “Freedom Next Time” which was published last year, describes how “Not only was their homeland stolen from them, they were taken out of history. Until recently, the [British] Foreign Office website denied their very existence”.

Documents from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) from the time show the deceit the British planned. Internal FCO documents described how any deportations should be “timed to attract the least attention and should have some logical cover where possible worked out in advance [otherwise] they will arouse suspicion as to their purpose”.

Other documents argued that once the local population had been removed, the British would present to the outside world “a scenario in which there were no permanent inhabitants on the archipelago”. This they did. The FCO wrote to the British Representative at the UN asking him to lie to the General Assembly that the Chagros Islands were “uninhabited when the United Kingdom first acquired them”. This he subsequently did too.

One document, written by a legal advisor to the FCO in 1968, was called “Maintaining the Fiction”. The “fiction was that the local people were “only a floating population” because this would bolster our arguments that the territory has no indigenous or settled population”. This was despite the fact that the local population had lived there for generations.

Over a number of years, the islanders were removed and barred from returning. Their story is absolutely heart-breaking. The islanders were literally just dumped in the capitol of Mauritius, St. Luis. They received no help from the British in resettling them. For a people who had lived and survived peacefully by fishing and practicing subsidence agriculture, they suddenly had nothing: no homes, no jobs, no way of making a living. Moreover, much worse, is that they had no way of returning to their beloved homeland.

Over the following years, the exiled islanders died of neglect, poverty, or suicide. One islander, Lizette Talate’s two children died within days of each other. They “died of sadness” she recalls.

It is a story that is repeated. Another islander, Loius Onezime lives in cramped appalling conditions in St Louis, with a leaking roof, and no kitchen. His family often goes hungry. His young wife died of a heart attack. “She died of sadness”, he told John Pilger last year.

It is a reoccurring theme of the islanders. Sadness is killing them, one by one. The lawyer representing the islanders in London, Richard Gifford, told the Times newspaper earlier this month. “I’ve lost count of the old folk I’ve met who have subsequently died broken-hearted at the fact they couldn’t see their beloved homeland.”

So far it has been a forty-year fruitless fight for the islanders to realize their dream of going home. In 1975, the islanders petitioned the British High Commission, complaining how they used to “live free” and how “we were not dying of hunger”… “Here in Mauritius we, being mini-slaves, don’t get anybody to help us. We are at a loss not knowing what to do.”

In 1982, a group of the most impoverished islanders accepted a “full and final” settlement from the British of £4 million, which equates to less than £3,000 a head, in compensation. Many of the illiterate islanders signed the document, unable to read what they had just signed and not knowing that they had just renounced their right to return home.

John Pilger points out the bitter irony at the time. In 1982, whilst the British government offered a paltry amount of money to the 2000 black Chagossians it had illegally evicted from their homeland, it was spending £2 billion protecting some 2000 white islanders of the Falklands Islands against the invading Argentineans.

Three times in the last few years the islanders have won their legal case in the courts, only to be rebuked again by the British. In 2000, the High Court in London ruled that the islanders’ “wholesale removal was an “abject legal failure”. After the verdict, the British government accepted the Chagossians’ right to return to any of the islands except Diego Garcia.

However, then came September 11th and the islands of Diego Garcia increased in importance to the Americans due to its strategic geographical location in the new “War on Terror”. It is from Diego Garcia that B52 bomber launch bombing raids in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is there also that it is rumoured the CIA has secretly been holding Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders at a secret prison camp. The Americans do not want anyone living even remotely close to their secret base. So now even the outlying islands –once the proposed place the islanders could return to – is off limits to the islanders.

In 2004 the British government once again removed the right of the islanders to return home. In 2006 the High Court ruled that the Government’s move was unlawful and “repugnant”. In May this year the Court of Appeal agreed. It concluded that Britain’s actions had negated “one of the most fundamental liberties known to human beings, the freedom to return to one’s homeland”.

But still the British government refused to allow the islanders to return. The government had until this month to decide whether they would fight the latest legal judgment. Days before the deadline, a selection of British MPs urged Gordon Brown to accept “the right of the Chagossians to return to their islands”. The letter argued that any further action by the British government “would waste more public funds, delay justice for the Chagossians” and “expose” Gordon Brown’s words on the right to liberty as “hollow”.

Just days later, just as they had forty years earlier, the British government used political events to cover up its continuing abuse of the Chagossians. On the same day as one of the most important events in the British political calendar – where the Queen opens the new session of parliament – the government quietly let slip that it intended to appeal again and continue the islanders’ plight.

It is difficult to overestimate the cynical nature of this move. The British government knows that many of the islanders are getting older and dying. Of the 2,000 evicted only 700 are still alive. It could well be another year before the islanders receive the next legal judgment by which time more will have died. After that there could be two or three more years of legal wranglings as to who is going to pay the meager cost of re-housing the islanders.

Standing outside Downing Street last weekend was Hengride Permal, of the Chagossian Islands Community Association. Standing dignified and tall he said simply: “We want the government to pay us compensation for 40 years of pain and suffering, and 40 years of exile. We want Gordon Brown to take action and withdraw the appeal. We want to go home to our island.”

Come on Gordon. Give up the fight. Let them go home to live in peace. Before another islander dies of a broken heart.

Asylum System is Criminal

Ellie Keen — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 02:13:57 +0000

Britain’s asylum system is a regime that includes government-tolerated criminality. Illegal acts and the abuse of asylum applicants are allowed to happen and are not punished. Many of these violations of the rule of law are perpetrated by the private companies that are contracted by the Home Office to run asylum detention camps and the deportation of would-be refugees.

This outsourcing of asylum abuses echoes the US policy of extraordinary rendition and torture of terror suspects in third countries. It does not, however, relieve the government of ultimate responsibility for criminal acts committed by others on its behalf and in pursuit of its objectives. The buck stops with the Home Office.

Home Office ministers and officials should be sacked. They should also face criminal charges of failing in their duty of care.

The latest evidence against them comes in a shocking new report by the government’s own watchdog, the Border and Immigration Agency Complaints Audit Committee.

The report is one of the most damning condemnations ever made concerning the Home Office and its private agents. It reveals “glaring failures” and widespread abuses of people facing deportation, including allegations of racism, discrimination and physical assault by contractors hired by the Home Office’s Border and Immigration Agency.

The Audit Committee said complaints about mistreatment by immigrants and asylum applicants were often not followed up. It found that only 8% of complainants were interviewed and 89% of investigations were “neither balanced nor thorough”.

The committee revealed that 19% of misconduct complaints against deportation agencies in 2006/07 concerned criminal behaviour – a rise of 12% over 2005/06.

It condemned the denial of legal and human rights to deportees by the private firms who act on behalf of the Home Office; detailing “glaring errors” in dealing with complaints about the mistreatment of people being deported from the UK.

The committee’s report says investigations into misconduct complaints have been “poor”, with 71% of complaints not being completed within time targets. In 95% of cases, those investigating the complaints had been from the companies under investigation. “Upwards of 20%” of records sought by the committee were missing and 83% of replies received were “indefensible”.

The report says complaints of wrong-doing are of “grave concern to us because of the risks of injury or death, wrongful arrest and civil liability arising from the arrest, detention and removal of failed asylum seekers”.

In a case highlighted by the BBC in its report on the committee’s findings, asylum seeker Apollo Okello said he had been bundled on to a plane at Heathrow Airport and refused permission to see his lawyer, despite the security guards knowing he already had permission to stay in the UK. He says he was beaten up in the back of a van: “That’s where I was punched – my ribs, my eyes, my neck, my back.” Mr Okello also said one of the guards told him: “These black monkeys don’t want to go back to their country.”

I can corroborate these patterns of abuse from my own recent work with asylum claimants.

Although they have committed no crimes, they are held in detention centres, such as the notorious Campsfield House in Oxfordshire. These are prisons in all but name. People mostly get put in detention if the Home Office thinks their claims are unfounded and or if they come from a “white list” country which is deemed to be safe. In other words, the Home Office prejudges their application.

In detention centres, run by private contractors appointed by the Home Office, asylum claimants are at the whim and mercy of the guards. Many guards are caring, fair and commendable. But in cases bought to my attention, some guards are bigoted and brutal.

Violent assaults do sometimes take place. They happen mostly in the “blind” areas, where there are no CCTV cameras. They also occur in the internal prisons within the detention centres – the high security segregation units – where “troublemakers” who try to assert their legal rights are sometimes punished.

As well as racist, misogynistic, anti-Muslim and homophobic insults, abuses include unjustified strip-searches and internal genital examinations. There are no checks and balances to protect against these violations. The systems of redress are woefully inadequate. Detainees are virtually powerless.

A Ugandan torture and rape victim I am supporting, KM, was held in detention for six months, without receiving any medical treatment or psychological counselling. He says requests for treatment are frequently ignored and people suffering severe trauma are sometimes fobbed off with aspirin.

Some claimants are deported illegally, without removal orders being served. Others get deported, even though they have a pending judicial review of the decision to refuse them asylum. Having an upcoming case in the High Court is no bar to the Home Office forcibly removing someone from the UK.

Despite filing for a judicial review of the decision to deny him asylum, a Jamaican national, EB, was forcibly repatriated. When he got off the plane in Kingston, he could barely walk. EB alleges his injuries were from violent beatings by Home Office-contracted security guards who forced him on to the plane and held him down in his seat during the flight.

I have experienced people being served with deportation notices while awaiting medical examinations to confirm their claims of torture. Their removal looks like a deliberate attempt to thwart medical corroboration. Even those who have their claims of torture confirmed by the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture are not safe. Some still get deported, without any court ever being allowed to consider the medical evidence.

It is not unknown for the Home Office to serve removal notices with little or no warning, perhaps just an hour before asylum applicants are carted off to the airport. This leaves lawyers insufficient time to challenge the deportation.

I am also aware of detainees who have had phone access confiscated when they are due for removal. This means they cannot contact their solicitors. They end up on the next plane out of Heathrow.

One of my asylum applicants in a London detention centre was bussed to Scotland shortly before his deportation order was served. His removal from English legal jurisdiction seems to have been calculated to make it as difficult as possible for his solicitor to take last minute action to halt him being sent back to Uganda.

Asylum seekers scheduled for deportation can be shackled, bound and forcibly injected with sedating medication, according to eye-witness accounts I have received. To stop deportees screaming en route to the plane, some escorts allegedly apply semi-strangulating thumb pressure to the throat and twist handcuffs so tight that they pinch wrist nerves and cut the flesh, leaving some victims complaining of semi-permanent nerve damage.

Home Office ministers cannot blithely claim they are unaware of these abuses. If they don’t know, they should. It is their responsibility. If they do know, why are they allowing it to continue?

The Border and Immigration Agency Complaints Audit Committee has highlighted many complaints of abuse and the failure of the government to remedy them. The Home Office is responsible for the Border and Immigration Agency and its private contactors. The buck stops with the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith MP, and her immigration minister, Liam Byrne MP.

This report is so damning, and the abuses so serious and widespread, that these ministers should be sacked and face criminal charges of negligence in their duty of care towards immigrants and asylum applicants.

Legal but Immoral

Ellie Keen — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 18:23:03 +0000

THE Law Lords’ decision on Wednesday that sending refugees from the Darfur region of Sudan to squatter camps near Khartoum did not amount to “unduly harsh” resettlement is one for the record books.

For it must be one of the most obtuse judgements ever handed down by that august assembly of lawyers.

In April, the Court of Appeal allowed appeals by three black African Darfuris against rulings of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal that they could lawfully be sent back to Sudan, where they feared that torture and death awaited them.

The Law Lords’ reversal of that decision rests on some fairly fine points of legal interpretation but it clearly has very little to do with human concern or even common sense.

For return to Darfur, in most cases, will amount to a death sentence.

And it is inconceivable that the noble lords didn’t know that.

It is hardly a secret that the Sudanese government is complicit with the janjaweed militias in a near-genocidal campaign of terror and mass murder of its black African citizens in the region.

The government is facing dozens of rebel groups who have alleged that the region is being neglected and claiming that the government is oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs and it has used the rebels as an excuse for a vicious campaign of repression.

Refugees from Darfur have reported that, following raids by government aircraft, the janjaweed Arab militias ride into villages on horses and camels, slaughtering men, raping women and stealing whatever they can.

Women refugees have told of multiple rapes, abductions and sex slavery.

The situation is so out of control that the United Nations security council has recently approved a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force to replace the 7,000 African Union observer mission which was swamped by the problems of the region.

Millions of people have fled their towns and villages and are now immured in camps with little food, water or medicine, camps that they cannot leave for fear of prowling militias.

Hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to have died either in the fighting or from starvation and disease in the camps.

And over 200,000 have fled the country to neighbouring Chad, where they find that living in barren camps along the border is preferable to returning to Sudan.

This is the situation to which the Law Lords consider it right and proper to return asylum-seeking Darfuris.

Echoing the original tribunal ruling that it would not be unreasonable or unduly harsh to relocate such refugees to camps in other parts of Sudan, they found that such a return would discharge all of the government’s legal obligations to the asylum-seekers.

That may well be so but, if it indeed is, that merely serves to illustrate just how narrowly drawn and inhuman the law is.

If the decision is legally correct, it is far from morally satisfactory.

It is to be hoped that, having won her little legalistic victory in court, Ms Smith now honours her pledge to review Home Office policy on Sudan in the light of the Aegis Trust report highlighting the torture of failed Darfuri asylum-seekers who were sent to Khartoum.

Law Lords or no Law Lords, common humanity requires no less