LIVING ON THE EDGE

THE HUMAN COST OF THE UK’S ASYLUM SYSTEM

Dissertation Portfolio
JNL6090

Submitted for the

University of Sheffield
Department of Journalism Studies
MA in Print Journalism

RACHEL HOVENDEN ©
If you would like to republish any part of this work please e-mail rachelhovenden@hotmail.com to
seek permission and for terms of reproduction.

SEPTEMBER 2010

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Table of Contents

I PLAYING THE WAITING GAME 3

II DETAINED LIVES 13

III ABUSED THEN ABANDONED 20

IV Critique 27

V Production Diary 30

VI Bibliography 34

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 I
PLAYING THE WAITING GAME

Many asylum seekers claim they fled torture and abuse in their home countries. But here
some face prejudice, destitution and mental illness while waiting for a decision on whether
they can stay in the UK. Rachel Hovenden investigates.

THERE’S a low murmur of chatter, the clink of china and children’s laughter. People
sit practising their English. Sam Musarika, in jeans and red t-shirt, is giving an
Iranian boy a piggyback around the church hall. St Matthew’s Church feels safe and
friendly. But Sam, like many of the asylum seekers here, could face deportation at
any moment.
He bounds over and takes a seat opposite me. Leaning back in his chair, his
hands behind his head, he says: “I spent three months in the Hillside induction
centre in Leeds. They told me I would be there for two weeks but they lost my file.
Because I had waited so long they said I could choose where to live. I decided on
Sheffield because I liked the steel industry.” An athletic 6ft 2, he says he wanted to
join Sheffield’s basketball team.
But despite his optimistic, relaxed manner, Sam has faced difficulties few
could imagine. He fled to the UK from Zimbabwe in 2004 after refusing to join
President Robert Mugabe’s youth militia (see sidebar). His first application for
asylum was rejected but he submitted new evidence in 2007 and has been waiting to
hear the outcome - for six and a half years.
“There was a time when I was really depressed because I had been waiting a
long time and didn’t know what would happen,” Sam says. “But then one day, I
thought, it’s going to take a long time. This is how it is, just get on and live your life.
“Some people don’t understand what it means to be an asylum seeker. They
think we are stealing their jobs and should go home. Peoples’ thinking needs to
change - policies are harsh and so we suffer.
“It’s like being gay in the 1960s,” Sam laughs. But there’s a seriousness to the
joke. “I know Iranians and Afghanis who pretend to be Italian because they’re
embarrassed to admit they’re asylum seekers.”

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 Asylum seekers are not allowed to work in the UK, although the Supreme
Court has said the policy is unlawful. Ministers are trying to ensure asylum seekers
can take only manual jobs where there is a shortage of workers.
But Robert Spooner, Chairman of Sheffield asylum seekers’ charity ASSIST,
claims the Government uses destitution as “a punishment for those who claim
asylum.”
“They come here in desperation and we leave them destitute,” he says. “The
Government thinks that if they make it harsh people will stop coming. But these
people are already fleeing for their lives. Anything is better than that.”
Sam keeps himself occupied by doing voluntary work. As well as co-
ordinating the conversation club at St Matthew’s on Carver Street, he set up and
manages various websites, including those for the Sheffield Green Party and ASSIST.
He receives no benefits and instead has to rely on the generosity of friends.
He rubs his arm looking down as he speaks: “I hate relying on friends because I feel
bad. I want to be able to stand on my own two feet. It’s so frustrating. If I didn’t have
friends then I would be given accommodation and about £30s a week in food
vouchers.”
But Sam says food vouchers are unhelpful: “An asylum seeker can’t have a
TV licence for example because they don’t have any cash. You can’t go on the bus,
you can’t buy a chair or a jumper. You can only buy food.”
Sam is ambitious and applied to do a science access course at the Sheffield
College. They turned him down because he wasn’t on benefits. But he still has high
hopes for the future and wants to study marine biology at University.
“It’s not fair and I feel angry because I can’t progress. I write poetry but I can’t
even publish that. And you can’t get attached to people because you could leave at
any moment.”
Sam claims the Home Office practices are inhumane. “When I ring up to ask
them what is happening with my case they say that they can’t answer individual’s
questions over the phone. So I write to them and they reply with a standard letter
three months later which says ‘we don’t answer questions on individual cases.’ They
give out these bland statements and I hate it. I want them to treat me like a human
being.”

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 His views are highlighted by a Home Office spokesman’s reply after I asked
him about Sam’s case: “We are systematically resolving cases in the backlog, on a
case-by-case basis. At this time our priorities are those who pose a risk to the public,
those on support and those who can be easily removed or those granted leave to
remain. We aim to conclude all cases in the backlog by summer 2011 or earlier and
Mr Musarika’s case will be concluded in due course,” he said.
Sam plans to set up camp outside the Sheffield Home Office headquarters.
With a glint in his eye, he tells me he will start in September, and continue camping
there until they grant him asylum. “Maybe then they will realise what it feels like to
be waiting in limbo when they see me there every day. I don’t think they will be
very happy about it.”

FELLOW asylum seeker Habib Asgari, 31, can relate to Sam’s plight. The normally
confident and beaming Iranian, who gives the impression of being a gentle giant,
becomes morose as he speaks: “When I left Iran I needed to go somewhere very safe
and to have a life. But here we don’t have anything. I would like to study but at the
moment no work, no job. I can’t work I can’t study, I don’t have any money. I don’t
have anything. How can you live? It is not human rights.”
Habib has been waiting two years to hear whether his asylum claim has been
successful. Leaning towards me he suggests that some asylum seekers turn to crime
and the black market to provide for themselves: “With nothing to do and no money
people go the wrong way. Although we are not animals, God has given us sense –
we don’t have to behave badly. But I understand those who do crime.”
He shakes his head. “Being jobless makes me depressed. It is harder to be
positive about your situation. When you have a job your mind is taken off the bad
memories. And the boredom makes you tempted to do bad things.”
He stops, and swallows hard. He tells of the discrimination and prejudice he
has faced in the UK: “One man told me I just wanted to come to Britain for a better
life. Of course that’s what I want – I don’t want to be persecuted. I want free
thinking. But he said I should go back to Iran.”
Habib says he is concerned he will never get married referring to the fact that
asylum seekers are unlikely to get permission to marry from the Home Office (see

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bogus marriages side bar). His eyes brim with tears as he explains: “I liked an
English girl but she thought I just wanted to marry her so I could stay in the UK.
That wasn’t true and it really hurt. I’m scared I won’t ever get married because no
one will trust an asylum seeker.”

SHEENA brushes her tight brown curls behind her ear, listening intently to the lady
opposite. She still attends the Sheffield conversation club although she won her ten-
year struggle to be recognised as a refugee. Now she believes it’s good for asylum
seekers to hear from someone who knows what it’s like to be in limbo.
She smiles, rising to shake my hand. She’s confident but not overpowering.
She offers me a seat and explains she’s quite a private person, doesn’t want
publicity, not used to giving interviews.
Sheena Begum, now 31, was born in Beirut, Lebanon, to a Lebanese mother
and Syrian father. Her father “disappeared” when she was just nine-years-old. He
had faced “unimaginable torture”, she says. In the ten years which followed, her
family members in Syria were arrested, tortured and killed by people she terms
“government officials”. She says her father was a member of the opposition party
and this is how the Syrian Government reacted to them.
The fact Sheena was living in Lebanon was no protection. Because her father
was Syrian she was deemed a foreigner by the Lebanese government. So every two
years she had to go to Syria to renew her visa. Her voice falters: “Because of this I
never felt at home.
“I always felt like a foreigner, and people treated me like one. The Lebanese hate
Syrians – when I lived there they were at war with each other. I was embarrassed to
say I was Syrian.”
But as the violence against her Syrian family escalated, Sheena became
increasingly worried about renewing her visa in Syria, believing she and her mother
would be targeted.
“It was dangerous for me to go and renew my visa, and dangerous if I didn’t,” she
says. “If I didn’t renew my visa Lebanon would deport me to Syria.”
So a friend organised for her and her mother to take a flight to the UK. They
claimed asylum at Heathrow airport and were sent to live in Sheffield.

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 When Sheena and her mother arrived in 2000, the old system of allowing
asylum seekers to work after six months was still in place.
“Our solicitor was terrible, he kept forgetting to send our papers so that we
could work,” she says, becoming agitated. “I would go to report to the authorities
every couple of weeks and every time I would ask if I could start working.
Eventually someone said, ‘I don’t see why you can’t?’ And I got a job as a part-time
IT teacher. But they never sorted it out for my mum.”
Only a couple of months later Sheena’s mother received a letter saying her
application for asylum had been refused and she would have to quit her flat
immediately. So Sheena resigned and asked the Government to put her back on
benefits so they would provide her with accommodation.
“I couldn’t have supported us both while I was working. I wasn’t supposed to
have her staying with me but I wasn’t going to let her go on the streets. They seemed
to forget about her because she didn’t hear any more from them.”
Sheena claims that the refusal letter said her mother could live in Lebanon
and have a relationship with her daughter by phone. “When I asked, what about
human rights? What about family life? They said, ‘You can have a family life over
the phone.’ I wonder how they would feel in my shoes?” she says.
Sheena believed the Syrian authorities tortured people to extract information:
“Because of what happened to my father I imagined that they would do the same
and worse to me,” she says. “For women the torture is worse – they would definitely
rape you. The things they do to you are criminal.”
Then in 2008 her mother was diagnosed with cancer and given just two
months to live. Sheena asked her local Imam to write a letter asking the Home Office
to grant her mother leave to remain. “I thought it would be a nice gesture – closure
for her. But they sent a letter back saying her case had been closed because she had
been refused asylum. They said we needed to make a fresh claim. But a decision
takes months,” she says.
In 2007 the situation worsened for Sheena and her mother. Being refused
asylum means the loss of free NHS medical care as well as accommodation. “The
doctor told me that because she had lost her asylum case she couldn’t get medicines
on the NHS, or any health care. He said she would be in a lot of pain without them

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and that I needed to get her case reopened so that she could get the medicines. But
she only lived one month more. She died in pain and never gained asylum.”
Sheena was devastated. “I felt really sad, really depressed and lifeless,
because I wanted to have a normal life. There was a point where I thought I was
going to be deported. I felt that now my mother was gone there was no-one to
protect me, to stop it happening. I thought of killing myself.
Her voice cracks as she speaks: “I went on the internet and started looking up
ways to commit suicide and I even talked to my friends about it.
“You can find anything on the internet – there’s the belt technique, slitting your
wrists, hanging. I was thinking any moment I could be deported and suicide would
be better than the torture they will put me through in Syria.
But for Sheena there was a light at the end of the tunnel as she was granted
asylum in October 2008. Although the form was stamped in August so it took almost
three months for her to know she had refugee status.
Sheena turns back to the group of asylum seekers, confident now in her right
to remain. “In Lebanon I always felt like a foreigner,” she says.
“But here I feel completely at home.”

PATRICK Mtimbusya has seen the mental health of his seventeen-year-old daughter
deteriorate rapidly since they fled to the UK from Malawi three years ago.
Jane-Jane’s room could belong to any teenage girl in Sheffield with clothes
scattered on the floor and make up and a mirror sitting on a dressing table next to
the window. But she and her family lost their asylum claim and so face deportation
at any moment.
Patrick’s wife, Elizabeth, found suicide notes in her daughter’s bedroom six
months ago: “I’m so glad we found her before it was too late. She was going to hang
herself that evening,” he says. Jane-Jane and her mother are both on anti-
depressants.
Mental health problems among asylum seekers are well documented.
Researchers at Birmingham University found that the majority had mental health
problems or knew others who did.

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 Patrick fled to the UK because he refused to kill his son, now 11-years-old and
also called Patrick, as part of a Malawian satanic ritual which would gain him a
promotion in his work as a van driver. As a consequence Patrick’s boss and other
cult members threatened to kill him. He came to the UK in December 2004. But cult
members repeatedly threatened his family and so they too claimed asylum in the UK
in 2007.
Patrick says his family’s well-being deteriorated after a two week stay in
Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) in 2009 when they were almost
deported. An injunction from the European Court of Human Rights halted their
flight just in time.
“My son has not been the same since, he has not been the happy boy he once
was,” says Patrick. “And my daughter found it really difficult. Staying in a detention
centre is like staying in a prison basically – as if you have committed a really serious
offence.”

SIDEBAR: SAM’S STORY

SAM fled Zimbabwe after his twin sisters, allowed to stay in the UK indefinitely and
living in Leeds, became secretaries to Father Maguire, an Irish priest. Father Maguire
supported the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) the opposition to President
Robert Mugabe’s party, Zanu PF.
Zanu PF members turned on sisters Hellen and Medelline when Father
Maguire was forced out of the country. The women fled to China. But after the
election they returned to Zimbabwe believing the situation had improved. Zanu PF
thugs beat and tortured them so they fled to the UK with Father Maguire’s help.
Sam said that after his sisters fled, Zanu PF members came to his house
repeatedly, asking where his sisters were.
In 2003, he attended a meeting for all the young men who had just left school.
“They wanted us to join the youth militia. I said I couldn’t join because I wanted to
work on my career. That wasn’t a problem at first.”
But then on New Year’s eve Sam says he was attacked by Zanu PF members.
“I was just hanging out with my friends because it was New Year. We were having
fun. But then these Zanu PF people started asking me why I refused to join the

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militia. They said my sisters had betrayed our country. They said I had betrayed the
country.
“They pushed me to the floor and beat me up. Then they said they would
give me a second chance and that if I didn’t join the militia they would kill me.
“But I wanted to do something different with my life than just joining the
youth militia that oppresses people. They do bad things that I didn’t want to get
involved with. I couldn’t go along with it.”

SIDE BAR: BOGUS MARRIAGES

JULIAN Sullivan owes his congregation to Britain’s asylum laws. His inner-city
Sheffield parish is at least temporary refuge for the huge number of asylum seekers
dispersed from London. Many are on a matrimonial mission.
Mr Sullivan claims the biggest issue he faces as an Anglican vicar is bogus
marriage. “It comes with the idea that being married will help an asylum claim,” he
says. “You are dealing with people in vulnerable positions and you have to trust that
the legal documents and checks will show if it is a sham marriage.
“You want to believe people and give them the benefit of the doubt.
“If someone has a genuine desire to marry for the right reasons because they
genuinely have a relationship, they love each other and want to stay together and
want to build a life together, then they will be able to marry. The fact they want to
stay together and build a life together is absolutely key.”
The Government requires all asylum seekers to request a certificate of
marriage if they wish to marry in a registry office. Mr Sullivan, who ministers at St
Mary’s Church, Bramall Lane, says he knows of only one time when the Home
Office have granted a certificate of marriage to an asylum seeker.
But the Church of England is exempt from this rule and still has discretion to
allow people to marry without a certificate of marriage.

FACT BOX: ASYLUM FACTS

 AN ASYLUM seeker is someone who has left their home country, applied for
recognition as a refugee in another country, and is awaiting a decision on
their application.

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 The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees defines a refugee as
someone outside their home country with “a well-founded fear” of
persecution.
 An asylum seeker in the UK must make an application for asylum as soon as
physically possible. A delay can result in a refusal.
 In 2009, 24,485 people claimed asylum. The Government refused 77% of those
claims. The UK received the second highest number of asylum seekers in the
EU, with France receiving more than any other EU country.
 Asylum seekers receive housing and benefits equivalent to 70% of regular
income support under section 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999.
They can access all NHS Health Services.
 People who have been refused asylum, but cannot leave the UK, receive
housing and a £35 weekly card to spend in certain supermarkets. This
provision comes under Section 4 of the 1999 Act. Zimbabwean failed asylum
seekers fall in this category as the UK stopped the removal of people to
Zimbabwe in 2005.
 Asylum seekers who are refused asylum and have exhausted all methods of
appeal lose their housing and financial support. They can no longer receive
free health care at NHS hospitals.

ENDS/… 3336

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 II
DETAINED LIVES

The UK is one of only seven EU countries to practice the indefinite detention of failed asylum
seekers. Rachel Hovenden investigates what goes on behind closed doors.

JAMES NEWMAN rummages through piles of paper and folders bursting at the
seams, with his chequered shirt rolled up to his elbows. Picking up one large black
folder he comments: “This is Brook House. It will tell you everything about how it’s
run. But if it comes to it and it ends up in court, I have never seen you ok?”
A cursory glance and the first page begins to detail how the Immigration
Removal Centre (IRC), situated next to Gatwick Airport, operates (see sidebar Brook
House IRC). “Commerical in Confidence” is printed at the bottom. It’s 224 pages
thick.
James, a senior official, sits wearily in his desk chair and, leaning forward,
talks of a job interview for a removal escort at Brook House. The interviewer referred
to a man sent to Cameroon: “He said that two policemen arrested the Cameroonian

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as soon as he was escorted off the plane. The policemen took him behind the plane -
they beat him. Then only the policemen came back. The interviewer then asked the
candidate how they would cope in that situation,” James says.
James talks of working in an IRC as “working with people on death row”,
pointing out that by law people must be told they will be deported 72 hours in
advance.
“You are working with people who are going to be killed,” he says. “They
have 72 hours to live. The question is how do you deal with these people?
“It’s a dimension the chaplaincies have to consider. How do you care for
someone who is effectively going to their death? Do you get involved in fighting for
them or do you just deal with their spiritual needs?”
He laughs. “Of course there is no system. In any other arrest the police must
justify the use of force. But with asylum seekers they don’t have to justify it. At the
end of the day what do you do if three children and their parents are refusing to
stand up when they are due to be deported. You’re going to force them aren’t you?
It’s one big joke.”
James tells of a Chinese couple who force-fed their children salt to avoid
deportation. He says the family were deported despite the children needing medical
treatment. His forehead creases: “I mean what kind of country are we when we
forcibly send children back to a country where they are in danger?
“The parents abused their children so we are sending them back with abusing
parents. Or perhaps the parents felt this was their only option? People that desperate
must be fleeing something right?”
James says some failed asylum seekers are detained for months and even
years. This is confirmed by Home Office statistics released this month which reveal
that in 2009, 15,780 failed asylum seekers, were held in UK detention centres. Of
these only 6735 (43%) were removed from the UK. And on 31 December 2009, 2595
people were held in IRCs. Of these almost one fifth had been detained for more than
six months.
Many in IRCs have served prison sentences for using false documents.
“They say they’ve used them so they can get into the UK to claim asylum. But with
false documents you have the issue of confirming who they really are. So often they

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end up in prison and go straight to a detention centre. They describe it as a second
prison sentence.
“Where are their human rights? They’ve already served one prison sentence,
why serve another?” James says.
He tells of one man, called Peter, who wanted to return to his country. But he was
kept in Brook House IRC for more than a year because he had no travel documents.
“It is like being in prison indefinitely. But often they are eventually released
because there’s no way of verifying their identity. The whole system is a farce.”

Names have been changed to protect identities.

ERMIAS Wubneh has a similar story. A judge ordered Ermias’ deportation in 2007
after he used a false passport to leave for the US. He served four months of a nine
month sentence but is still in an IRC. He is now begging to return to his home
country of Ethiopia believing it is now safe for him to return.
Ermias fled the famine and war in Ethiopia in 2003 and has been detained in
IRCs since 20 March 2009. During that time he has been moved between seven
different IRCs and is currently in Colnbrook IRC in Middlesex.
He says: “I just want to leave now. I have told them I want to leave but I have
been in detention for so long. I feel depressed and don’t know what else I can do.
Anywhere would be better than staying in detention. I’ve seen people harm
themselves with knives in here. This is not a good place.” (See sidebar: self-harm and
crime in IRCs)
But Bill MacKeith of the Close Campsfield campaign, which holds monthly
protests outside Campsfield IRC in Oxfordshire, says that many held in Campsfield
have been there for more than three years.
“It is wrong to lock up innocent people,” says Mr MacKeith. “The effects of
indefinite detention on mental health are massive. I’ve known people attempt
suicide, people who have been perfectly healthy end up being sectioned after staying
in an Immigration Removal Centre.
“What happened to human rights in this country? Since when did it become
acceptable to lock people up for years on end with no release date in what are
effectively prisons, when they have committed no crime?”

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 Ermias sent a letter to the International Organisation for Migration and the
Ethiopian Embassy asking to be sent home. But he claims they were unable to help
because he did not have travel documents. He says he would be happy to return to
either Ethiopia or Eritrea - he claims to be half-Eritrean. He has no travel documents
except for an Ethiopian birth certificate.
While staying in Haslar IRC, Portsmouth, Ermias alleges he contracted food
poisoning after eating the centre’s food. “I was unconscious for three days because of
what I think must have been food poisoning. I woke up suffering from memory loss,
I didn’t know where I was. I made a complaint about the centre but have heard
nothing since,” he says.
Director of the London Detainee Support Group (LDSG), Jerome Phelps,
claims long-term detention is common. “There are people facing huge barriers to
going back home simply because they don’t have travel documents and have been
waiting for a response from their home embassy for many years,” he says. “They
have no prospect of returning unless they can provide original passports or high
levels of documentation. This means many asylum seekers who want to go back are
instead trapped in detention. Ermias is effectively stateless and stuck in limbo with
no idea of when he can return to his home country.
“Some people cannot be sent back to their home countries but rather than
admitting this the Government detains them indefinitely.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “The UK Border Agency does not wish to
detain people for any longer than is absolutely necessary, however the removal
process can be delayed by factors such as a lack of travel documentation.
“Where there are difficulties in obtaining travel documentation this is taken
up directly with the respective Embassy or High Commission and detainees are told
the onus is on them to submit any supporting evidence they have to speed this up.”

MR PHELPS has worked with asylum seekers for 15 years and through the LDSG -
which visits Colnbrook and Harmondsworth IRCs - campaigns against what he calls
“long-term detention”.
His dilapidated office with worn wooden chairs might indicate that work
with asylum seekers is not the most popular charitable endeavour. He flicks the

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switch on the kettle. Nothing happens. A tall, spindly man, he bends down and
flicks it again mumbling: “It should be working now.” Ten minutes later and I’m still
without a cup of tea.
“Mental health is a massive problem in detention centres,” he says, twitching
nervously as every over-worked Director should. “There was one man who was in
detention for four years and developed insomnia. This man had never had any
mental health issues before but in detention he was sectioned twice and again when
he was released. People develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from extended
detention because they don’t have a release date.
“In prison even murderers have a release date, but with asylum seekers the
rules don’t apply.”
Mr Phelps’ concerns are well founded. A study of 70 asylum seekers detained
in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, concluded that the majority had Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression. The longer they were detained, the more
pronounced those symptoms became. And Australian research showed that long-
term detention caused “grave ongoing psychological injury”.
Many IRCs such as Brook House, and Colnbrook, operate to a category B
prison standard of security. Many were previously prisons, or are run by the prison
service.
Mr Phelps says that in 2008 the LDSG interviewed 188 people who had been
in detention for more than a year. He claims that since then 60% had been released,
7% were still in detention and only 33% had been deported.
He says this shows that long-term detention is ineffective. But he argues it has
continued because no-one wants to seem soft on foreign criminals (particularly after
the April 2006 scandal when many foreign criminals went missing after their release
from prison).
He argues that pre-detention assessments should be carried out judging how
likely it is that the asylum seeker can be deported and how long it will take. He
argues that the Swedish model for dealing with asylum seekers is more effective and
humane. It provides asylum seekers with a caseworker who guides them through
the asylum process and ensures they have access to appropriate health care and
counselling.

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 He points to a similar pilot study in Australia. This saw 67% of those refused
visas deciding to return to their home countries voluntarily. “Is this not a better way
– where people of their own free will choose to go home?” he says.
But there’s a danger of viewing this through rose tinted spectacles. After all
what happens to the remaining 33% in a country, which alongside Sweden and the
UK, also practises indefinite detention.

SIDE BAR: SELF-HARM AND CRIME IN IRCS

DETAINEES self-harmed more than 100 times and there were more than 200
assaults inside IRCs between 1 January and 30 June this year. Statistics released to
this newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act show that there were 111
“incidents of self-harm requiring medical treatment” in IRCs. Colnbrook had the
highest number with 52, Brook House 20, and Dover 13.
During this period there were six allegations of sexual assaults or abuse and
234 assaults were reported. The highest number of assaults took place at Brook
House with 106. Colnbrook had the second highest with 38, whilst Oakington had
29. Four allegations of sexual abuse or assault were reported at Dungavel IRC.
There were also 50 reports of drug use or finds. Half of these were at Dover
IRC, with 13 incidents reported at Harmondsworth.
David Goggin, of the UK Border Agency’s Criminality and Detention Group,
said: “Any detainee who assaults either a fellow detainee or a member of staff may
be removed from normal location for a period of time while a risk assessment is
carried out to determine the threat they pose to the safety and security of the centre.”
He added: “All incidents of self-harm are treated very seriously and every
step is taken to try and prevent incidents of this nature.”

SIDE BAR: A LACK OF OPENESS

IMMIGRATION removal centres are not known for their transparency. A
Parliamentary Select Committee found their visit to Yarl’s Wood IRC highly
controlled, as Keith Vaz, MP for Leicester East told Parliament on June 17 this year:
“Unfortunately, our visit was somewhat marred by the Home Office officials'
terrible anxiety about the Select Committee visit. They tried hard to keep us away

17
from the people being detained there, which was totally unnecessary. The point of
Members of Parliament visiting an institution such as Yarl's Wood is to ensure that
we speak to the people there about their circumstances.”
My own attempts to visit a detainee who claimed to have been held for two-
and-a-half years in Lindholme IRC were thwarted by officials and an interview with
the manager refused.
Two Freedom of Information requests on the length of time detainees were
held in each IRC and how much it costs to keep them there were refused.

FACT BOX: BROOK HOUSE IRC

A DOCUMENT obtained exclusively by this newspaper gives details of how Brook
House (the largest UK IRC with space for 426 detainees) operates:
 It appears to show that the IRC holds genuine torture victims as clinical staff
undergo training with Medical Foundations of the Care of Victims of Torture.
Torture victims are identified on arrival.
 It suggests detainees may be at risk of self-harm and suicide: “Staff will be trained to
identify and provide care and support to those Detainees at risk of suicide or self-
harm.”
 “Suicide and self-harm support” and “support for victims of torture” groups visit
Brook House.
 There is a “lock down” period between 9pm and 8am each night when detainees are
locked in their rooms.
 Escorts may use “control and restraint” techniques approved by the Home Office.
They can use reasonable force to keep a detainee “in custody” and to “manage
detainees from preventing their own removal”.

ENDS/… 2295

18
 III
ABUSED THEN ABANDONED
Deportation will always be an emotional experience. But increasing numbers of failed
asylum seekers are claiming that UK deportation escorts abused them and made them
false promises. Rachel Hovenden investigates.

YVES Njitchoua sits on his bed, his heart pounding. There’s no chance of sleep
tonight and he hasn’t slept for three days already. It’s midnight and there’s a knock
on the door. He’s told it’s time to leave.
He explains frantically that he will be killed in Cameroon. His brother was
murdered seven years ago and he discovered his body face down in a river in
Yaounde. He has the photos to prove it and has been haunted by flashbacks and
nightmares ever since. The people who killed his brother also tortured Yves and put
him in prison.
One escort handcuffs Yves. Yves asks to call a friend to let them know he is
leaving but the escort refuses. They search through all his belongings and walk him
outside to a non-descript white van with other asylum seekers from Colnbrook
Immigration Removal Centre (IRC).
The Cameroonian had lost his claim to asylum despite a medical report
showing he had been tortured on several occasions and had suffered scarring from
cigarette burns as well as injuries to his testicles and legs. A UK immigration judge
ordered his removal.
When they reach Heathrow Yves becomes increasingly agitated. He says: “I
told them I would be killed in Cameroon. I refused to get on the plane. They
handcuffed my hands and feet. Then this security guard made a deal with me. He

19
said: ‘We won’t get paid if you don’t get on this plane. If you go to Kenya we will get
paid and then you can go back to London the next day. If you refuse to go to
Cameroon we’ll bring you back from Kenya.’”
Yves claims that another Cameroonian man refused to board the plane. But
Yves got on without making a fuss believing he had made a deal and would return.
He says there were 15 asylum seekers and about 45 security guards on this
Kenya Airways flight on 9 April from Heathrow to Nairobi. He was flanked by a
male and female escort and a male medical escort; all three were provided by private
security company Group 4 Securicor (G4S).
“People were screaming and shouting, crying throughout the flight. People
were scared for their lives,” Yves says.
But worse was to come. The plane landed in Kenya and Yves spent the day in
Nairobi airport transit lounge. At about 5pm the escorts took him to the flight gate.
“I kept telling them, I’m not going on the flight. My life is not safe in
Cameroon,” he says.
Yves becomes increasingly distressed as he explains what happened next.
“One of the escorts made a call on his mobile. Suddenly 15-20 police officers came
towards me and surrounded me. They said they were here to make me board the
plane to Cameroon. They tried to handcuff me but I wouldn’t let them. I said: ‘I can’t
get on the plane. Don’t get involved. I was told I wouldn’t have to board the plane’.
“They started to push me. They pushed me to the floor and walked on me
while I lay on the floor. They kicked me in the stomach. Someone held by head
down so I could not breathe. My nose and mouth were bleeding.
“I gave up. I couldn’t take the pain any more. I was bleeding, my body was
bleeding, and my right hand really hurt. I was in so much pain I thought I was
bleeding inside.”
Yves claims that the escorts took him to a Kenyan immigration officer and
told him Yves was a criminal.
Yves tried to fight his cause, explaining he was an asylum seeker who had
lived in the UK for five years, and had never committed any crime.
Both private security company Group 4 Securicor (G4S) and Yves agree that
he was taken to an immigration office where his handcuffs remained on for over an

20
hour. The flight to Cameroon was suffering technical problems and had not yet
departed. But the pilot refused to carry Yves because of his distressed state.
Yves slept on a bench in the airport that night and claims he was forced to
wipe the blood from his body using his clothes before he saw a nurse the next day.
Four days after the incident he was examined by a doctor from charity
Medical Justice who found bruising to his face and ribs. He said there was evidence
that Yves had been held “tightly around his neck” and that he had a loss of sensation
in his right wrist.
Dr Charmian Goldwyn concluded: “Overall the distribution of the injuries,
the severity of the wrist and facial injuries are highly consistent with Mr Njitchoua’s
account of assault in Nairobi Airport and an innocent explanation is unlikely.”
But according to reports filed by three G4S escorts, Yves became violent and
punched the walls, shouting that somebody “will die today”. They also claimed he
tried to throw a fax machine at one of the escorts.
In a subsequent investigation into the incident all three escorts denied
claiming that Yves would not be sent to Cameroon if he agreed to go to Kenya.
When Yves arrived back in the UK he discovered that his bag had gone
missing. He was told that it would be returned to him the next day but it never
arrived. He believes it had been put on the plane to Cameroon holding all his
belongings including his asylum documents and ID.
He says: “If my bag went to Cameroon it means they know everything – they
know everything about my involvement with the opposition party and all about my
asylum claim.”
Yves claims he fled Cameroon after he escaped from prison for campaigning
for the opposition party during the 2004 elections and for telling people about his
brother’s murder in 2003. His brother was a local councillor and had been hoping to
become an MP.
Yves was finally removed on 28 April and is now in hiding in Cameroon. He
says: “I am staying with friends but I can’t even go outside. If I go outside I have to
go in the dark accompanied by my friend. I can only go out for a couple of hours. I
get very depressed because I can’t do anything. I have no ID and I can’t apply for
any because they might arrest me. I have no life now.”

21
LUDOVIC Paykong also claims escorts assaulted him during his removal on a
Kenya Airways flight this year.
He claims that when he refused to board the plane on 28 March, escorts
gagged him, kicked him, handcuffed his hands and legs and pushed him to the floor
of the plane. He says he couldn’t breathe because of the pressure they put on his
neck and chest.
“They took me to the back of the plane because I was crying and the other
passengers didn’t want to see me. I feared for my life in Cameroon but I felt like I
had been in a car accident after what the British authorities did to me. I lost
consciousness on the plane.”
Ludovic, 26, fled Cameroon after being tortured by police for printing
documents promoting human rights. They burnt down his house and destroyed his
printing press. They then subjected him to the Cameroonian balancoire – a torture
technique which sees the victim chained upside down by their ankles for weeks on
end.
Ludovic arrived in the UK in October 2009. He was forced to represent
himself at his Appeal hearing after being refused legal aid. This was then granted by
the Legal Services Commission who held that his case had more than 50% chance of
success, but it was too late for a second hearing.
A medico-legal report confirmed his account of torture but the report came
through on the day of his removal.
He is now in hiding in Equatorial Guinea after a UK contact arranged for a
trusted police officer to meet him and take him across the border to a safe house. But
Ludovic is unable to go outside as he fears being discovered and returned to
Cameroon.
He has not seen his wife and two-year-old daughter, Mbena Abigail, since he
was imprisoned in 2009 despite asking the Red Cross to help find them.
And Christian Ntantchou, 28, also from Cameroon, claims that immigration
escorts handed him over to the police despite promising they would ensure his
safety. He says he told the escorts that his uncle had organised for a friend to meet
him at the airport and that they told him to go to the UN who would provide help in

22
ensuring his safety in Cameroon. But when his uncle went to the UN last week they
told him they could not help.
Christian claims escorts handed him over to the airport police at Yaounde,
who put him in prison for two weeks, before his uncle paid a bribe to get him out.
He was beaten and became so sick he ended up in hospital for three days.
Christian says: “I thought the UK was a just country. I thought it was fair and
allowed free thinking. But the escorts just handed me over to the police despite
promising they would protect me. The UK claims to be for human rights but where
were my human rights?”
Jackie Fearnley, of charity Justice First, which works with asylum seekers,
says she has heard similar stories from deportees: “They are increasingly using
underhand tactics – making false promises that deportees will be kept safe, can
return home, or that they can go to the British High Commission and will be
protected by them.”
When Christian was taken to Colnbrook IRC in March his 34-year-old English
girlfriend, Chantelle Rame, suffered a miscarriage. Christian believes it happened
because she was so distressed by his detention: “When I called her to say that I was
being taken into detention she started crying and screaming. Then the next day she
told me she’d had a miscarriage.”
He claims he fled Cameroon in September 2008 after suffering torture at the
hands of police for taking part in protests against the Government. He was also a
member of SDF, the opposition party, and a French charity working for political
freedom. The charity’s head in Cameroon sent documents in support of Christian’s
asylum claim.
He says that his sister and grandmother were threatened and beaten by police
in 2009 demanding to know his whereabouts.
Christian is now in hiding in Cameroon, staying with friends. He says he is
unable to leave the house except for a few hours at night because he is fearful he will
be recognised and arrested again.
His voice trembles: “They will keep arresting me because they want more
bribes. But what life is that for me? I can’t go out and earn money or move to another

23
part of the country. I need ID to do anything and I refuse to lie about my identity. I
can’t even pay for a taxi.”
SIDE BAR: RESTRAINTS AND USE OF FORCE BY IMMIGRATION ESCORTS
A CONFIDENTIAL document obtained by this newspaper shows the types of
restraints and force used by immigration escorts.
Handcuffs such as the rigid bar, front stack, chain link, right stack and double
locked handcuffs are listed. Escorts can use a thumb lock, a goose neck lock, a
straight arm lock, and a final lock.
Also approved is the nose control technique, which according to an HM
Prison Service report recommending it be banned from use in young offenders’
institutes, is a sharp hit to the nose to cause a burst of pain.
Head control is also listed (which according to the same report has been
known to cause blood spotting, nausea and other health problems when used in
young offenders institutes). Self-defence practitioners say head control involves
pushing down on the opponent’s head to bring them to the floor.

FACTBOX: FORCED REMOVAL

 THE INSTITUTE of Race Relations in 2005 documented 11 deaths during
removals conducted by European countries since 1991. In each case the
deportee suffocated while “control and restraint” methods were being used.
The UK Border Agency’s operating standards state that: “When the
application of force is deemed necessary, no more force than necessary will be
applied and any such force must be reasonable.”
 A total of 6855 people have been forcibly removed on commercial flights and
specially chartered planes in the past year. The removals between 2005 and
April 2010 cost the taxpayer almost £110m in fares to carriers including British
Airways, Virgin Atlantic, BMI, and Air Baltic.

SIDE BAR: ESCORT ABUSE REPORT

 HANDCUFFS and leg restraints are used on asylum seekers – often with no
justification.

24
  One woman was handcuffed in her hospital bed as she recovered from
surgery.
 Another was physically restrained during an intimate medical examination.
 Three further cases of serious physical injury identified in a report by Dame
Nuala O’Loan – those cases included a broken finger, a punctured lung and a
dislocated knee. Baroness O'Loan said: "In the first two cases there was no
satisfactory explanation as to how these injuries occurred. In the third case
there was no clear evidence as to how the injury was sustained.”
 A very young woman was lifted almost naked and carried through an
Immigration Removal Centre handcuffed behind her back. The blanket
supposed to shield her from view fell off. “There was no evident
consideration of whether this was necessary and proportionate," Baroness
O’Loan said.
 Two out of three cases of alleged abuse had been improperly investigated - or
not investigated at all.
 The Medical Justice Network revealed in July 2008 nearly 300 cases of alleged
physical assault and racial abuse of asylum seekers since 2004 – two out of
three of the 29 alleged assaults were against men. And there were 27 alleged
incidents involving families, comprising a total of 42 children.
 Many claimed escorts were racist, using abusive terms such as “black bitch”
and “black monkey, go back to your own country.”

A report commissioned by the UKBA into allegations of escort abuse by Dame Nuala O’Loan was published in March this
year.

ENDS/… 2380.

25
 V
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31