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Statement from the United Network of
Detained Zimbabweans (UNDZ-UK)
The deportation conditions for Zimbabweans given the current
situation in Zimbabwe is unethical. That has been described by Kate
Hoey as humanitarian catastrophe. Human rights abuses condemned by
Amnesty International and the United Nations.
We as Zimbabweans feel that the current position of the UK Government to
remove Zimbabweans from the UK is both a violation of their human
rights. We feel that this Zimbabwean case is special in the sense
that foreign and national organisations have agreed on the human rights
abuses that have an currently are occurring in Zimbabwe under the brutal
Mugabe regime.
Furthermore, the UK Government does
not guarantee the safe arrival of Zimbabwean deportees. It is widely
known that Zimbabwean deportees face persecution upon arrival in
Zimbabwe. In support of the above statement, we have a letter to
confirm this from the Archbishop of Bulawayo Pius Ncube and Professor
Terrance Ranger of Oxford University, as witness statements.
It is apparent that the UK Government has put faith in Tabo Mbeki to
tackle the Zimbabwean situation since 2003 and has failed the Zimbabwean
people.
Numbers of detainees, these people become stressed. They are
affected psychologically having to wait day by day, waiting in the
darkness not knowing where they stand nor what to expect the following
day. Upon arrival into the detention centre, the detainees' wait
beginning day to day, extending to weeks and then months in anxiety not
knowing where their case is going and having no clue as to where in the
immigration process their individual case is. The communication
process is extremely poor. The factors build up anxiety leading to
various forms of depression. It is further psychologically
distressing and depressing for genuine asylum seekers to be mixed with and
even share quarters in the detention centres with known criminals that
have records. This practice is unfair and a dangerous position to
put anybody who has had no formal training in dealing with somebody with a
criminal psyche.
We also want to highlight the way detainees are treated during transit to
the airport. A number of cases have been brought to our attention
where deportees are abused in transit en route to the airport. These
incidences have gone unheard for too long. The physical and
psychological harm indured by the detainees remains with them and haunts
them for the remainder of their lives.
Among the detainees there are family men that have been separated from
their wives and children. They are being held and assumptions are
made that detainees may abscond on upon release. Surely this begs
belief. How can, as an example, a man with a young child abscond.
We hope you will bring our cause to the attention of the sympathetic
public to understand our current plight.
Tafara Nhengu
Chair
Harmondsworth Removal Centre - 0208
283 3850 xtn 1113
Mafungasei Maikokera
Women's Co-ordinator of Detained Zimbabwean Women
Yarl's Wood Removal Centre - 01234
821000 room 236
Director
Nobel Sibanda
07832 191659
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