PRESS RELEASE

TESTIMONY OF CARITAS SONY, 24 YEARS OLD, AND 2 BABIES AFTER DAWN RAID ON HER HOME AT KINGSWAY, SCOTSTOUN, GLASGOW

Churches, charities, schoolteachers, neighbours have condemned the treatment of 24 year old Caritas Sony who was brutally removed from her home of two years in Kingsway Court (Block 50, Flat 2/2) in a dawn raid by immigration officials this morning, Monday 2 October 2006. This is the latest in a series of several dawn raids on innocent families in Kingsway, Scotstoun and highlights the continuing brutality of the home office’s asylum policy on Scottish soil.

Dawn raid

Between 6 and 7 am this morning, Monday 2 October 2006, Caritas Sony, 24 years old, and her two children, Heaven (son), 2 Years old and Glad, (daughter), 4 Months old, were woken by around 10 immigration officials who broke down her door with a metal battering ram.

She was then handcuffed while her children were distressed in the bedroom, her two-year old was screaming for her. She asked to see her children and calm them down but immigration refused. Other immigration officers took her children away from her; both children were very distressed and cold. The officers did not put warm clothing on the children despite caritas’ request. They took the mother out first and placed her in a caged van, and then the two children were taken separately in a different vehicle in a very distressed state.

The family was taken into brand street home office. They wanted to look in her bag, she refused it, but they took her bag anyway and searched her documents. Then they searched her body and the children’s bodies too.

Dungavel

Immigration officials took Caritas and her children to another van. During the journey her two year old fell from the baby seat and screamed, she had to plead for immigration to put him back into the seat. She was too terrified to help her own child because she was warned by immigration officials not to touch her own children, or hold him to comfort him or keep him safe. Caritas hasn’t eaten or drunk anything. She said she would rather die here than go back to the Congo where she fears she will be killed as soon as she returns. There is no baby food for her 4 month old child, while her 2 year old has been eating only yoghurt. She is in a room with no other women and has been crying most of the day. There are 5 other empty beds in the room. Caritas’ baby needs SMA Gold baby milk, yet the only milk available in dungavel is for babies of six months or older. Caritas tried to breast feed the baby but because she herself can’t eat she cannot produce breast milk.

Why she left

Caritas fled Congo after her father, a politician, disappeared in 2001 and his body was never found. They were the all arrested. Then her mother was executed in front of Caritas in prison November 2003. In prison, her brother was ordered to rape her, he refused and was then executed in January 2004. Caritas was kept in prison where she was repeatedly raped and tortured. Her two year old son is the child of one of the men that raped her. She cannot count the number of times she was raped. Caritas managed to escape prison and she arrived as an asylum seeker in Glasgow in February 2004. Both her two children were born here. Caritas’s 19 year old sister was put in a different cell when the family were arrested. She never saw her again. In summer 2005, Caritas received the death certificate for her sister. Caritas has a twin sister who was not arrested and she understands fled the country for somewhere in Europe , Caritas does not know where.

Speaking from Dungavel, Caritas Sony said:

“I cannot go back to Congo because I went to prison and I know that if I return back there I will be killed, I want to fight for my children, I know that in Congo they will kill me because they don’t want any evidence left and I am the last piece of evidence. I cannot tell you how much it tears my heart to see my baby starving without the milk that she needs, or to see my two year old so crying and unable to eat, my children are restless; we have been put away like criminals. I came here to seek refuge and I feel like me and my children’s lives have the worth of nothing.”



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Caritas and her children are currently in Dungavel Detention centre and will be transferred to Yarlswood tomorrow, then due to be deported on Wednesday. She is prepared to speak to the press.