UK ministers revolt over Zim asylum seekers

UK ministers revolt over Zim asylum seekers

ZIMBABWE'S deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga has urged Britain NOT TO deport Zimbabweans

• Wedding stings that ends with one way ticket to Zim

• Zim asylum seekers go on hunger strike

• Double tragedy for UK asylum deportee

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

By Staff Reporter

BRITISH Home Office secretary, Charles Clarke, faces a Cabinet revolt over the deportation of Zimbabwean asylum seekers, reports from England said.

The Times newspaper said Clarke was at odds with his Cabinet colleagues over his assessment of the Zimbabwe situation, and could be forced to halt the deportations as early as next week.

Signs that Clarke had buckled came Saturday when he agreed to suspend the expulsion of Crespen Kulinji, who claims to be opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's former aide.

More pressure has been applied on the Home Office after Zimbabwean asylum seekers in seven detention camps went on hunger strike since Thursday. The strike was expected to end on Saturday.

A senior Foreign Office and Commonwealth source told The Times: “The deportations are down to the Home Office and they must explain why they think it is a safe place to send anyone who has defied Mugabe”.

The Zimbabwe Community Association (ZCA) said scores of failed asylum-seekers recently removed from Britain had been detained by state security agents on arrival in Zimbabwe. Their families said that they had heard nothing from them.

Opposition leaders in Harare urged Britain to suspend the deportations as armed police demolished more homes in Zimbabwe’s major cities.

Trudy Stevenson, an oppostion MP, said: “The British Government knows full well it isn’t safe to send anyone back here.”

In a bizarre twist, Zimbabwe's Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga urged Britain NOT TO deport the asylum seekers, claiming the move was RACIST.

"As government we feel concerned by this racist scenario where black Zimbabweans are being unfairly treated because the reason for their deportation is that they are blacks," Matonga told the official Herald newspaper.

"These people were invited and misled and used by Mr (Tony) Blair, now that they have abused and tortured them they deport them. It’s hypocrisy, it’s madness from our point of view.

"We would like to urge the international community to join Zimbabwe and condemn this inhuman and barbaric act," he said, urging the United Nations to send a probe team.

The United Nations says more than 270,000 people have been made homeless in the so-called clean-up and is sending a special investigator to Harare. Mugabe has congratulated the police for the operation, in which at least three children have been killed. Mugabe, meanwhile, has pledged to build houses for the displaced.

"If the Foreign Office is saying Zimbabwe is such a dreadful place, then there's no way the Home Secretary should be sending people back there"

KATE HOEY, MP

Refugee groups say that the Home Office is more concerned at meeting quotas to expel failed asylum-seekers than with investigating the fate of those who are expelled.

Member of Parliament Kate Hoey, who recently returned from a trip to Zimbabwe, and Richard Howitt, a Labour Party member of the European Parliament, said anyone sent back to the country faced an uncertain future.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Thursday the situation in Zimbabwe was of "serious international concern" and that no government that subscribed to human rights and democracy should allow this kind of thing to continue.

Hoey said Britain needed to unite over the issue.

"The government needs to be speaking with one voice," she told Reuters. "If the Foreign Office is saying Zimbabwe is such a dreadful place, then there's no way the Home Secretary should be sending people back there."

Howitt said: "We've correctly got very strident criticism of the Mugabe regime on human rights grounds which will be totally undermined if we are engaging in the forced return of people who have a genuine fear of persecution."

A spokesman for the Home Office said the government's policy was to remove people to Zimbabwe if they were found not to be in need of international protection.

The government changed the law in November 2004 to allow Zimbabweans to be deported against their will.

"Since returns were resumed to Zimbabwe last November, we have received no substantiated reports of abuse of any person returned to the country," Immigration Minister Tony McNulty said.

Howitt said 95 Zimbabweans had been deported in the first three months of 2005.
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