Key Zimbabwe asylum judgment on Friday

Key Zimbabwe asylum judgment on Friday

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By Staff Reporter

BRITAIN’S Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT) will on Friday hand down judgment in a key case which has a bearing on the fate of thousands of failed Zimbabwean asylum seekers.

The UK is currently not deporting Zimbabwean asylum seekers awaiting the outcome of an asylum appeal by a Zimbabwean known by the initials HS.

Judgment was reserved in September after a hearing which lasted two weeks.

HS (Zimbabwe) is the new country guidance case on Zimbabwe after the AIT dropped another case known as AA (Zimbabwe) which had been subject of marathon appeals by both the Home Office and AA, the asylum seeker represented by those initials.

The change from AA to HS, lawyers said, was aimed at “dealing fully with recent developments in Zimbabwe”.

The three AIT judges’ judgment will deal with refugee status and consider the risk of ill-treatment of returned asylum seekers, humanitarian conditions and what deterioration has occurred since last summer, Sonal Ghelani of the Refugee Legal Centre, representing HS, said.

Human rights groups and asylum campaigners in the UK say asylum seekers returned to Zimbabwe face harassment and possible torture by state security agents who see them as “British agents of regime change”.

The UK government argues that Zimbabweans who genuinely need protection are given refuge on a case-by-case basis, and that it should be allowed to remove those asylum applicants whose claims are unfounded.

The Zimbabwe Association, a campaigning group, says 16 145 Zimbabweans applied for asylum in the United Kingdom between 2000 and 2004. A majority of the claims remain unresolved or have been dismissed.

The Association says 1 010 Zimbabweans claimed asylum in 2000, a further 2 115 in 2001, some 7 695 claims in 2002, 3 280 claims in 2003 and 2 045 we made in 2004.

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