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Each year around 4,000 refugee children arrive alone in Britain. Without friends or family, and unable to speak English, they face a frightening future. Sarfraz Manzoor reports on a project that lets them use photography to tell their own stories

Monday November 26, 2007
The Guardian

When Amir arrived in Britain last December he was 16, fleeing Iraq on a false passport after the kidnap and murder of his father. He landed at Heathrow with nothing except a scrap of paper on which his name was scribbled in English. “I did not know where I was; I could not speak English,” Amir recalls, his hands fidgeting nervously. “I was scared - I had no family, no friends. Who is going to help me? Who is going to give me support?”

In the stark terminology of Home Office bureaucracy, Amir is one of an estimated 4,000 “unaccompanied young refugees” who arrive in Britain each year from everywhere from Iraq and Afghanistan to the Congo and Rwanda. Separated from their families and far from home, many suffer from depression, insomnia and anxiety. The vast majority - 80% - settle in London and their experiences are rarely understood.
“Mainstream society only hears certain things about immigration,” says Tiffany Fairey. “They never hear direct stories from the people who are coming here or what they are dealing with.” Fairey is the co-founder of PhotoVoice, a charity that uses photography to enable marginalised groups to tell their stories. It has been working with young refugees since 2002, most recently on New Londoners, in which 15 of them have been mentored by professional photographers. The photographs can be viewed online and a book is being planned for next summer. “The biggest barrier to integration is misunderstanding,” says Fairey. New Londoners enables the young people “to tell their own stories from their own perspective”.

PhotoVoice was helped in the project by Dost, a London charity that supports young refugees. Dost is based in Trinity Centre, a converted redbrick church in East Ham in east London. On one of the afternoons that I visit the centre, a group of elderly Sikh men are playing cards while four young refugees are immersed in Connect 4. Among them is Sacha, who arrived as a 13-year-old from Ukraine five years ago. “It was like a bad dream,” he recalls, “like taking too many painkillers.” Since leaving eastern Europe, Sacha has had no contact with his parents. “It isn’t easy, it takes a lot out of you having to get by without parents,” he says sadly. “You need lots of emotional support, you need stimulation, spiritual and physical contact with people.”

“People don’t live in a vacuum,” adds Yesim Deveci, who set up Dost. “If everyone who has been part of your life does not exist any more you need to feel that someone cares about you.” For the young refugees who visit Dost, most of their interactions with mainstream society are institutional - social workers, the Home Office, their housing office and their solicitor; the New Londoners project allows the young people to transcend their refugee identity.

The recurring themes in New Londoners’ images are, perhaps unsurprisingly, being far from home, and the contradictory emotions that come from being in Britain. Mussie, a 17-year-old from Eritrea, photographed food that he had cooked. “This picture is about my new life in England,” he says. “In my country I had never cooked before.”

Amir also photographed one of his meals. “For someone here, it’s just my breakfast,” he explains. “Two eggs, some bread, tea. But if I showed this picture to someone in Iraq they wouldn’t believe it because in Iraq we imagined English breakfasts to be tables full of lots of food.” Another of Amir’s photographs shows dinner being eaten by candlelight. “They hadn’t been able to pay for electricity so it had been cut off,” he tells me. “In Iraq we don’t believe things like this happen in England.” Many of Amir’s photographs are taken in the dark; like many young refugees, he finds it hard to sleep at night. “Many of the kids are so anxious,” explains Liz Orton of PhotoVoice. “When we first gave them cameras, they came back after a week with dozens of images of each other taken during the night. You could just see the time passing.”

Rosalita is a sad-eyed 18-year-old who arrived in Britain two years ago after fleeing the Congo following the death of both her parents. Her father was Rwandan and her mother Congolese, and as a young girl Rosalita was raped by Congolese soldiers who thought she was Rwandan and Rwandan soldiers who accused her of being Congolese. Even though she is sitting less than two feet from me, I have to strain to hear her speak and her whispery voice tapers off into silence. Having arrived unable to speak English, she is now fluent in English and Spanish as well as Swahili. She says she wants to work for a charity after leaving university. I ask her to tell me about her favourite photograph from those she took. “I saw an old woman lying on the street,” she murmurs. “She was so old and no one cared about her - it was Liverpool Street, where there are lots of banks and big buildings. I don’t know if she had any children but everyone was ignoring her. It made me sad; in Congo, families live with their grandmothers and grandfathers. Not like here.”

Chen, 18, photographed another old person. “I felt the strangeness of the old man lying on the ground,” he says. “He was not Chinese but he was asleep in China Town.” Chen’s mentor was the artist and photographer Gayle Chong Kwan, who found that working with the young refugee opened her eyes to her own Chinese heritage. “It was not about me teaching, so much as having a conversation,” she says. “With photography there is none of the frustration of having a limited language. These young people can express thoughts that they could not do in English.”

It is almost impossible to imagine the journeys that have led these young refugees to Britain. Many have been orphaned by war; most of them are having to grow up without things the average Briton takes for granted. Their photographs are hopeful, but tinged with loss and uncertainty. Many of the refugees are still awaiting Home Office decisions on whether they will be allowed to remain in this country. Those who have been granted the right to remain have complicated feelings about the prospect. “I feel safe here and I have a chance to do something with my life,” says Amir, “but life here is not easy. I want to use my photographs to tell people in Iraq, ‘Don’t think that living in England is easy, don’t think this country is better than Iraq. Life here is very hard.’ I would like one day to return to Iraq, my country, and when I go I will take a camera”. Some names have been changed.

· To find out more about the New Londoners project and to view the photographs, visit www.photovoice.org and www.projectdost.org.

Monday November 26, 2007
The Guardian Letters

On November 20 2005, the first flight of forcibly returned Iraqi asylum-seekers left from Brize Norton military airbase in Oxford. The Home Office has now stopped flying Iraqi Kurds on military aircraft. Since September, Kurds have been forcibly deported via a Jordanian airline to Jordan and from there to Erbil airport in northern Iraq. As we write, Rozhar Omer is being held at Heathrow by two bodyguards. He was due to be escorted on to a plane flying to Jordan and then on to Erbil.
The International Federation of Iraqi Refugees still maintains Iraq is not a suitable place to return “failed” asylum-seekers to. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees recently issued a report confirming that northern Iraq is unsafe. Iraqi Kurdistan’s two ruling parties, the KDP and PUK, regularly imprison and attack trade union activists, socialists and other political opponents. Moreover, in addition to the threat of an Iraqi civil war, there is an external threat from Turkey and Iran, both of which have bombarded Kurdish villages in recent months. Those returned to Iraqi Kurdistan face not only poverty and unemployment, but the threat of harassment, torture and death. That is why the IFIR is calling for the immediate suspension of all removals to Iraq and the right for all Iraqis living in the UK to study, work and access public services.

Dashty Jamal
International Federation of Iraqi Refugees

John McDonnell MP, Karen Johnson
Coalition to Stop Deportations to Iraq

Mick Duncan
No Sweat campaign

Sofie Buckland
National Union of Students executive

JACK DOYLE

THE children of asylum seekers should not be held in detention centres, a group of European MPs said yesterday.

MEPs said the conditions in which the children found themselves were “not humane” and urged the UK government to find an alternative.

The MEPs presented their preliminary findings after visiting three removal centres: Yarl’s Wood, Bedfordshire; Oakington in Cambridgeshire; and Harmondsworth, near Heathrow.

They said conditions were generally good, but Cypriot MEP Panayiotis Demetriou said they had concerns over the length of time immigrants were held and the conditions for children.

He said: “It’s not an easy thing to send the children from their mother and their family. But it’s not humane to see very young children confined in these centres under the rules of safety which are required to keep control of a centre. This must be dealt with by the authorities.”

Dungavel, Scotland’s detention centre for failed asylum seekers, has been the focus of criticism because babies and children are housed alongside adults there.

The controversy has been tied to objections by MSPs - and the Scottish Government - over the use of dawn raids by Immigration Service officers in Scotland to apprehend families of failed asylum seekers. Ministers have argued it is wrong to separate children of asylum seekers from their families.

A Home Office spokeswoman said there are 44 children currently detained with their families in Britain. She said the system has a capacity to hold 164 families at a time.

By Andy McSmith and Jerome Taylor
Published: 27 November 2007

The principle that everyone is entitled to their say, however obnoxious their opinions might be, was put to the test at the Oxford Union last night as hundreds of protesters gathered to voice their disapproval of the two men from the extreme right whom the illustrious debating chamber had invited there to speak.

One of the guests, the BNP leader Nick Griffin, heads an organisation that wants to see millions of people deported from the UK because they do not regard them as truly British.

He was due to share a platform with the historian David Irving, who has courted notoriety for decades by claiming that Hitler did not give the order to commit genocide, that there were no gas chambers and that six million Jews were not killed by the Nazis.

Scuffles broke out as anti-fascist groups yelled “Shame on you” at members filing into the union building, and the police shut the gates with the chamber only half full. While a handful of students crushed against the main gate to create a diversion, 30 others scaled the wall and barged past the tight security, occupying the area around the debating table until they were persuaded to leave.

“I hope we’re not giving Griffin further publicity by doing this,” said Peter Simpson, a student at Essex University who stormed the chamber, ” but history has shown that you need to draw the line with fascists. I think a lot of people are here because they know what happened in the Second World War and they don’t want it to happen again.”

Dr Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP due to join the debate, criticised Thames Valley Police for “failing to put a cordon around the Union” , allowing the protestors to barge through.

“The failure of the police is outrageous,” he said as he told students in the chamber of plans to split the speakers after the university authorities decided it was too dangerous to walk Mr Griffin and Mr Irving across the quadrangle to the debating hall.

“The police have failed to provide for the safety of this event; failed to provide for the safety of this going ahead as planned.

“I’m very disappointed. The police imply that they don’t have enough resources to move people away from the perimeter or that it is not their job. ”

In order to get the debate under way, the speakers were split into two groups, with Mr Irving, jailed last year in Austria after pleading guilty to Holocaust denial, speaking in the main chamber, and Mr Griffin, convicted of incitement to racial hatred over material denying the Holocaust in 1998, in a cramped room in the main university building.

Warned to expect a maelstrom of abuse, they had avoided the main demonstration by arriving in separate black cabs, 10 minutes apart and 90 minutes early. The debate – on how far the freedom of speech should extend – finally started more than an hour late at 10pm.

Mr Irving defended accusations that his publications and speeces denied the existence of the Holocaust. “I still refuse to be bowed. I am not going to write what they want me to write. I’m going to write what I find in the archives,” he said.

Across the yard, Mr Griffin went head-to-head with two student debaters. ” The majority of racist attacks are on white people by members of ethnic minority communities,” he said. “Those people outside are a mob and they could kill. Had they grown up in Nazi Germany they would have made splendid Nazis.

“Any restriction on free speech is dangerous. You start by saying people should not speak and you end up with burning people at the stake. Free speech is an absolute, it is universal.”

Mr Irving, reported to have left at 10.45pm to a chorus of jeers from waiting demonstrators, said that disagreeing with some elements of the ” whole package” did not make him a Holocaust denier. He had been invited to speak at the Oxford Union seven times, he said, but security fears had put paid to any chance of appearing. Speaking at the Union was something he cherished, he added, saying that the most important thing that any student listening to him could do was to think for themselves.

The president of the Oxford Union, Luke Tryl, was unconvinced. “I think David Irving came out of that looking pathetic,” he said “I said in my introduction that I found his view repugnant and abhorrent because I wanted that on record.”

Outside, some protesters chanted “Kill Tryl”, to which the Union president said: “I don’t think they do their cause any favours by inciting violence. That is my only regret.”

Last night’s meeting breached an unwritten agreement observed for years by the mainstream political parties – not to give the far right a public platform. Instead, it fell back on a much older principle, summed up in a maxim attributed to the French philosopher Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Mr Tryl, who has been under intense pressure to cancel the event, defended the decision to go ahead. He said: “David Irving and Nick Griffin have awful and abhorrent views but the best way to defeat those views is through debate.

“I remain committed to the principle that free speech has to prevail. I really worry about how the far right has been able to portray themselves as free-speech martyrs and I hope that this sort of debate will help dispel that myth – to show that the liberal mainstream are prepared to take them on and beat them in debate.”

A minority of the students gathered outside the building agreed with Mr Tryl. Kudzh Ranga, a black law graduate living in the city, said he supported the right of Mr Griffin and Mr Irving to speak. “Though I don’t agree with [Mr Irving's] stance on racism and the Holocaust I think it is only proper to let him come and address the general public,” he said.

But most students and protesters in the street vehemently disagreed. They included Jean Kaigamba, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. He said: ” I’m flabbergasted that people who claim to be intellectuals invite extremists in the name of free speech to give them a platform and let them air their perverted view.”

David Green, a former committee member of the Oxford Union, said he had resigned from the organisation in protest. “What the union is doing today is extremely irresponsible – namely giving prominence to Holocaust deniers, people who are completely discredited,” he said.

by Wendy Miller

A YOUNG girl was released from a detention centre for surgery at Yorkhill Hospital - then bundled into a van and locked up again just three days later.

Now her anxious mum claims the eight-year-old is still seriously ill in Yarlswood detention centre in England and is pleading for her family to be allowed to return home to Glasgow.

Asylum seeker Humaira Qudoos fears for her eldest daughter Waieeba, who is battling malaria.

Originally from Pakistan, Humaira and her three daughters have been locked up for six weeks and threatened with deportation.

Immigration officials released Waieeba temporarily to allow her to have surgery at Yorkhill.

But three days after surgeons removed lesions from her ears, the youngster was bundled into a van with her mum and sisters Maida, 6, and Mahnoor, 3.

The family, who want to stay on in the Scotstoun community they call home, were taken on a 14-hour journey back to the Yarlswood centre in Bedfordshire.

They have now been there for almost a month and face being sent back to Pakistan, where they fear a violent backlash.

Campaigners in Glasgow fighting for the family’s release say they are concerned about Waieeba’s health.

Phil Jones, a case worker at the Unity Centre in Ibrox, said: “This family have been treated appallingly.

“They are three lovely little girls. They should not be locked up, especially as Waieeba has been so ill.

“They moved them from Yarlswood up to Dungavel, so she could have her operation in Yorkhill, and then took her back to Yarlswood just three days later.

“We don’t believe children should be detained at all.”

It’s the second time the Qudoos family have been detained this year following the rejection of their asylum claim.

They won a temporary reprieve in May and were welcomed back to Scotstoun by their friends and neighbours.

But a judicial review into their case collapsed and they were detained at Brand Street immigration centre on October 12.

Initially taken to Yarlswood, they were later transferred to Dungavel and taken back to England following Waieeba’s operation.

Humaira and the girls came to Glasgow from Edinburgh in May after fleeing her husband, whom she claims was abusive.

They moved into a flat in Scotstoun, where they have been befriended by the community.

Humaira is begging immigration officials to let her and the girls stay in Glasgow.

Publication date 22/11/07