Yashika not to be deported today so fight goes on

 

Lawyers representing Yashika Bageerathi, the 19 year old student faced with deportation, have been told she will not now be put on a flight to Mauritius today.  Yesterday her fellow students, teachers and sympathisers demonstrated in Parliamment Square against her deportation and there was a Twitter and phone campaign to persuade Air Mauritius not to accept her on the scheduled flight.

Yashika remains in detention at Yarl's Wood.

This is just a delay rather than a reversal of the decision to deport and Theresa May is still refusing to intervene in the case. The campaign has to continue for the release of Yashika the granting of right to stay.

It has been heartening to see, amidst the UKIP inspired ratcheting up of anti-immigrant rhetoric, how the school community at Oasis Hadley have risen up in defence of their fellow student, backed by staff, and gained support across the country.

It is important though to recognise that focusing on an indvidual has strengths in showing the impact of our immigration laws at a personal level, it is important to make the laws themselves a focus of the campaign. The emphasis on Yashika's 'star pupil' status and her bright future as a mathematician begs the question as to whether a run of the mill, or under performing student, would somehow not merit the support that Yashika has received. 

Surely it is the issue of detention at Yarl's Wood, separation from family and deportation into a dangerous situation, and the legal framework which allows this to happen, that are important and should apply to anyone, regardless of academic achievement?

Meanwhile congratulations to the Save Yashika campaign for their success in stopping the deportation today and bringing the issue into the national spotlight.

The school Principal and students are interviewed on this clip from Channel Four News LINK

Sixth formers fight for classmate's right to stay in UK

Reblogged from BuzzFeed (Alan White) LINK

 

Yashika Bageerathi (right) fled Mauritius in 2011, seeking asylum with her mother in the UK. She's currently in Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre.

Via change.org

This week she was detained by the Home Office and is set to be deported on Tuesday. Bageerathi’s mother has said they left Mauritius because of death threats from a family member and violence from local gangs. She claims that if deported, Bergeerathi will have to go back to a place where she still fears for her life.

Her classmates have started an online campaign to stop the UK Home Office from deporting her months before she completes her education.

ambs @amberdowness

Is this the face of a criminal? #FightForYashika #saveYashika @SaveYashika 

Twitter: @nehharoyce

Abigail Faith @abigailcichosz

#saveYashika

And this afternoon, the protesters have gone to the Home Office in Whitehall.

Save Yashika @SaveYashika

#FightForYashika Hundreds of supporters!!! Showing the love for Yashika!!

 

Koos Couvພ @KoosCouvee

Enfield students are @Home Office protesting deportation of Oasis Hadley student Yashika Bageerathi @NrthLondonNews

 

Proud Immigrant @ourstweets

Proudest moment. Seeing our students lead the chants outside the home office. Justice for Yashika #FightForYashika

Her local MP has expressed his support.

David Burrowes @davidburrowesmp

@OAH6thform am doing all I can to #FightForYashika and support her. Have made contact with Home Office to try and urgently stop deportation

She is enrolled at Oasis Academy Hadley in Enfield and the school’s deputy head is helping to run the campaign.

In a press statement, Zoe Thompson says:

Since enrolling at Oasis Academy Hadley, Yashika has made an outstanding contribution to the life of the academy. Not only is she an incredibly talented mathematician, she has spent considerable time helping to train, teach and coach younger students in the subject, transforming their learning experience. On top of all of this she has poured herself into voluntary activities, helping the Academy to win a national award in recent months.

To deport Yashika at any stage would cost the UK a valuable member of society. To do so just weeks before she is about to complete her education would be an uncompassionate and illogical act of absurdity. We are fighting to give her the right to stay until June to finish her A levels, and ideally to allow her to remain with her family indefinitely.

The Home Office has said it will not comment on individual asylum cases.

Asylum system contributed to these deaths

Saturday's Guardian revealed that the asylum seeking family who apparently committed joint suicide in Glasgow last week by jumping from the balcony of their high rise flat, previously lived in the flats opposite Brent Town Hall in Forty Lane.

The Serykh's, originally from Russia, arrived in the UK from Canada. The deaths occurred after the family's asylum application had been refused and they were told that  financial support and housing would be withdrawn.

Serge Serykh appeared to be suffering from a mental illness.  He claimed to have been a Russian secret agent and to have been given refuge in Canada for 'services rendered'. However he fled Canada as a result of feeling he would be a target for the Canadian secret service because he had discovered a Canadian ploit to kill the Queen.

Barry Gardiner, Labour MP for North Brent, had given the family advice at his asylum surgery when they lived in Wembley.  Gardiner has become embroiled in an argument with campaigners who claim that the brutality of the asylum system, and particularly the withdrawal of financial and housing support, was to blame for the deaths.

Gardiner told the Guardian, "I am not qualified to judge his mental health, but in layman's terms he had paranoia. My overwhelming impression is that this was a tragedy that was always going to happen. He was not an ordinary person driven to suicide by the Kafkaesque immigration system, as some people seem to be suggesting."

I do not doubt the hard work that Barry Gardiner does on immigration and asylum. I was particularly impressed when I took a Kosovan family to his surgery for help and he gave time to their 10 year old daughter who insisted on an individual interview to put the family's case. He has an enormous workload on these issues.

However, I think his comment underestimates the stress caused by the withdrawal of support, threat of homelessness and fear of deportation experienced by all asylum seekers. It is likely that it was  not a matter of either mental illness or withdrawal of support being the cause of the likely suicides, but that withdrawal of support was the final straw that literally drove the family, already suffering the father's mental illness, over the edge. They died on the day they were told to leave their flat.

Under pressure from the media and the far right, the government has adopted a 'tough' policy on asylum that does us no credit. Forcing families into destitution and detaining children at Yarl's Wood offends any concept of a decent society.

GOVERNMENT CHILD ABUSE

Despite the Government's policy of Every Child Matters which seeks to ensure the well-being of all children, the Government is itself responsible for abusing one group of children: those held in UK immigration centres.

A report published in Child Abuse and Neglect of 24 children between three months and 17 years old detained in Yarl's Wood Immigration Centre shows that 73% had developed clinically significant emotional and behavioural problems since being detained. None had previously had any such problems. According to the Guardian's review of the findings:

• Eight children had lost weight since being detained,including a two-year old and a nine-year old who had both lost 10% of their body weight.
• Three children had regressed and refused to feed themselves or would take only milk.
• Most complained of recent health problems including abdominal pain, headache, coughing and vomiting. Two required hospital care.
• Ten out of 11 children seen by a psychologist had begun to experience sleep problems including nightmares and difficulty falling or remaining asleep
• Four children had bed-wetting, although they had previously been dry for a number of years and two started daytime soiling and wetting, indicators of severe stress.
• Four children had regressed language skills, including one child who had become selectively mute.
• All nine parents interviewed reported severe psychological distress, and six out of nine had contemplated suicide. Two were on suicide watch.

In rather deadpan fashion the report concludes that its findings support Australian research which suggested that 'detention is not in the best interests of the child'.

Most importantly the parents and children did not have access to the full range of assessment, support and treatment that they required and which they would have had access to if the children were attending a school.

Brent has one of the highest populations of refugees and asylum seekers and as a Brent teacher I gained valuable knowledge in educating and caring for children who had often gone through the most horrendous experiences. Providing a safe and supportive place for them to talk and work through their experience, as well as access to other agencies, enabled them to benefit from school and because they were the most fluent English speakers in the family, they often acted as interpreters in the family's dealings with the authorities.

I believe that one of the reasons that detention is favoured by this Government, and previous ones, is that schools as institutions have become highly effective at mounting campaigns against the deportation of pupils as well as supporting their needs. Schools are legally required to support racial equality and often have policies committed to social justice. Refugee and asylum seeker's children establish friendships in the school and their families begin to make links with the local community. These friendships and connections challenge negative stereotypes as refugees and asylum seekers become real people, with names, characters, emotions and histories and earn the respect of the host community.

An exemplary approach to providing support for refugee children is provided in Brent by Salusbury World, a charity operating from Salusbury Primary School in Queen's Park. A BBC report on one family's experience can be seen here: Child Abuse by UK Border Agency