A 'Gestapo' welcome for Zimbabwe's UK deportees

A 'Gestapo' welcome for Zimbabwe's UK deportees

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By Dixon Marisa

AS BRITAIN steps-up its efforts to deport failed asylum seekers back to Zimbabwe, those who have already made the dreaded trip report of a real “Gestapo” welcome at the Harare International Airport.

"We have a right to ask whether these would be deportees or Blair’s mercenaries of regime change or plain law-abiding Zimbabweans returning home after having been abused and dehumanised in Britain. Their treatment will depend on which is which," Information Minister Jonathan Moyo said recently.

Moyo's comments are not idle chatter.

Ratidzo (not her real name) said she was one of three deportees forced into a plane from the UK after the Home Office had refused to extend her student visa. She also reports of structural changes to the arrival lounge at Harare International Airport which has been changed drastically to house Central Intelligence Organisation interview rooms.

She said all deportees were told to use a different entrance and behind the wooden doors were mean-looking plain clothes officers who identified themselves as state security agents.

"We were separated and each was led into a different office. As soon as they closed the door the two officers started shouting at me," she told New Zimbabwe.com.

She said her inquisitors wanted to know:

• Why had you run away from Zimbabwe?

• How does it feel to be home again?

• Why did they send you back?

• Why had you claimed asylum in the first place?

• How long were you in the UK?

• What did they teach or train you to be?

• How much are you going to be paid to effect regime change?

• We have information that you are a mercenary, can you prove otherwise?

• Which division of the British Army did you train with?

• Why are you coming back just as we are preparing for elections?

• Are you going to vote?

• Who are you going to vote for and why?

• What is going to be your role in the MDC?

• What method of communication will you use to link with the British spies?

• Give us all your contacts in UK.

"The British immigration officials did not allow her time even to withdraw her money from the bank. All her personal belongings which were in Coventry have since been stolen"

“The intimidating officers fired question after question shouting abuse and threatening me with incineration at the notorious torture chambers of Goromonzi Prison,” Ratidzo narrated.

“At one time an officer hit me across the mouth when I asked him why they did not believe that I was just a student wrongly deported. He said, ‘…we have a job to do here and sell-outs like you have no grounds to ask us about anything!’”

Ratidzo said her interrogation continued for about three hours and only stopped when she remembered that she had an uncle serving in the Zimbabwe national army. “I told them about him and asked that they make a phone call so they could confirm my story. They did and my uncle asked them to let me go, promising that he will keep me in check. If it was not for that connection, I really do not know which direction my life would have taken.”

By the time they released her she was close to a mental breakdown.

“From the time I was picked up by the British immigration officials to the time I faced the CIO inquisitors, events kept changing in my life so fast that I could not cope. The most cruel were the British who seem keen to play a numbers game with people’s lives, claiming to have deported such and such simply because there is an election coming up in the UK

“As for the Zimbabwean side, I have no words to describe the insanity. They seem to believe Moyo’s paranoid guess work when he announced that UK was not really deporting the Zimbabweans but simply deploying specially trained agents to cause trouble in Zimbabwe. This is really insane but the CIO operatives are more than convinced that it's true. As I left the building I could still hear shouts and groans from the other two deportees.”

Ratidzo, who had not been in Zimbabwe for the past three years is now living in squalor and depravity since the British did not allow her time even to withdraw her money from the bank. All her personal belongings which were in Coventry have since been stolen.
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