Campaigners hold ‘week of action’ for young asylum seekers
Article published: Friday, April 1st 2011
A new network of groups promoting the rights of young asylum seekers is tonight celebrating its inaugural Awareness Week with an evening of drumming and dance at Manchester’s Methodist Central Hall.
Young People Seeking Safety (YPSS)’s Manchester branch will be hosting drumming sessions and a performance of the famous Brazilian ‘capoeira’ martial arts-inspired dance starting at 7.30 this evening Friday 1 April. Following the performances will be a discussion from Debbie Abrahams, MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, and Sally Hyman, winner of Liberty’s Human Rights ‘Close to Home’ Award.
Set up on the back of successful campaigns, the organisation brings together several different refugee groups campaigning for greater protection of young forced migrants without either parents or carers, over 3,000 of whom claimed asylum in the UK in 2009 according to campaigners.
The event has won the backing of filmmaker Ken Loach, who said ‘each year thousands from across the world leave behind a bleak existence to seek shelter in our country. Too often they meet hostility and rejection.
‘This is a great opportunity to show vulnerable young people the friendship and support we would wish for our own family members.’
Protecting the vulnerable
Bob Miller, from Oldham Friends of YPSS, told MULE the group was sparked by the campaign to save Rabar Hamad, a young Iraqi asylum seeker and Oldham school pupil who came within days of deportation when his age was disputed by the government, before being granted temporary reprieve following a vigorous camapaign that brought together local campaingers and national groups such as the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC).
Miller said: ‘After the Rabar [campaign] had been fairly successful, we got a phone call from a woman from NCADC South. They wanted to get together different campaigns which had been helping young people across the country to work to see if there was enough commonality in what we were doing to bring together something national.’
Miller explained the group’s aims: ‘One of the things we want is proper age-assessments which are supported not just by over-worked, stressed social workers making a quick snap judgment after they’ve been on a short training course, but one that takes into account medical evidence.’
‘Luck of the draw’
MULE spoke to Ali, a young Iranian refugee, who explained how support upon arriving in the UK is crucial in allowing forced migrants to rebuild their lives: ‘The reason I left Iran was a government problem. Once I got here, everything was good for me. It was a new life for me. Once I arrived in the UK, social services from Calderdale were really helpful and I got treated really well and fairly.’
Five years on Ali, who on arrival couldn’t read, write, or speak English, is studying Engineering in Oldham. Yet Miller warned that whether or not people receive such support is ‘luck of the draw’, pointing to how Hamad had faced a very different experience, accusing the UK Borders Agency (UKBA), the government body responsable for asylum and immigration, of a ‘climate of suspicion’.
The UKBA was recently criticised by the UN High Commission for Refugees, who said in a 2010 report that there was an ‘increasing emphasis and stress on factors UNHCR does not consider relevant to the assessment of credibility’.
Miller continued: ‘We just want young people who arrive here to be trusted, to be believed, and to be treated fairly. And none of those things happen at the moment.’
James Legge
More: Manchester, News
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