A toxic combination of inhumane policy and public indifference tragically drives vulnerable refugees beyond despair
Last weekend, three members of a family jumped together to their deaths from a Glasgow tower block. It's said that they were Russians whose asylum claims had been rejected. However, most deaths among asylum seekers don't make national news, as is made clear by a report compiled by Harmit Athwal for the Institute for Race Relations in 2006.
Driven to Desperate Measures catalogued the deaths of 213 asylum seekers, refugees and migrant workers who had been murdered in racist attacks or died in accidents since 1989; 57 had killed themselves, and – a little-known, appalling fact – nine of these had set themselves on fire, mostly in public places; and 11 died at their own hands in immigration detention centres or holding centres. But most of the suicides took place in the community, which can be a cold place for fugitives from horrors most of us will never have to face.
There is a few things to catalogue here, OK, they came on a plane making the UK their first country of contact. No disputing that. BUT why, if they came from Russia would they be claiming political asylum? Russia is no longer a Stasi controlled state, unlike here in England. The family would have had no death threats to go back to UNLESS the father had some connection with the Russian Mafia. You must admit that it must take some extreme conditions to force these people to jump to their death. I will admit that living in Glasgow itself would be reason enough to want to jump from a high building, but when you consider CAREFULLY the possible reasons behind this tragedy.
ReplyDelete1. Conditions in Russia are so terible.
2. Tourists would never go there as it is such a terrible place.
3.To paraphrase the mis-guided reporter from the Grauniad, Melanie McFadyean "We operate a harsh asylum system that allows for little hope, that crushes people"
UTTER BOLLOCKS! If that were the case, why are we, as an island SO OVERCROWDED WITH PEOPLE FROM OTHER LANDS WHICH WOULD BE EJECTED FROM ANY OTHER EU COUNTRY????
I would suggest that she herself lives in a nice part of London like Chalk Farm or Regents Park Road where there are artists and musicians walking up and down the road. She herself should shut the fuck up and go back inside her lovely three storey Georgian house with her husband, children and the compulsory children's nanny paid for by her newspaper's fat salary cheque.