Refugee Week 2009

Behind the happy smiles and magnificent costumes lent by Carnival Art, the people in this part of the Govan Fair procession are being persecuted.

Unity at Govan Fair

Not only by people in their home country – which is the reason they fled to the UK to seek sanctuary in the first place – but many of them are being hounded by the UK Government’s Home Office.

They are all asylum seekers.  And since June 15- 21 is Refugee Week it is worth highlighting what that means.

An asylum seeker is forbidden by law to work, is dependent on the accommodation he or she is allocated and is given a meagre allowance which they are obliged to live on. Some have to wait years, before their case is finalised. They have to endure the weekly and sometimes daily humiliation of ‘signing in’ at the Home Office building in Brand Street, Govan  - not knowing if they will be allowed back out after the ‘signing in’ has been completed. In recent weeks many have been held and taken to detention centres such as Dungavel and Yarlswood straight from Brand Street.. Despite assurances that children would not be incarcerated in these prisons, at least 21 have been taken to Dungavel this year alone.

Days after the Home Office had announced the start of a pilot project designed to prevent the need to detain asylum seeking families, they went at dawn to the home of Fatou Felicite Gaye and her four year old son Arouna in Sighthill, and forcibly removed them toYarlswood prison. This is the third time 39-year-old Fatou and her son have been detained and it was the first dawn raid this year. The child was so distressed by the previous experience that he was being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder and had an appointment at Yorkhill Hospital for Sick Children for a few days after the dawn raid. Mum Fatou is receiving counselling from the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture.  She fled from her home on the Ivory Coast in February 2005 after her husband had been kidnapped and her family home burnt down. Arouna was born soon after her arrival in Scotland and has only every known Glasgow as his home.

When the UK Borders Agency returned Fatou and Arouna to the Ivory Coast, immigration officials there refused to allow the family to enter the country because Arouna had been born in the UK and they consider him British. The family and the five UK officials accompanying them, all returned to Britain.

Helping to support people through such trauma is a small charity based about 100 yards away from the Brand Street Home Office centre. Called the Unity Centre the volunteers who run it – mainly asylum seekers – have now set up a charity shop at 794 Govan Road opposite Govan Cross Underground. It will open on Saturday 13 June and donations, volunteers to assist in running the shop, and buyers for the goods  will be equally welcome.