Refugees: countdown to zero
01 January 1991
Refugees: countdown to zero
artdoc August=1992
In July, just as the European Court of Human Rights was about to
denounce Britain's asylum procedures for giving refugees
inadequate protection, the Home Secretary announced new appeal
rights for asylum-seekers whose applications for refugee status
are refused by the Home Office Refugee Unit. When the new law
comes in, they will no longer have to wait until they're removed
from the country before they can appeal, but will have the right
first to present their case to an independent adjudicator. This
announcement should have been good news to the refugee groups,
which have been campaigning for years on the issue. But it
wasn't. For this is no ordinary appeal system, but one designed
to get rid of as many `bogus refugees' as possible as quickly as
possible.
Free legal advice and assistance from lawyers is to be abolished;
instead, only the Home Office funded United Kingdom Immigrants'
Advisory Service (UKIAS) is to represent asylum-seekers (though
UKIAS has since challenged this, on the grounds that legal
representation should be a matter of free choice). `Manifestly
illfounded' applications will be dismissed without a hearing. The
right to challenge Home Office decisions in the High Court will
disappear.
The new appeal system, then, bears all the hallmarks of a sorely
begrudged concession. And it was announced as part of a package
of measures which all have the same aim and which are informed
by the same ideology; the majority of asylum-seekers are `bogus'.
Fines for airlines carrying passengers with false or no travel
documents are to double to Ã2000. The number of people who,
having not qualified under the strict definition of refugees, are
given `exceptional leave' to stay in the country, is to be
severely reduced.
DOUBLE VISION
The ideology of `bogus refugees' reflects the double vision of
the West on the issue. Refugees who stay where they are, dying
in the mountainous war zones in Iraq or starving in refugee camps
in Africa, are `real' and victims to be pitied; those who attempt
to get to the West are `bogus', adventurers in search of a better
life, and are to be deterred, detected and removed.
But both views fail to see the West's own responsibility in the
creation of the `refugee problem'. In April, it was only massive
public incredulity and outrage which forced George Bush, John
Major and other Western leaders to agree, belatedly, that they
had a moral responsibility to help the refugees which their war
in Iraq had created. Only after it became clear that the world
would not let them get away with inciting a people to rebel, only
to walk away from the consequences, were the leaders shamed into
doing something. Even then, the aid was only for the Kurds in the
north; the southern Shia Muslims, whose plight had not hit the
headlines, were quietly betrayed as US forces left them
unprotected from the Iraqi army's retaliation for the US-inspired
rebellion.
In Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia and Uganda, in Central and South
America, Western governments have armed, trained and supported
rebels against governments; in countless other countries, they
have supported (sometimes installed) authoritarian governments
- all, of course, to protect Western `vital interests'. These
interventions have been less visible than the dismemberment of
Iraq, but no less devastating for the citizens of those
countries. So, too, has been the financial intervention of the
IMF and the World Bank, leading to national bankruptcy,
immiseration and repression.
But to acknowledge this responsibility would be to recognise the
need for fundamental changes in the global economic, political
and military order. To acknowledge what the West (or the North)
owes the Third World (the South) would be to recognise that
Europeans derive their standard of living from non-Europeans, and
therefore cannot justify closing the door on them.
STRIC