Asylum seekers on hunger strike in UK detention facility

FIVE of eight Zimbabwean asylum seekers held at a British immigration removal centre for women went on hunger strike on Monday, pressing for their release.

The eight -- detained at Yarls Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedford -- have been told they face deportation to Malawi and South Africa after UK authorities refused to accept they were Zimbabweans who travelled on foreign passports to beat a new visa regime introduced in Harare.

Britain has stopped deportations to Zimbabwe pending the outcome of a country guidance case known as HS Zimbabwe. Judgment in the case was reserved after a week-long hearing last month.

Human rights groups say Zimbabweans face an automatic risk of torture if deported back to the southern African country where President Robert Mugabe is accused of human rights abuses.

Maud Kadango Lennard, a spokesperson for the striking detainees, told New Zimbabwe.com that they would not call off the hunger strike until they were released.

“We are determined to resist deportation to countries whose geography and systems are alien to us,” said the 36-year-old who came to England in January 2004 on a Malawian passport.

“The Home Office, against all the evidence, has refused to accept that we are Zimbabwean and we are saying that is wrong. It’s convenient for them, but potentially hazardous for us.”

Hundreds of Zimbabweans who bought travel documents in neighbouring countries in order to avoid visa restrictions imposed on the country have been told they will not be considered for UK asylum.

Lawyers and human rights groups say the UK is endangering Zimbabwean asylum seekers who are detained and interrogated on arrival in Malawi and South Africa, and face criminal prosecution for using fake travel documents. The deportees are then handed to Zimbabwean authorities, with no system in place to check their wellbeing.

Lennard said she was detained after overstaying in the UK, while other Zimbabwean detainees were arrested after being found working.

She has been told she will be deported to Malawi on September 19.

A letter from the Home Office, seen by New Zimbabwe.com, states that she left Zimbabwe on a valid Malawian passport on January 27, 2004, and transited via Egypt, arriving in the UK a day later.

She was refused leave to enter the UK on arrival, but granted a temporary admission on condition that she would catch a flight back to Zimbabwe on January 30, 2004, but she absconded. She was detained after turning up at Heathrow Terminal 3 to claim asylum on August 8 last month.

The Home Office wrote to her: “You disputed the fact that you would be returned to Malawi as you claim to be from Zimbabwe. However, you hold a valid Malawian (sic) and are therefore removable to Malawi.”

Lennard’s appeal was dismissed on August 30 -- a judge ruling that she was not in danger of being persecuted if deported to Malawi, “and accepted the fact that she was entitled to a Malawian passport”.

Campaigners said there were many similar cases of the Home Office deporting Zimbabweans to foreign countries after refusing to accept several forms of identification disproving their assumed identities on the false travel documents.

Sarah Harland of the campaigning Zimbabwe Association said they had tried to make representations to the Home Office to no avail.

And New Zimbabwe.com’s legal columnist, Lloyd Msipa, said: “The tragedy of this situation is that once these Zimbabweans are deported, they are forgotten. It’s like putting people on a conveyer belt to nowhere.

“Nobody wants to touch these cases with a long stick because legal aid is no longer available to most of them, and the cases are notoriously difficult to win. I have seen people who have produced birth and death certificates of their parents, letters from headmen and many other forms of identification to invalidate their false passports, but they all suffer the same fate.”

Rights groups have been pushing the UK government to follow-up on people who have been deported to guarantee their safety – one of the key elements of the argument in the HS Zimbabwe case.

Although Air Zimbabwe and British Airways have both refused to fly deportees, some airlines like Kenyan Airways and Air Malawi continue to accept deportees. They have previously been targeted by campaigners.

Flight captains are handed the passports of any deportees on their planes, which they hand over to immigration officers on arrival at their destination – a process which rights groups say invariably leads to lengthy questioning for the asylum seekers and harassment.

Hunger strikes have been tried by asylum seekers in the past, including other nationalities, with very little success.