BRITAIN-HUMAN RIGHTS: Asylum Seekers Often Land in Jail

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

LONDON, Mar 21 1997 (IPS) - Indian Methodist Minister Rev. Inderjit Bhogal has embarked on a 256-kilometre walk to highlight the detention and imprisonment of foreigners seeking asylum in Britain.

Bhogal, who spoke to IPS mid-way between Sheffield and London on Thursday, is demanding that the British government stop detaining and imprisoning these people while their cases are being processed.

“I’ve embarked on this pilgrimage to raise public awareness on the plight of asylum seekers. A lot of people in this country are not aware of what is happening to asylum seekers in Britain,” he said.

“These people are not criminals. Detaining them alongside criminals is unfair,” he said.

Bhogal, who is based some 256 kilometres north of London in Sheffield, said his walk was inspired by a 1996 Methodist Conference resolution passed in the British resort town of Blackpool, which urged the government to stop detaining asylum seekers.

But the Home Office here insists that the government only detains a “tiny” minority whom it considers will “abscond” and those who travel on “forged” travel documents to the United Kingdom.

The number of asylum seekers detained in centres and prisons around the country is about 850, according to figures provided by several refugee agencies here.

Bhogal’s public journey comes at a time when a few legislators in Prime Minister John Major’s ruling Conservative Party have highlighted immigrations and race as election issues during the campaign which kicked off on Mar. 17.

In recent years, the number of people coming to Britain from the South Asian sub-continent has remained roughly stable at three percent, but there has been a rise in immigration from some African countries, such as Ghana, Nigeria and Somalia, according to the publication ‘Britain 1996: An Official Handbook’.

The size of immigrants in Britain, out of a population of over 58 million people, is estimated to be six percent. Most of them originate from the former British colonies in the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.

But the statistics, based on the latest 1991 census, exclude some 6000 men and women fleeing human rights abuses in their own country who have been granted asylum in the United Kingdom in the past five years.

Amnesty International, in its report ‘The Detention and Imprisonment of Asylum-Seekers in the United Kingdom’, published in December 1996, said the Home Office began to use powers to detain, pending determination of their asylum claim, some of those seeking asylum upon arrival at ports of entry to the United Kingdom in 1985.

“This development appears to have been linked to a change in the pattern of asylum applications, and in particular to an increase in the proportion of applications made at ports of entry, following the imposition of visa regimes on nationals of a number of refugee-producing countries in 1985 and 1986,” said the London- based Human Rights organisation.

According to the group, the practice heightened in 1987, when a total of 449 asylum seekers were detained for 14 days or more under Immigration Act powers. By the early 1990s, up to 200 asylum seekers were detained at any one time, with many being held in the remand wings of criminal prisons, such as Winchester and Pentonville.

“The number of asylum seekers incarcerated at any one time has now risen to over 850 — a three-fold increase since 1993,” said Amnesty.

“Those so detained are held on the basis of a cursory examination by an Immigration Officer, acting without reference or effective accountability to any court or independent review body, and may be held indefinitely – many of those currently in detention have been incarcerated for six months or longer,” said the Human Rights group.

It said, “in most cases they are not, at any stage, informed of the basis of the decision to detain them and, unlike persons charged with a serious criminal offence and awaiting trial, the detainees do not benefit from a legally prescribed presumption in favour of liberty”.

Amnesty’s report, based on a survey of 150 asylum seekers detained under these extraordinary powers, said the longest length of time spent in detention was 662 days.

Bhogal, who began his walk on Mar. 10, strongly believes that the government will only stop detaining asylum seekers when the British public is made aware of what is happening to these people.

He said his message is slowly reaching the British public. “I have been warmly received by the people and local journalists along the road. Whenever I arrive at a location, I am warmly welcomed and interviewed by newspaper, radio and television journalists,” he said

When he arrives in London next Friday, Bhogal will present a petition on the plight of asylum-seekers to the prime minister and to the main opposition leader Tony Blair.