Calls for Zimbabwe deportations to stop

Calls for Zimbabwe deportations to stop

ZIMBABWEANS have been protesting against the detention and deportation of asylum seekers in the UK

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By Karin Strohecker

LONDON (Reuters) - Human rights campaigners are urging the government to stop sending failed asylum seekers back to Zimbabwe -- a practice that was resumed since last November after a two-year suspension.

A small group of protesters outside the House of Lords where a debate on the former British colony was being held said the decision to resume deportations had sent the wrong signal in the run up to parliamentary polls there on March 31.

"The situation there has not changed; if anything it has become worse," Arthur Molife, chair of the Zimbabwe Community Campaign to Defend Asylum Seekers, told Reuters on Wednesday.

"The signal the British government sends is that it is safe to go back to Zimbabwe for political asylum seekers. It is quite clearly not," he said.

Britain halted deportations in January 2002 following a series of attacks on opposition campaigners in the run-up to presidential elections that extended President Robert Mugabe's 22 years in power.

Foreign observers said the election was deeply flawed -- although Zimbabwe's neighbours did not agree -- and the Commonwealth of 54 mainly former British colonies suspended Zimbabwe from its ministerial councils.

The asylum moratorium was then lifted in November 2004, and since then nearly 50 failed asylum seekers have been sent back.

The Home Office said the moratorium was lifted because of a surge in the number of failed applications which, it said, proved the system was being abused.

Statistics from the Home Office show the number of asylum applications from Zimbabwean nationals dropped to around 2,000 in 2004 from 7,655 in 2002. In 2004 Britain received 38 percent less requests than the year before.

But over the same period unsuccessful applications had risen from 62 to 89 percent, a Home Office spokeswoman said.

"Lifting the suspension did not reflect any changes to the government's opposition to the human rights abuses in Zimbabwe," she said. "Now we will decide on a case by case basis."

One of the cases the Home Office is dealing with is that of Regina Gwebu, a 45-year-old teacher and political campaigner.

She came to Britain in 2000 and had her application turned down the following year. She appealed several times -- a process that took her into the deportation moratorium period.

Gwebu said she had been abducted twice by a government intelligence unit in Zimbabwe after campaigning for a small opposition party. She says she was tortured, interrogated and deprived of food and drink.

"I am liable to detention or deportation any time," Gwebu told Reuters. "It is very scary. I feel like I have got no human rights, but this is why I came to Britain."
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