This report by Nicky Road of a recent conference has been forwarded by the Institute for Race Relations and should be of interest to teachers, social workers, lawyers and refugee groups in Brent.
The conference, organised by the Royal Holloway and the Tavistock and Portman NHS
on 19 September, brought together lawyers, teachers, mental health
workers, social workers, refugee organisations and young asylum seekers
to share their knowledge and experiences and to establish a network to
collate information and track the outcomes for separated young people
seeking asylum.
The excellent contributors detailed both the legal minefield of
seeking justice for these young people and the emotional and
psychological impact of displacement and a very uncertain and
potentially life-threatening future. Young people from Afghanistan also
participated in the day and spoke about their experiences of living in
the UK, gaining education and qualifications, making friends and a life
here only to be met with a very uncertain future as they reach 18.
There were speakers, films taken by young people speaking about their lives, a performance of
Mazloom, a play based on words and experiences of young asylum seekers, and a film called
Hamedullah.
This is the true story of Hamedullah who fled Afghanistan as a teenager
and lived safely in Canterbury until Border Agency officials came to
his house in the middle of the night, arrested him and removed him to
Kabul on a charter flight. Sue Clayton, a film director working in the
Media Department at the Royal Holloway, filmed the day he was led to his
flight and gave him a tiny video camera which he has since used to
capture his experience of returning and his daily struggle to survive.
This film is a very powerful testament to the dangers that these young
people face when they are forcibly removed and gives the lie to the
official statement that it is safe for these young men to return.
The greatest sense of injustice voiced by those young people present
was the inequality in the way they are treated in the UK. The different
standards of the legal representation they receive was also voiced by
many, lawyers included. Supporters of these young people have started to
show extracts of
Hamedullah to judges, highlighting what they
can expect on their return, and this is proving an increasingly
effective way of influencing the decisions taken by courts.
The film
Hamedullah costs £10 with all the proceeds going to
this young man to support him whilst he tries to make a new life for
himself. He has been unable to get work, has no family left and his
village is in one of the most dangerous areas. He is viewed with great
suspicion as belonging to neither country.