FRFI 154 April / May 2000
Home Secretary Jack Straw is plumbing new depths as he seeks to remove all obstacles to implementing a policy of zero tolerance towards refugees. In March, The Independent reported that Straw would be calling for a fundamental review of the United Nations Convention on Refugees. Despite the introduction of one vicious asylum and immigration law after another over the past 30 years, the 1951 Convention, signed by 120 countries, has continued to provide some protection to asylum-seekers who could prove that they had a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’ in the country they were fleeing. Of course, it has not been easy proving this to a racist system, which is determined to exclude ‘economic refugees’ and refuses to recognise marks of torture or accept that regimes with which it has friendly relations are oppressive, but the structure for asylum claims exists.
Straw now seeks to redraft the Convention and as a first step will ask the European Union to agree new guidelines on its interpretation to exclude hijackers, anyone paying to enter a country illegally, or anyone arriving via a third country, even one travelled through to reach a planned destination.
Although some of the ‘liberals’ Straw bemoans will doubtless lament the watering down of the Convention, there is unlikely to be serious opposition to this or any other attempt to tighten border controls. In a deal with Britain, French immigration officers have begun patrolling Eurostar trains and a torrent of media filth is currently being unleashed against East European asylum-seekers in particular.
The last 20 years have seen a massive rise in the number of refugees worldwide – from 2.5 million to 20 million. Western European countries are desperate to ensure that the vast majority go only to neighbouring countries and do not trouble the affluent nations. However a sizeable number of today’s refugees come from countries very near at hand. Thus the borders of Fortress Europe are being strengthened to keep at bay not only immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America, but also those fleeing conflict in Europe itself. There are one million refugees from the NATO-driven conflict in Kosovo alone. Within Fortress Europe, Britain seeks, as always, to accommodate as few as possible of those asylum-seekers who do get into the EU. The ‘soft touch’ is a complete myth, propounded loudest by Shadow Home Secretary Ann Widdecombe to attack the Labour government.
Labour is not soft on refugees at all. In 1999 71,160 asylum-seekers came to Britain; of the 32,000 cases decided, 36% were granted refugee status and 11% exceptional leave to remain. Labour’s contempt for refugees from oppressive regimes was clearly demonstrated by its treatment of Afghanis claiming asylum following the recent hijacking in which an internal flight was diverted to Britain. Jack Straw announced that he would personally oversee all asylum claims and would ensure those making them were deported as swiftly as possible. As a disgusted official interpreter told Channel 4 News, immigration officers then harangued the Afghanis into withdrawing their applications and, when those who had done so were on the plane home, they cheered loudly and went to the pub to celebrate.
In March 2000 Oakington Detention Centre opened. Run by Group 4, who already manage Campsfield House, Oakington will increase government capacity to imprison would-be immigrants by 400. Britain already detains up to 1,000 asylum-seekers at any one time.
In advance of the implementation of the relevant section of the 1999 Asylum and Immigration Act, asylum-seekers are already being ‘dispersed’ among local authorities across the country, cut off from all community support and housed in appalling conditions. The full dispersal programme comes into force on 1 April, as does the system of replacing cash benefits with food vouchers.
Sodexho Pass, a French company already running a voucher system for asylum-seekers in Germany, and which will be running the British scheme, has openly touted for ‘trading partners’ by advertising the potential to short-change refugees: ‘Vouchers cannot be exchanged for cash. Change should not be given, eg if goods to the value of £4.50 are purchased with a £5 voucher the 50p change should not be handed back, but you as a Trading Partner will receive the full £5 value for that voucher’. How low can you get?
Given that even prior to the mass introduction of the voucher scheme, people claiming asylum at the port of entry have only been entitled to claim 90% of income support (£46 per week) per adult, plus housing benefit, it is hardly surprising that some end up begging on the streets. But these, mainly Romany, migrants are being vilified in language reminiscent of propaganda from 1930s Germany, with the media, parliament and the courts all playing their part. With Ann Widdecombe calling for mass internment of asylum-seekers ‘before they get a chance to go on to the streets to beg’ and even the more restrained newspapers talking of a ‘growing army of beggars’, the scene is set for anyone who perpetrates physical attacks on East European asylum-seekers to do so with impunity.
Any talk of eradicating institutionalised racism in Britain cannot begin to be taken seriously while would-be immigrants are excluded, hounded and deported and are treated as pariahs and criminals.
