Double tragedy for UK asylum deportee

Double tragedy for UK asylum deportee

• Zim asylum seeker in UK deportation drama

• Calls for Zimbabwe deportations to stop

• Ex-Warriors defender faces deportation from UK

• A 'Gestapo' welcome for Zimbabwe's UK deportees

• Zimbabweans rally against UK deportations in London

• Britain must stop the Zimbabwe deportations

• UK wants asylum seekers to clean-up streets

• Zimbabweans in UK student visa scam

• UK tells Zim asylum seeker: 'It's your fault you were persecuted'

• Britain accused of 'savage brutality' over Zim deportations

• Zim says UK deportees 'mercenaries of regime change'

• Zim families qualify for UK amnesty

• Britain urged to halt deportations

• UK protests planned over deportations

• Neighbour's eye witness account as UK deports Zim mum

• Britain deports Zimbabwe mum and kids

• UK condemned over deportation of Zim asylum seekers

• UK resumes deportation of Zimbabweans

• Britain plugs Zimbabwe visa loophole

• Britain still a magnet for Zimbabweans

• Zim immigrants account for half of Aids cases in UK

• Deported for falling out of love

• Britain's asylum shame

• Britain clamps down on C'nwealth job scheme

• Britain clamps down on sham marriages

• 6 years for hit-and-run Zim refugee

• Zanu PF UK asylum network exposed

• Police shed more light on visa scam

• Zim man nabbed in visa scam

By Staff Reporter

COVERED under a blanket, and her legs and hands firmly chained, Catherine Mbele is goaded to the waiting Egyptian Airlines plane.

It has been six months since she was grabbed by fierce-looking police officers and immigration officials in an early morning swoop at her flat in Swansea, Wales. She was shuffled into a waiting truck and taken to a high-security immigration removal centre in Bedford.

Two days before she was deported last Sunday, Mbele spoke to New Zimbabwe.com from inside the Yarlswood Immigration Removal Centre. She was determined to defy deportation to Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

"It has been six months since they took me. They have done just about enough to break me down. But I will try and resist deportation," she said.

"I can't belive the British government wants me to be deported to face Mugabe's despotic regime."

Of course her resistance came to nought. Many Zimbabweans have successfully managed to avoid deportation by creating ugly scenes at the airport. But the strategy has changed since her friends were taken there a few days before. Now she had a blanket over her to muffle her screams, and both feet and hands controlled by cuffs. She also had the attention of three guards all determined to take her to Zimbabwe, two males and a female.

Arriving in Zimbabwe with £1.50 in her pocket, a worn-out and exhausted Mbele approached the Kukura Kurerwa Bus Company with her story, and the bus staff agreed to an arrangement to be paid on arrival in the second largest city of Bulawayo, about 400km from the capital Harare.

Arriving at her family home in Mpopoma suburb, Mbele's already desperate situation took an an extra-ordinary twist for the worse.

"She was met by mouners. Her father had died at about the same time she boarded the plane," a friend told New Zimbabwe.com. "She is devastated. She has plunged the depths of despair, she has totally cracked."

Mbele's case is a sad one. She is the latest victim of a new violent form of removal of asylum seekers by hired bouncers from security firms contracted by the British Home Office. Successful removals are rewarded by the with more contracts.

"Some Zimbabweans are handcuffed, jailed and badly treated here in Britain"

ARCHBISHOP NCUBE

Tens of Zimbabweans have complained of being mistreated on the journey to Harare. Often, such complaints have not been exhaustively investigated, or police have declined to interview witnesses, like the case of a group of Zimbabwean women held at the same detention centre who resisted deportation in April.

One of them told the London-based internet radio station Afro Sounds FM from the centre: "A guard stepped on my neck. I overheard them talking about visiting friends in Harare, and my attempts to resist deportation were, therefore, disrupting their plans and they took it personal. My friend was also roughed-up and her breasts have been painful since. They are refusing us to see a doctor."

Many of the detainees said in separate interviews that they had been detained usually when reporting to the police on the regulatory weekly basis; seized from home in the early hours of the morning or when stopped while driving.

Zimbabwe's eminent clergyman, Archbishop Pius Ncube, who was in Scotland to receive an international award last Friday highlighted the abuse going on, and pleaded with the British government to rethink its policy.

"It saddens me that the British government since September last year has embarked on forced repatriation of Zimbabweans who are asylum seekers. They fled from harassment, torture, and a threat to their lives and they will be made to suffer when they are returned," he said in his acceptance speech of the Robert Burns International Humanitarian Award.

"Some Zimbabweans are handcuffed, jailed and badly treated here in Britain. And as Great Britain is a highly respected country in the world, I am afraid that this attitude will be followed in other wealthier Commonwealth countries, as happened with the imposition of the visa on Zimbabweans in November 2002. I plead that you be patient with Zimbabweans till the situation normalises," the Archbishop said.

A Home Office spokesman said the complaints by the women had been looked at by Bedford police who decided no further action was necessary. The Home Office insists all cases are looked at and reviewed to ensure all those deserving protection by the British government are granted asylum, and to protect the United Kingdom from abuse of the system through bogus claims.
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