Despite the fact that asylum and immigration issues are reserved to Westminster, the people involved are not. Mandy Rhodes looks at the plight of those seeking refuge in Scotland.
IMAGINE this; you are in fear of
your life or your children’s lives,
you have seen your husband killed
and you have been gang raped and
anally abused. You are branded an enemy
for daring to speak out about the brutality
that is going on around you and have
nowhere left to hide. You are so frightened
that you leave the safety zone of what had
been your privileged life, you creep away
by cover of darkness like a common criminal,
leaving behind your well paid job,
your home, your pets, your family and
friends. You arrive in a foreign country,
with a prolapsed womb and open sores on
your arms, legs and buttocks, hoping you
will be helped. But instead, you are interrogated,
locked up and treated like shit.
You are told your case will be looked at,
you are told not to work, sent to live in a
bleak housing estate in a flat in one of the
worst areas of the city and told to expect a
knock at anytime of the day and night that
could mean you are to be sent back home.
You wait.
How would you cope, if this was you?
Welcome to Britain as an asylum
seeker.
This is Sarah’s story but could apply
to any one of the 5,500 asylum seekers
in Glasgow who, contrary to popular
opinion, have not arrived here hoping
to live off handouts or find an easy life.
The demographics reveal that, in general,
asylum seekers will be well qualified and
from privileged or high profile lives in their
homeland. It is because of that position that
they are targeted when political fortunes
reverse or their country is ripped apart by
war. That is why they seek refuge.
Sarah is 65, a Kenyan mother of ten
and a grandmother to many more. The fact
that she doesn’t quite know how many is a
hint at the chaos she has lived in for the last
decade. She talks loudly, non-stop and in a
stream of angry consciousness that at times
has you reeling, at times has you embarrassed
and all of the time, has you aching
with her pain and crying alongside her as
she narrates some of the dreadful details of
what has happened to her family.
Sarah is undoubtedly strong but even
she, in her perfect English, which indicates
her status in her native home, breaks down
at the memory of what she and her family
have endured. And in an attempt to prove
her story – and this should make any British
person ashamed for what it implies about
our attitude to asylum seekers she raises
her dress and insists I feel the top of her
naked inner thigh. British reserve causes
me to hesitate but she grabs my hand and
runs it up her leg. There are hard lumps
of scar tissue as you get to the top and
my fingers run over old scars on her buttocks.
She shows me healed over holes in
her hands and feet and tells me that these
wounds and the internal tears are a result
of being raped by four men who burst into
her home, who not only used their own
strength and bodies as weapons of war but
penetrated her with all manner of things in
a final act of humiliation that took away
any semblance of dignity that remained as
she lay spread-eagled and bleeding on her
living-room floor.
First of all, they had assaulted her vaginally,
stabbed her with household items
and stuck pieces of fruit inside her but then
they turned her over and raped her anally.
She talks about them sucking “her old
woman’s breast as if they were trying to
suck the very blood from her” and she says
as a respectable, strong, Christian woman
(she was married to a Church of England
bishop), she was left discarded, used and
broken. Her physical injuries were such
that she required gynaecological surgery
when she arrived in Britain. She says now
that she wishes they had turned a gun on
her there and then to save her the agonies
of what was to come.
The rapes were the final chapter in
a turbulent story that started for Sarah
when she was born into bondage on a
British man’s farm in Kenya. Both her
parents were slaves who fought for their
freedom. When independence was granted to Kenya in 1963, her parents secured
a large piece of farmland and hoped for
a better life but the ongoing unrest and
frequent changes of political rule led to
tumultuous years for Kenya with different
tribal factions arguing over every scrap of
land. Her own family farm was eventually
seized and her family scattered in fear of
their lives as they were considered allies
of a previous regime. She spent 15 years
in limbo, moving around the country with
various family members, trying to find
sanctuary until eventually, after seeing her
husband killed for speaking out about the
crisis in their country; she escaped with
three of her grandsons and fled to Britain,
hoping for refuge.
Some of her sons and daughters were
killed in the ensuing battles and she now
has grandchildren languishing in orphanages.
Her pain is palpable.
"If I had known then, what I know
now," she says, "I would have stayed in
Kenya and grieved for my own family
members. Instead of coming here and having
to prove my story, be viewed with suspicion,
be seen as someone who just wants
hand-outs and have this ongoing agony of
waiting, waiting to find out if I will be sent
home to die. I might as well be dead."
Sitting in her damp, two bed-roomed
council flat with its mismatched pieces
of second-hand furniture in one of Glasgow's
less salubrious estates, it is difficult
to understand why anyone could accuse
Sarah or anyone with her background of
coming to Britain for a better life.
I tell her that people need to hear her
story and that it will help her case; she asks
what would be the point when the Home
Office already has a 72-page report on her
plight, has newspaper cuttings and photographs
which reveal the terrible carnage
that her family has suffered, has medical
testimony about her injuries and the risks
to her grandsons, and yet has done nothing
to help. She’s right. What would be the
point, indeed, of telling her story?
Last year, despite the evidence, the
Home Office gave Sarah notice for her
family to quit. The meagre benefits that she
was entitled to were immediately stopped
and she and the boys slept every night in
their clothes, waiting for that knock on the
door from officials who would force them
to a detention centre and then out of the
country. When the knock came, the family
escaped from their flat by jumping from
the second-floor balcony and they went
into hiding, sleeping rough in a tunnel
near Central Station. When Sarah eventually
caught pneumonia and was admitted
to hospital, her GP took the family into her
own home and the MP Mohammed Sarwar
intervened. The case is now in a legal
limbo with the family given a reprieve of
sorts while the Home Office looks at the
case again. Sarah doesn’t understand what
her status is and although her benefits have
been reinstated, her lawyer says she might
need to face being taken into detention
before he can start the legal process rolling
again.
She says the boys run and hide whenever
there is a knock at the door and one
of them came home with a bottle of liquid
that he said they should swallow if
the Home Office came knocking and they
could all die together in Scotland.
one
of them came home with a bottle of liquid
that he said they should swallow if
the Home Office came knocking and they
could all die together in Scotland. 
This family, terrified of what every
day could bring, represents the true face of
asylum in the UK. And their story should
shame those who have contributed to the
poisonous atmosphere of prejudice and
hysteria that surrounds the issue in Britain.
There is no issue in British politics so
wilfully misrepresented as asylum. People
talk of a breakdown in community cohesion
and a strain on the public purse.
Spongers, chancers and frauds are the
words frequently used to describe people
who come to Britain looking for help.
It would be convenient for the government
if this were the case. But although
there are plenty of fraudulent applications
by people whose motive for leaving home
is merely to improve their circumstances,
the number of genuine applications has
multiplied with the rising incidence of wars
and civil strife. The government tacitly
accepts this fact, because although only 4
per cent are granted refugee status, another
22 per cent are granted some form of leave
to remain – because their claims on our
mercy are well founded.
That is why there is a point to telling
Sarah’s story, albeit disguised and anonymised,
for while she may be terrified
that causing any fuss might jeopardise her
case not causing a fuss is an indictment on
humanity.
But she is justified in her fears. The destitute
foreign refugee setting himself on fire
in protest at his miserable plight is a character
that not even Dickens conceived of
but this happened in Scotland last month.
Uddhav Bhandari, 40, who fled to Scotland
from Nepal six years ago, set himself
alight at the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal
Centre in Glasgow on March 7. He
was terrified of being sent back to Nepal.
This was not a man happily leaving his
own country for a land of milk and honey
in Scotland. This was a man who was prepared
to put up with anything, anything,
even death rather than go home. He hadn’t
left because he wanted to. He left because
he had to. The tabloids would have you
believe that people like Bhandari are simply
looking for an easy life but the statistics
– 50 per cent of people seeking asylum
have post-traumatic stress disorder and
a further 35 per cent have been sexually
abused or tortured – tell a different story.
Yet we push them into a life of shame,
poverty and suffering.
If the government wanted to do something
that would genuinely improve our
immigration system, it would allow asylum
seekers to work while their applications
are being processed. This would
expose the slur that refugees are all benefits
scroungers and that asylum seekers
are only searching for an easier life. And
we need to hear their stories because those
tales alone would expose the lie and would
also help to draw some of the poison from
the debate.
Yet only last week, attempts by the
Scottish Executive to relax the rules about
asylum seekers working were thwarted by
the Home Office who said no exceptions
could be made, even in a country such as
Scotland where we have a need for skilled
and educated people to fill our population
gap.
Last week, Henriette Koubakouenda,
was given the right to stay in Glasgow.
She had been here for six years. In her own
country of Congo-Brazzaville, she was a
high-profile scientist who had done work
for the American Peace Corps, travelled all
over Europe and to Washington, offering
her expertise in the field of aquaculture
and was married to an influential politician.
She lived an extremely privileged life
in a palatial house with servants including
a personal driver.
When she arrived in Britain with
her young son Chris – she was forced to
choose and leave three of her other children
behind – and her nephew Arnaud whose
own father was a high-profile politician
who had already fled his homeland in fear
of his life, she was on her way to Canada seeking refuge. Her mistake was to set foot
on British soil, which meant that she triggered
a whole series of events meaning she
had to become an asylum seeker here.
She remembers her first day in London,
having to queue from early morning until
5pm at the immigration services waiting to
get advice. She was given a male translater
from the Democratic Republic of Congo
and was too frightened to tell him her full
story because not only did she have personal
things that she did not want to share with a
man but she also feared he could be a spy.
"I couldn’t believe that here was me,
Henriette, standing in a queue and then
being interrogated in this way. At home, I
had been called ‘madam’ and given respect
but now this...after all I had been through,
I expected comfort and a welcome. I felt
then that I would have preferred to die but
I had the children to think about."
The family was placed in one room
in a hotel for asylum seekers before being
put on a bus to Glasgow. They arrived in
Scotland at 5am and their names were read
off a list and they were taken to a flat in
Sighthill. It was October 11 2001.
Her application to stay in Britain has
been rejected twice and gone to appeal
twice. She has waited and waited and tried
to make a life based on sand. Despite this,
her nephew was earlier this year picked to
represent Britain in the Special Olympics
in China in October this year. Until last
week, he still did not know if the family
would be thrown out of the country and
sent home.
However, among Henriette’s records
are testimonials from Americans who had
worked with her in Congo during her time
with the US Peace Corp, from representatives
from Oxfam and other charities. One
letter from the programme supervisor of
the charity USAid says: "If anyone meets
the criteria and should be granted asylum,
it would be Mrs Koubakouenda."
On Tuesday morning at 10.30, the
Home Office came knocking at Henriette’s
door. She feared the worst. But the news
was good and the family can now stay.
"People keep phoning to congratulate
me but I can’t be too happy. One woman
told me not to forsake the rest of them
here and I feel that weight of responsibility.
Who else is there to help?"
Scotland’s record on its attitude to
asylum seekers perhaps demands some
scrutiny. There has indeed been a massive
public outcry against deportations,
there has been debate in the Scottish Parliament
over how to end the terror tactics
of dawn raids, there have been awards to
campaigning schoolgirls who fought to
bring attention to the plight of their school
friends who lived at risk of being thrown
out of the country. We have had a sympathetic
First Minister and Cabinet and we
have the Fresh Talent initiative and recognise
the wasted talent of thousands of
skilled asylum seekers living in poverty in
Glasgow, barred from working by a government
in Westminster. And that’s the
point, we need these people but we have
no control over their outcomes. We allow
them to come and live here, however temporarily,
because our councils, particularly
Glasgow, need the cash that their residency
brings but with that financial carrot, we
absolve responsibility for them and that
might be something for MSPs to consider
after the May 3 election.
Sally Daghlian, chief executive of the
Scottish Refugee Council, says "A recent
report by the Joint Committee on Human
Rights said that the government’s treatment
of asylum seekers in general and
specifically their refusal to allow them to
work amounted to inhuman and degrading
treatment.
"The Scottish Executive has a clear
policy for integration, regardless of where
people are in the asylum process. This
includes supporting community projects,
access to language classes and volunteering
opportunities. Permission to work would
be the next step to make this integration
policy fully achievable and we urge the
Scottish Executive to push this with the
Home Office."
No one has commented on this article. | 
Holyrood magazine is the fortnightly insiders guide to understanding the complexity of Scottish politics and policy developments and is widely regarded as being the leading publication for political news and information in Scotland.
