On 12 February 2007, 38 asylum seekers were deported on a special flight from RAF Brize Norton to Erbil in northern Iraq. On 26 February, 40 adults and children were flown from Stansted Airport to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). As Home Secretary John Reid steps up his drive to demonstrate the increased efficiency of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, we can expect more large-scale removals to war-torn countries that Britain has decreed to be ‘safe’. NICKI JAMESON reports.
Brize Norton to Erbil
Despite the continued stance of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that the situation in northern Iraq ‘remains tense and unpredictable’ and that ‘careful consideration’ must be given before any deportations take place, the British government has chartered planes to send groups of asylum seekers to there three times in the past two years.
In November 2005 an attempt to deport 70 Iraqi Kurds was partially averted with just 15 removals taking place following a series of last-ditch legal applications. One of the deportations that did go ahead was subsequently ruled unlawful, resulting in humiliation for the government, which was forced to track down the asylum seeker and bring him back. Having learned nothing from this, on 31 August 2006 John Reid wrote to the High Court, stating he would ignore any challenge short of a full injunction to the next planned mass deportation of 32 Iraqis.
Deportations to Iraq are likely to increase, as the government is desperate not only to prove to its critics that it is not ‘soft on failed asylum seekers’, but perhaps even more crucially to establish, despite all evidence to the contrary, that at least part of Iraq is safe, now it has been ‘liberated’ and ‘democratised’ by the British and US military.
Around 60 people protested at Brize Norton on 12 February as the latest charter took off carrying 38 asylum seekers. Reports say the plane landed in Erbil, not at the normal passenger terminal but in a cargo area, which journalists and most airport workers were kept away from. Members of the ruling Kurdish Democratic Party’s special police, the Asayish, were waiting for the plane and some deportees were beaten by airport guards as they were herded onto a waiting bus.
Stansted to Kinshasa
Two weeks later, over 40 people, including 19 children, were forcibly removed on a charter flight to DRC. Sixty demonstrators gathered at the Home Office in London in an emergency protest called by the Congo Support Project, Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! and the LSE FRFI society. This protest was widely publicised and endorsed by NCADC, Unity Centre Glasgow and London No Borders, among others.
In the week leading up to the flight other demonstrations had been held in Glasgow, Leeds and Middlesborough, and Brighton No Borders had taken the protest to the offices of flight operators XL Airways in Crawley. The Bishops of Winchester, Chichester, Durham and Ripon spoke out against the mass expulsion to DRC, literally thousands of faxes were sent to the Home Office and XL Airways, and actor Colin Firth wrote to The Independent and The Guardian protesting that the government was ‘conniving at murder’ .
Although, unlike Iraq, DRC is not directly occupied by British and US troops, the British Labour government is still keen to peddle the myth that it is a safe place, following the election last November of President Joseph Kabila after a war that had ravaged the country since 1998 and in which over four million people died. While the British media, when it mentioned it at all, reported the war as an ‘ethnic’ war, this was not true. DRC has the world’s largest deposits of copper, cobalt, coltan and cadmium, as well as large quantities of chrome, timber, tin, rubber, oil, uranium, germanium, diamonds and gold and the war was for control of these resources. According to a 2003 UN report, high level political, military and business networks were involved in the organised theft of DRC’s mineral resources, and by 2002 had transferred at least $5 billion of state mining assets to private companies, including 18 British firms such as Anglo American, De Beers, Afrimex and Barclays Bank. Since his election Kabila has signed lucrative contracts with multinational companies, many of which have British links.
In a ridiculous twist of government policy, just one month before Britain kicked these 40 Congolese asylum seekers out, a number of families and individuals from DRC were brought into Britain through the Gateway Protection Programme (GPP) and allowed to settle with refugee status in various parts of the country; 77 were settled in Motherwell in Scotland. GPP allows for in-country asylum applications and is designed to prevent people arriving in Britain and claiming asylum; however the annual total allowed in from all countries is 500.
Mass deportations
Britain has made regular use of charter flight deportations since 2001. Up until the end of January 2006, 12,956 individuals had been removed on 320 flights at a cost of between £1,226,972 and £1,968,025 per annum. In the following year (February 2006-January 2007) there were 64 flights; the majority of them part of Operation Aardvark (51 flights removing 1,267 people to Eastern European countries) and Operation Ravel (11 flights taking 259 people to Afghanistan).
The use of charter flight deportations looks set to continue and increase. Though costly it appears that the government has calculated that it is still more cost-effective than deporting individuals on standard flights. And, although group deportations will inevitably be responded to by more widespread protest than those of individuals, the state appears prepared to weather that protest for now. Of course, the deportation of individuals and families on routine flights has not stopped, but protests against airlines who carry out removals and the reactions of holidaymakers and business travellers who find their fellow passengers are refusing to board or screaming until they are taken off planes have rendered carrying deportees on standard flights far less popular with passenger airlines.
Oppose all deportations!
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!
FRFI interviewed two Congolese refugees, Yannick and Dems after a mass protest outside Dallas Court reporting centre in Salford which followed the charter flight deportation.
What is your view about the British government’s deportation of asylum seekers to Congo?
To deport people into the hands of the people who have killed five million people is inhuman. Britain is picking on soft targets as a present to Kabila and to prevent Congolese demonstrations informing the British people about what is happening in DRC.
What is your message to the British people?
Everyone wants to be in their country if there’s peace – no one will choose to be here without their family. The fact we are here shows that there must be a problem in Congo. There is a war in our country. We ran away from people who want to kill us. There’s no peace in our country that’s why we are here.
Britain says Congo is safe. What do you think?
If Congo is safe as the British government says, why are they going to Maheba refugee camp in Solwezi, Zambia and bringing refugees [via GPP – see main article] to live in Sheffield, Bolton, Hull and Rochdale? This is a contradiction. And again, why is there no UN tribunal in Congo? Five million people have died. This is genocide. Britain is asking for a war crimes tribunal in Darfur, Sudan, but not in Congo? This is very shameful.
Tony Blair claims to be a champion of Africa. What’s your message to him?
Blair recently apologised for slavery. I say to him, don’t apologise for something that he did not do, but apologise for what he did in Iraq and Congo. This is hypocrisy to apologise. Does he expect someone to apologise for him in 200 years time?
FRFI 196 April / May 2007
