Human Rights Campaigns
UK Home Office: friend or foe for Zimbabweans?
UK - ENGLAND - I met with a Zimbabwean client at the Home Office near Heathrow airport last week. We were told to be there at 8.30am for a 9.00am start. We attended promptly. The Home Office did not start until 10am.
Had my asylum seeking client turned up late, she would have been accused of disregarding instructions and displaying characteristics that question her suitability to be in the UK.
Fairness is a principle that should be applied across the board.
This treatment is symptomatic of an inherent problem within the Home Office. Anyone who has attended or visited an immigration detention centre or the Home Office for interview will know what I am talking about.The waiting, the way in which asylum seekers are directed to sit, wait again and the manner in which they are interviewed all suggest that a constant "power game" has become part of the normal practise within the Home Office.
I am not suggesting that there is a deliberate policy of treating asylum seekers badly.
Rather, the Home Office - creaking at the seams attempting to cope and worsened by its own management inefficiencies (asylum cases can be "managed" by 4 or 5 different offices at the same time!) - is unable to assess its own capability and ensure that the checks and balances, that should be in operation, are actually working. In its place, a culture of treating all asylum seekers and visa applicants as second class people has developed - with some, not all, Home Office staff happy to wield the power they have indiscriminately.
Unfortunately, Zimbabweans are suffering more than most. The recent favourable decisions in the courts, finally recognising the potential suffering and the violence in Zimbabwe, have resulted in the Home Office subconsciously redressing the balance in its interview and assessment techniques.
Frightened that accepting any claim will lead to a perceived avalanche of Zimbabwean asylum seekers, the Home Office seeks to reject them all. Clearly this is unfair, nay discriminatory. What should Zimbabweans seeking asylum do? First, seek representation. Second, do not be tricked into answering "yes or no" questions in interview and, third, have the courage to take on any inherent discrimination.
The European Convention for Human Rights was designed to help. Use it!
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Zimbabweans and Asylum in the UK
UK - ENGLAND - No-one actually knows how many Zimbabwean nationals are living and working illegally in the UK. The Home Office will know how many Zimbabweans are living a terrible life of limbo - with their application for asylum or settlement in the UK pending and seeming to be going nowhere - and we can only guess that the numbers are in their tens of thousands.
The European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) was designed to provide safety and sanctuary to those people who, through no fault of their own, had to flee their home country and whose lives would be in danger if they were to return. History is littered with examples of tyrants and despots who have forced innocent people and families to flee for their life.
From any reading of history, the Mugabe regime must be one of the worst.
The evidence of torture, inhumane treatment and misery is voluminous. There can be no doubts, in the minds of any right thinking people, as to the true horrors of what has gone on, and what continues to go on, in Zimbabwe. The new power sharing agreement is a step in the right direction but it will take some considerable time for the systematic violence to stop.
That said, it is extraordinary that the Home Office is seeking to deny Zimbabwean nationals refugee status in the UK. If the ECHR, incorporated in UK law, is not offering sanctuary in these cases - when does it apply?
The recent decision in the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, RN Zimbabwe, has shifted the emphasis of evidence that should be demonstrated in the UK Courts ie returned asylum seekers from the UK are likely to be considered to be MDC supporters and are, therefore, susceptible to ill-treatment by the ZANU PF militias.
A return to Zimbabwe, therefore, must be in breach of the UK's obligations under Article 3 of the ECHR.
The Home Office declined to challenge the expert evidence in the RN Zimbabwe case but, strangely, feel able to question the live and true evidence of Zimbabweans seeking safety in the UK.
Zimbabweans in the UK need to seek legal advise. Taylor Partnership among others specialises in challenging the Home Office and ensuring that the human rights of our clients are heard and considered.
Given the position of the Home Office, we would advise all Zimbabweans to ensure that they seek prompt and effective legal advice and representation as soon as possible.