Teenager threatened with deportation after Home Office blunders
Article published: Tuesday, July 27th 2010
Sixteen year old Rabar Hamad has lived in Oldham for the last two years, having fled Iraq due to fears for his safety after his parents were killed in targeted explosion at their home in 2008. Upon arriving in the UK – hidden near the wheel arch of a truck – his age was incorrectly assessed by a social worker and he was treated as an adult. As a result of administrative errors he now faces deportation.
Rabar Hamad, 16, who is threatened with deportation due to administrative errors.
A campaign calling for the Home Office to reverse the decision has been organised by Rabar’s teachers and classmates. Teacher and campaigner Sally Hyman told MULE: “The aim of the campaign is to make sure Rabar has a future and that he’s allowed to stay living in his home where he’s happy.
“He should be able to continue his education and not be sent back to Iraq where his parents were murdered. We also hope that he and his nine year old sister can be reunited.”
Rabar’s future in Iraq would be uncertain to say the least. He has had no contact with his younger sister for two years and he has fears of returning.
“I’m worried for my safety.” he said, “I don’t want to go to Iraq, they will kill me like they did my parents.”
As of August 5 he will be made homeless and will no longer receive income support. The order for his deportation could be made within a fortnight. Yet the sequences of events leading up to this decision brings into question the actions of the authorities and agencies supposed to look after vulnerable migrants.
On arrival, aged 15, Rabar’s age was assessed by a social worker as 18. Campaigners allege that not only was the finding of the examination factually incorrect, but that many aspects of the process were erroneously carried out. In one meeting, Rabar was given an Arabic speaking interpreter, despite his first language being Kurdish. The difficulties in translation were later used in the case against him which raised ‘inconsistencies with his story.’
“They asked me questions,” Rabar said, “sometimes I understood and sometimes I didn’t.”
Rabar was instructed by social workers to live in a hostel where he stayed for one year, during which time he was assaulted by some of the adults in the house. With no understanding of English and still a child, he could not read any of the Home Office papers he was sent nor properly feed himself.
At a tribunal hearing in 2009 with a new solicitor, Rabar was found to be a minor in a new age assessment by a doctor of 40 years experience who declared that he was between 13 and 16 years of age. He was then placed in a children’s home and started attending Breeze Hill School, where he has been studying for his GCSEs. Besides performing well academically, teachers report that Rabar has thrived outside of the classroom as well. He recently attended a football training event at Fulham FC and was awarded “Best Player Of The Year” by his school.
However despite his successful integration Rabar has been judged to be an absconder after Wigan Social Services failed to notify the Home Office of his change of address. Due to a string of errors in his case, all evidence was deemed unreliable by the Home Office and in Spring 2010 he was subject once again to an age assessment. Contrary to the earlier finding by a doctor, Wigan Social Services decided that he was 20.
At a petitioning event in Oldham town centre on 21 June MULE caught up with Rabar’s fellow students at Breeze Hill who were dumbfounded by the decision. “How can they just lie about his age?” said one classmate, “it’s crazy.”
One local shopper, Eilleen Chamberlain, commented: “I read about this in the paper, it’s sad really. You can tell he’s too young.”
Public support for the campaign has been remarkable, with over 800 signatures for the online petition and over 200 signatures collected in the first two hours of the event in Oldham.
The case highlights major shortcomings in the practice of British asylum law. Under UN human rights treaties to which the UK is a signatory, any child under the age of 18 must be looked after by the host state, even if their asylum claim fails. However in a report on age assessment conducted by the Immigration Law Practitioners Association in 2007, it was noted that “there is strong evidence that the rise in age disputes is linked to prevailing cultures of cynicism and disbelief among immigration officers and some social workers.
“The decision to dispute age is often based on ill-informed assumptions about the appearance, behaviour and roles of children in other cultures and contexts.”
Home Office statistics show 720 claims assessed for children in the first quarter of 2010, of which only 85 were granted asylum.
Refugee Action said on Thursday that although they could not comment on Rabar’s case, they would like to see all age assessments carried out by independent bodies.
“Age assessments are very complex and it is vital that anyone undergoing an assessment understands the process and that it is as fair and thorough as possible,” said their spokesperson.
Meanwhile Oldham East and Saddleworth MP Phil Woolas has pledged his support for Rabar by requesting the UK Border Agency to conduct a further age assessment test, this time by a medical officer and not a social worker. The outcome of such an assessment would not determine Rabar’s asylum claim but would entitle him to education and care in the UK until adulthood.
Many will find Woolas’ support somewhat hypocritical, given his record in office under the Labour government as Immigration Minister. Many migrant campaigners saw his position in the Labour government as a cynical ploy to placate the far-right. As the detention of women and children asylum seekers in centres continued and grew, hunger strikes were held in the notorious Yarl’s Wood in protest of indefinite incarceration and inhumane treatment of detainees. Woolas once accused asylum seekers and their lawyers of “playing the system” and alleged that most were ‘merely’ economic migrants. Despite several attempts to contact him Mr Woolas declined to speak to MULE.
Supporters are still holding out hope that the Home Office will overturn the original decision. One member of the Facebook group left an uplifting and defiant message: “As if Rabar hasn’t been through enough in his young short life and yet he’s done so well to work hard at his studies and football. He’s a shining example of what can be acheived in the face of such terrible things. We must succeed with Rabar’s plight. Keep up the fight!”
You can sign the petition calling for Rabar to stay here: http://petitiononline.com/hamad93/petition.html
Joe Beech
More: Manchester, News
Comments
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Wigan Social Services should be in the dock here. According to the facebook group in support of Rabar two of the employees involved in the errors in his case are no longer employed. I just hope that the intervention of Phil Woolas MP has a positive effect
Comment by M on July 27, 2010 at 2:06 pm -
[…] Original article online at the Manchester Mule here […]
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[…] 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 […]
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