From 17 to 25 September the Immigration Appeal Tribunal considered submissions that the ‘Country Guidance’ on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is incorrect and deportations cannot be safely carried out. (Country Guidance is intended to provide immigration judges with information to assist their assessment of asylum claims.) As FRFI goes to press, the Tribunal has heard all the evidence and the three judges have retired to consider their verdict. This could take some months. Whatever the court decides, the view of the many people from DRC who have been demonstrating all year in cities across Britain and who made their presence felt outside the court is clear – DRC is not safe!
In February the Home Office succeeded in deporting 40 men, women and children to DRC on a charter flight. There have been reports that many of them were subsequently persecuted. In 2006 lawyers and activists in the Congo Support Project had already begun collecting evidence and testimonies in order to challenge the standing Country Guidance on DRC. The 26 February charter flight to Kinshasa seems to have been a cynical move by the government to get some asylum seekers out before the Tribunal hearing began. Similar moves have been made against groups of Zimbabwean, Sri Lankan and Sudanese asylum seekers in advance of Country Guidance hearings.
Following a ‘directions hearing’ in April, the Tribunal was to begin hearing the full case in July; however, faced with overwhelming evidence of the intimidation, torture and imprisonment of asylum seekers who were expelled to DRC, the Home Office legal team pleaded for more time to verify all the information they had been given. This case was then adjourned to September.
In August, freshly appointed Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, anxious to flex her muscles, decided that at the end of the month a charter flight would take failed asylum seekers to DRC. This was successfully challenged in the High Court, which ruled that no asylum seekers should be deported to DRC until after the Country Guidance case had been heard. No-one from DRC was deported but there have been reports that the plane departed nonetheless, opportunistically redeployed to take asylum seekers from neighbouring Congo Brazzaville, which was not covered by the decision.
The British government has an interest in keeping up the pretence that ‘DRC is safe’. Although Britain has never directly colonised DRC, British companies are deeply involved in the exploitation of the country’s mineral wealth. DRC has the world’s largest deposits of copper, cobalt, coltan and cadmium, as well as chrome, timber, tin, rubber, oil, uranium, germanium, diamonds and gold. The war that has taken the lives of millions of people in DRC has been depicted in the international media as an ‘ethnic war’ or a ‘civil war’. In reality it is a war for the control of these resources. Since his election last year, President Joseph Kabila has signed lucrative contracts with multinational companies, many with British links.
Every hearing related to the Country Guidance Tribunal has been accompanied by nationwide demonstrations, with Congolese communities in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Nottingham, Newcastle, Middlesbrough and other cities mobilising to get across the message that while Kabila’s corrupt regime rules DRC and while imperialist countries and multinational companies plunder the region’s resources, it is not safe to return. FRFI has supported and will continue to support these demonstrations and the struggle of the Congolese people against imperialist oppression.
Nicki Jameson
FRFI 199 October / November 2007
