How the Government misleads the public about refugees
One of the worst and most dangerous mistruths that this Government peddles is that refugee Channel crossings are “illegal”. As they know very well, the law allows refugees to come to the UK to claim asylum. A recent court of appeal ruling has shown that refugees coming to the UK on small boats are not arriving “illegally” if they intend to arrive at a port and claim asylum – which almost all of them do. In a court case on Thursday, Sir James Eadie QC, representing the home secretary, admitted to court that there had been a “misunderstanding” that …
Refugees face constant danger in Calais
On Tuesday the dead body of a young man we understand to be a refugee was found on a road near the port in Calais. The cause of his death has not been confirmed, but his injuries suggest he fell from, or was struck by, a lorry. It is not known how long his body had been there. Horrifically this is the third confirmed refugee death in northern France already this year, and it’s likely that there have been at least two more. On January 14, Azzeidin, a Sudanese man in his 20s, died at sea when the boat …
Andrea’s story
I left my home in Mexico three years ago just hoping to get a job paying enough for me to live on. I only meant to go to Cancun, but horrible things began to happen on the way, and I was abused and exploited in different countries for the next three years. My name is Andrea and I am 29. I was born in Tapachula, a small city near the Guatemala border. In Mexico gangs are always looking to see who has some money – they’re connected to the police, who look away or even organize kidnappings. One …
Aaron’s story
Aaron left Eritrea seven years ago, just before his 19th birthday. If he hadn’t left, he thinks he would be “in the army guarding the border, or doing hard manual labour somewhere. Or dead.” When he first set off, he went to Sudan and spent three years there. It was a bad time for him: he was still a child but trying to live in a frightening adult world, and although he got work in a restaurant, the pay was so low he could hardly afford to eat. And even when he did manage to save money, he kept …
Solafa’s story
It’s Heaven, really – it’s like Heaven. My children are in school, and the teachers are so kind. The education system in Gaza was a catastrophe. I’m Solafa and I’m from the Gaza strip. I lived there with my husband and our four young children, but it was a terrible place to live, just like a big jail, with no way out for us. It took us more than ten years to find a way to leave – we finally found a way out in July 2019, but it took us quite a while to get here. I have …
The photography of former refugee Abdul Saboor
I left Afghanistan because they shot me. Not once, but three times. I don’t know who shot me or why, they were too far away to see. Afghanistan is a dangerous country – people do not follow rules, they do what they like. The first time I was shot, it was was in my arm, and I treated the wound myself. The next time it was my leg, and the doctors wanted me to stay in hospital, but I wouldn’t stay. The last time was in my back, and that was bad; I stayed in the hospital for 10 days …
Shaun’s story
Anyone can become an asylum seeker; you just don’t think it can happen to you. I came to the UK because it is safe, and I speak English. It’s a fair country, and I knew I’d have a chance here. Last week I got my refugee status after two years of waiting, and today I picked up my card! I grew up in Uganda. There are four of us in my family, and my father died when I was quite young so my mother brought us up. I went to a good school in Kampala with a lot of …
We’re taking the government to court to stop pushbacks
We’re proud to say we’ve officially begun our legal action against this Government’s plan to cruelly push back flimsy boats at sea. We’re making our challenge alongside the PCS Union who represent Border Force’s own officials, and we’re doing this on behalf of all refugees whose lives will be put in more danger if they try to cross the channel and get pushed back. Pushbacks are the forcible turning around of boats carrying refugees to stop them from reaching a country’s border. Pushbacks have led to deaths in other countries and we don’t want them to turn the English Channel …
Problems at a Calais eviction
Despite a promise made just eight weeks ago to allow people to collect their belongings when evictions are carried out, this morning the French police formed a cordon around a settlement of around 200 people, herded them out and seized their possessions. Official reports say the police arrived at the usual time of 9.30am, but refugees have told us that the time was 7am, which meant they were utterly unprepared. Violence broke out between refugees and police as refugees tried to retrieve possessions such as clothes and phones. There are reports of tear gas, rubber bullets and batons being …
The young refugees of Calais
Today on Boxing Day we went to the Fort site which is mainly visited by Sudanese men, though today there was a Kurd, an Afghan, an Iranian and a Romanian who was carrying all his worldly possessions with him. You could see he was struggling with anxiety and fear. Mental distress is a problem amongst the refugees, some have been trafficked, tortured, enslaved, beaten, hunted and hated, many before they even set off from their home country. I don’t think I could endure their life without my head fragmenting, in fact I’m certain of it. Many of the men I …