Zimbabwe Report

Below are two statements and a special message in response to an announcement made by the British Home Secretary David Blunkett on the resumption of removals of Zimbabweans who have 'failed' their UK asylum procedure.

The first is by the eminent Zimbabwe expert Professor Terence Ranger.

The second is an eloquent letter from Kate Allen (Director of Amnesty International UK) published in The Times of London on 24th November.

The message is from Sarah Harland of the Zimbabwe Association

We would ask you kindly and urgently, to take up for public debate the very serious issues his statement raises not only for exiled Zimbabweans but about the rapidly deteriorating quality of legal representation for all of them.

The Government announced on November 16 that it was lifting the suspension on returns to Zimbabwe. Its spokesman said that 'we suspended temporarily all enforced returns to Zimbabwe in 2002 for the best of motives but it has been exploited'. Zimbabweans were arriving on false documents and with manifestly weak claims, confident in the knowledge that they would be allowed to stay in Britain even if their asylum claims were disallowed. As supporting evidence the Home Office asserted that between January and November 2004 1,825 of the 2,025 Zimbabweans who applied for asylum were refused it.

There are several grave flaws in this official position. However good the motives of the initial suspension, it was rapidly followed up by the introduction of a visa regime. No Zimbabwean could travel to Britain without a visa; no-one could apply at the British High Commission (now Embassy) for a visa on the grounds that they wished to claim asylum. Even the most genuine of asylum seekers, therefore, had either to pretend some other reason for wishing to visit Britain or else to obtain false South African or Malawian passports – both taken as adequate reasons for refusing their applications.

Moreover, the very high numbers of refusals in the last eleven months contrast strikingly with statistics for the previous period subsequent to the stay on removals when there was an unusually high proportion – over 40% - of successful appeals by Zimbabwean asylum seekers. The change during this year reflects not so much the increased number of 'bogus' claimants as the imposition of a new regime. Fast track assessments allow no time for proper investigation or representation. The drastic cut-back on legal aid means that many fewer expert reports are commissioned. Many of the best asylum legal practitioners have withdrawn because of the manifest impossibility of adequately representing their clients. Anyone who has written expert reports knows how arbitrary initial Home Office refusals can be. They are now unlikely to be challenged.

The new policy makes no pretence that Zimbabwe has become a safer place since 2002. The Government says that there has been no change 'in our opposition to human rights abuses in Zimbabwe' and that it will work to 'restore democracy so that all Zimbabweans can in time return safely to help build a prosperous and stable Zimbabwe'. In the meantime, however, it proposes to send many Zimbabweans back to an unstable Zimbabwe in a state of economic collapse and with continuing human rights abuses. What has changed since 2002 is not Zimbabwe but the British political climate. In 2002 Zimbabwe was much in the news because of the take-over of white-owned land. Even the Conservative Party supported the suspension of removals. Now Zimbabwe has dropped out of the news headlines. Few British politicians care much any longer about what happens to black Zimbabweans.

But those who do care wish to register a strong protest against the resumption of removals and to call for the re-instatement of just processes of assessment of asylum claims.

Professor Ranger was for many years professor of Social History at Zimbabwe University, and resides now at St.Anthony's College Oxford. He is the President of the British Zimbabwe Society and a trustee of the Oxford based asylum detainee support group of Asylum Welcome. He continues to visit Zimbabwe regularly under the current difficult circumstances and is exceptionally well informed on all of the many distressing political, legal and social developments in that tragic country.

Sir, The Government’s decision to start sending unsuccessful asylum applicants back to Zimbabwe (report, November 17) is astonishing. As government officials must know, Zimbabwe is systematically repressing all opposition — through arbitrary arrests, torture, political killings and new legislation to curb freedom of speech and assembly. Movement for Democratic Change members, trade unionists, teachers, journalists and human rights activists are just a few of its targets.

Why then, with the human rights crisis in Zimbabwe deepening by the month, is it now right to start returning unsuccessful asylum-seekers? Just as mystifying, the Government had told Amnesty International that its Zimbabwe no-returns policy was “not based on asylum or human rights reasons but on the view that in the wider context of its position on Zimbabwe it would be inappropriate to forcibly return failed asylum-seekers at this time”. What has changed to make forcing people back to Zimbabwe “appropriate”?

This year, the Home Office began forcibly returning male asylum-seekers to southern Somalia, which has no effective national government, justice system or police force, and where fighting between armed factions continues.

Despite the manifest insecurity in Iraq, the Home Office is also pursuing plans for the enforced return of asylum-seekers even there.

When it comes to asylum, a “return at any cost” culture now appears to reign at the Home Office.

KATE ALLEN,
Director, Amnesty International UK, 99-119 Rosebery Avenue, EC1R 4RE.

The Zimbabwe Association will be sending out information re removals to Zimbabwe early next week, giving guidlines on action to take.

We understand that there will be a lull in removals until around 10 December 2004 so we have a couple of weeks to get ourselves organised.

If anyone hears of any detentions or removals before that date, PLEASE let us know immediately.

If we don't have an address for you and you want information please call the office on 020 7281 3029 and give us postal details. (Tues and Thurs are best between 10.30 and 2.00)

PS Please continue signing as failure to sign will draw yourselves to the attention of the authorities more quickly (for non-compliance). Take a friend with you if you're nervous, and they can alert us if anything happens ...

The reports below date from the time when removals to Zimbabwe were first suspended: