The Home Office should take a beating over this
From The Times
October 4, 2007
Tom Stoppard
Today is moral maze day again at the Home Office. Actually, so is every day, but today the show moves to the House of Lords in a case involving three asylum-seekers from Darfur.
One should spare a thought for the immigration officials. We pay them to keep the door shut but to open it discriminately, case by case. One of their rulings is that it’s OK to return Darfur refugees to Khartoum. Back in April this ruling was overturned in favour of the three Darfuris.
That was in the Court of Appeal, which decided that deporting them would be unduly harsh because of the conditions in the Sudanese refugee camps.
It’s not that the Home Office had a thing about these three individuals from Darfur. The “problem” for the Home Office is that there are about 300 more Darfuris in the same situation, and – potentially – the court’s decision opens the door to all of them. This is why on Thursday the lawyers will be asking the law lords to reverse the Court of Appeal.
Got the picture? I’m afraid you haven’t. We have better mazes than that.
The real issue is not about conditions in the camps, it’s about the beatings and torture. It’s about what happens on the ground in Khartoum when the British handcuffs are taken off the deportee, and when the British escorts hand their prisoner over to the Sudanese security officials.
At the Court of Appeal in April there was no ruling on that: the evidence available at the time was deemed insufficient.
Since then, the evidence that has become available is ample and compelling, most particularly from two named individuals who made the long journey from the horrors of Darfur to Britain, and from Britain, in handcuffs, to Khartoum; and from Khartoum, by escape, to a place of safety where they told their stories . . . “The beatings and questions went on for days . . . I was bleeding everywhere, I was completely soaked in blood. They never let me use a toilet. The room was covered with my faeces and urine.” The beatings began before the British escorts were clear of the airport.
But none of that will be allowed to be introduced into today’s proceedings, because it had not been put before the Court of Appeal (it arrived too late).
Two questions: (1) The Home Office knows that the line it takes (“A person will not be at real risk on return to Khartoum . . . Neither at the airport or subsequently will such a person face a real risk of being targeted for persecutory harm or ill treatment”) is codswallop – so, will it continue to press its case simply on the conditions in the camps?
(2) Gordon Brown earned a lot of points by taking up the Darfuris’ plight at the UN – so, will somebody tell him what his left hand is doing?
A mixture of law, politics, autobiography and humour. Once described as "The Devilish Advocate" (Guardian), I do have the ability to provoke a response. Sometimes it comes from someone who uses a thought process, and sometimes from jerks usually associated with the knee.
2 comments:
Good one. We have similar situation in the U.S. with Iraqi translators who worked for us, yet can't even get into the U.S. for asylum. Thus being left behind in Iraq, to face severe consequences.
I personally would make them sit in a concrete room and look at a full wall blown up picture of Gordon Brown's false smile at its best - that should be enough to make them re-think their case.
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