CONGOLESE OY! WE DO NOT WANT ASYLUM! WE ARE REFUGEES NOT ASYLUM SEEKERS!

Voice Forum Notes From Meeting At House Of Commons
Thursday 29 November 2005

For Decolonialisation – Against Dehumanisation
For Refugee Status – Against Asylum Seeking
For Resistance – Against Removal




RESISTING DEPORTATION / REMOVAL

The route for deportations is:
Colnbrook – Heathrow – Adis Abbaba - Kinshasa
Deportees have resisted at every step of the way. When a scuffle broke out at Addis Abbaba, Congolese authorities when hearing of this refused to take deportees onto the onward flight to Kinshasa and so the deportees were brought back to London.

Migration is a dehumanization – reduction of people to economic units of production


EVIDENCE FROM BAIL FOR IMMIGRATION DETAINEES (BID)

BID – has 3 offices, been going for 7 years now,
Watched removals to “safe zone” countries in Europe.
In 2002, received calls from Congolese detained for up to a year. In 1 year 1 person resisted deportation 11 times. He said:
“We resist deportation because of what has happened to those detained”

EU Travel documents given to deportees – consisting of 1 paper with a photo. Like Afghani and Iraqi deportees they were on chartered flights.
UNHCR wrote Chartered Flights being easy to target. Still, EU does not research what happens to deportees.

Detention and removal to Kinshasa is an attack – but the truth is that the Immigration Services have not been able to remove most people.
Afghanistan and Iraqi governments are more compliant than Congolese authorities.

We need evidence of what happens in these countries.
The last decision of the IAT gives a list of people who shouldn’t be returned – but the government has stopped all removals/deportations to Zimbabwe and should also do the same for DCR. People have been arrested in DCR just for claiming asylum. Prison conditions there breach Article 3 of the HR Convention.


VOICES FROM THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (DCR)

In 10 years DCR is the place with the most deaths in the world.
There are problems in the the DCR – It is we, Congolese who are here, have proposals of how to resolve this crisis. The government needs to listen to us, but it is massivelyt hypocritical.

Stop making guns – stopping reaping Congo – people don’t want to be asylum seekers.

Don’t make a fire and then be the fire fighter.

We all know that the war in the Congo is for the massive mineral resources.


CONGOLESE OY! OY!

Here in Europe we can find our Human rights. People have no food, no resources, no support. We are not asylum seekers. We are refugees. And we demand to be called refugees.


Are UN Migration laws different in the EU or in Africa. In Africa I never heard the word asylum seeker. All our doors are open.

I have no support here – and next is deportation for me. It is a struggle. We must unite in this struggle – the Unions, NUJ, BBC, all and continue to fight on all fronts. The embassies are full of spies. Blair will not intervene in Congo because he has interests in the country, unlike in Iraq.


UK money and guns are in Uganda and Rwanda. The Congolese must learn from Zimbabwe. When Mugabe wanted to intervene in the Congo there were national protests that stopped him. 26 people from Zimbabwe went on hunger strike. They stopped the Zimbabwean and the British governments . These lessons teach us the need to unite and to organize

But that is still not enough. The demonstration in London on June 30th 2005, shut down the center of the city. But we need long term solutions. We must highlight human rights abuses. Companies must be boycotted.


There have been many meetings but little progress. Jeremy Corbyn is a Labour MP . It is the Labour govt. that is unprepared to help sort out the mess in DCR that it has helped to create. They have helped Zimbabwe only because it is a Commonwealth country. It is the British tax payer that bears the cost of “asylum seeking”. And still no international solution. What do you want us to do? We have tried all democratic ways. How can we have a better future?


J30 saw 3,000 people on the streets on London and still it was totally ignored by the British media. Even the police said that they had never seen so many on a protest for a non-British colony. The government here needs to recognize they are not doing anything. There are deaths every minute, every second. Children are buried alive.


Congo was born free. We do not need to come here and beg. We can make peace for ourself. Our message here is of Shame to Bush Blair and Shirac. Ugandan, Rawandan and Burundi leaders rape kill and thieve from Congo – their soldiers spread AIDS in the DCR and yet they travel with immunity and freedom in Europe. We do not want to see these people here. We must stop the sell out of those in Congo who collaborate with them.


It is a shame to come here and “seek asylum”. Immigration officers have more power than the police – they are unaccountable for their atrocities. We must fight them – beat them. Not kill them but meet their violence fairly. The Congolese embassy does not issue passports because it does not have them.


My English is poor because the UK Government has denied me education. Tell the government that we have a blood affinity. Morton Stanley and David Livingstone discovered the Congo and sailed up the Congo river. Congolese people are your people. You take Congo and give Belgium. You send weapons and send us to death. But the Congolese men are your brothers.


We have put it in writing that deportees are arrested and abused. I have annexed support documents to BID. And still the government deports people to certain death.


The Geneva convention says that all people who flee persecution from a country are refugees. It does not mention asylum seekers – that is a product of British legislation.


EVIDENCE AND DATA GATHERING

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have new evidence. There is a new report on prison conditions.

HRW has research on Multi national companies exploitation by EU and US companies (water industries etc)

Officers from Central Intelligence of Zimbabwe have been credible witnesses and given evidence. Witnesses from the intelligence agencies of DCR maybe able to counter UK government and IA lies. Evidence about airports and returns – DCR prisoners have been detained and released – we need to track people and bring evidence back.


VOICE Refugee Forum
University of Decolonialization