Pastor Makielokele Nzelengi Daly - or Detainee 4707

"They lied to my children."

"I asked them, what are you doing here? It was then that the children told me that "oh, we were told we were coming to visit you." And I told them “no no no no, thats not reality, the reality is you've been arrested with me."

"My daughter asked me ‘why should we be arrested, what did we do? Should we be arrested for nothing?’ Those kind of words are very painful to a father."

Pastor Daly and his family fled Angola four years ago after he refused to spy on his congregation for the MDLA Government (Democratic Movement for the Libertion of Angola). Along with thousands of other asylum seekers they settled in Glasgow, whose local authority had accepted a deal with central Government to house refugees in their disused high rise buildings. The working class city welcomed the influx of outsiders, needed to swell a declining, ageing population.

Pastor Daly went door to door in the Red Road flats where he lived, building up a thriving Pentecostal church with some two hundred families in the large community of African exiles and refugees. A respected local leader, head of a family, and a church. But on the 10th of December he was abruptly informed that his asylum application had been rejected. Without further explanation, he was taken to Dungavel detention centre pending deportation on the 23rd of December.

I have just finished reading Pastor Daly an extract from the Detention centre rules 2001.

Purpose of detention centres

3. - (1) The purpose of detention centres shall be to provide for the secure but humane accommodation of detained persons in a relaxed regime with as much freedom of movement and association as possible, consistent with maintaining a safe and secure environment, and to encourage and assist detained persons to make the most productive use of their time, whilst respecting in particular their dignity and the right to individual expression.

"No of that applies in reality" he says Pastor Daly emphatically. The picture he paints of Dungavel is not one of major abuse; but of powerlessness, of small but degrading humiliations. "Detention is a place where people can get crazy very quickly." he tells me. "It is a place that the Home office uses to torture to people not necessarily in a physical way, but mentally, you are tortured." There is constant surveillance, constant constraint. Yellow lines show you were you can and cannot walk - on the first day he recalls being “told off like a child” for crossing the line and unwittingly setting of an alarm. You must obtain permission to go anywhere in the building. You are refered to not by your name, but by you're number. Pastor Daly was number 4707. The bedrooms have peepholes for staff to check on detainees during the night - though apparently they prefer not to use them. "They will just open the door brutally and bang it, and then you can't sleep again - because you know that after 3am they will come again at 6am and do the the same again."

Both independant and Government reports cite the mental damage caused by detention. The 2002 Prison Inspectorate report they concludes that "Dungavel provides a conscientious level of custodial care in a building that was not ideal for its purpose, and in circumstances that were not conducive to good mental health... Access to quality legal representation and information about the progress of their cases was poor and these factors afforded little protection against the damaging effect of unanticipated and indeterminate detention."

Less ambiguously, the 2005 Save the Children report "No Place for a Child described how detention creates a "pressure cooker effect." Trapped in a monotonous and stressful environment, without access to information about ones case, and surrounded by others in a permanent state of anxiety, it is unsurprising that some lose hope. In July last year, a 22-year-old Vietnamese refugee, Tung Wang, killed himself at the centre, and in August the Glasgow Sundy Herald revealed that a 27-year-old refugee priest from Nigeria, John Oguchuckwu, had been sent to Greenock prison indefinitely because he became suicidal after spending eight months in Dungavel. Lessons have been learnt though; when when a Chinese man attempted to commit suicide a few weeks ago, he was quickly isolated from other detainees. No news of that incident reached the press.

"That is why the chapel that I started was very popular within the detention centre" says Pastor Daly. "It was the only place that people could go and have some words of hope, and also some counselling from their own." Even here, facing deportation, he sought to help others with their problems.

And outside Dungavel, it was the African church community that came to his rescue. They turned out in hundreds at demonstrations in Glasgow, at Dungavel, and the Scottish Parliament, swelled by sympathetic members of the public. They hid Pastor Daly's children and wife Isabelle to prevent being sent to Dungavel. And when the whole family was finally detained, they raised the bail money that ultimately secured their release.

The campaign was spear-headed by Sana Bumba, a Congolese refugee and activist based in London, and a close friend of Pastor Daly's.

Sana himself was originally a refugee from the DRC. He is a jovial and relaxed man, always teasing and making jokes, but also giving of an impressive sense of confidence, solidity. Short and stocky, immaculately dressed in a, dark overcoat and dark glasses (he jokes that he looks like a CIA agent,) he has the air of a man that gets things done.

“I came first in this country myself as an asylum seeker. I couldn't speak english at all, I could see in the people's faces that I was an idiot, just because I couldn't speak english - and that's not how I would describe myself." He lets out a deep, rich laugh.

There were a lot of frustration, and a lot of difficulties; housing, benefits integration; just having friends to talk to. At the time when my wife and kids weren't there, because I came on my own at first. It was very hard -Very, very hard. so out of my own experience.

Then I started attending a community church. Everyone in that church was an asylum seeker, including the Pastor himself, as we are having here now - because I was very determined to learn english, and to understand the language, I was one of the first one in the commmunity that start to pick up the language, so I started by people bringing in a letter, "OK, ca you read this letter and explain for me?" in the Church. And they would tell somene else, "Oh, you know, you've got this difficulty, go and see Bumba, becasue he can read english. other people would say, "say. So people start bringing in letters and I start reading and explinaing what was going on. At some stage I start translating documents form them, I start interpreting for them and thanking them to the DSS and to the GP, and it built up, and at the end of the day, I ended up having a mass within a mass. When I get to Church everyone opeope will bring in their lletters, all of their issues, and as soon as they see me...they know "We see him as sooon as the church finish." So at the end of the church, I would have 20, 25 people surrounding me or just waiting in a que just to see me." He laughts again.

Project Lisalisi grew out of that work.

After three years, he found a job working with refugees for Barnados, where he received formal training and more experience. Finally, four years ago, he founded the Lisalisi Project in London; but in reality, it was simply a continuation of the years of work and experience that he had already put into his community - only now with an official name, and with funding.

They started the Glasgow branch only 10 months ago, with the help of Pastor Daly, whom Sana had met in London four years ago when he first arrived in the country.

“I met Pastor Daly when he came to London, and quite quickly we agree on a lot of things. I think that is what friendship is.

"So, when Pastor Daly moved up here, he would call me for advice. He started building up the church, going door to door, starting with his own family, then another family, until it was about 200 families. At the time people would come with their issues as well, and he would always refer to me. So I start coming over, doing some work, phonecalls. I do the letters in London. Bascially it was on Pastor Daly's initiative that we got the Lisalisi Project up here. Becasue I don't live in this part of the world, so Roger is the one coordinating the work from up here."

"But I was here the whole time the Pastor was in detention, because I had to lead the campaign to get him released. In that campaign, we were much helped by the Campaign to Welcome Refugees in Glasgow. Thery wrer of great help to us. ut on the African side I was basically the main lead of the campaign, and at the time, I don't know if I slept three days out of those 39 days the Pastor was in detention. I was all the time on the move, anfd I would have to visit him, and when I come back home I would have to read all the letters, all the emails, try to respond to some of them, write letters, contact the MSPs."

So, in large part it was Sana's hard work, confidence and experience that got Pastor Daly released from Dungavel. In fighting and winning that case, alliances were forged between the church, politicians and sympathetic members of the media - that they are putting to good use now to help other detainees in Dungavel.

Margaret Wood of the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees also worked tirelessly, helping connect the campaign to the Scottish media, new legal support, and local politicians, from the SSP, the Greens, and the SNP. The Glasgow Press also proved sympathetic to the story - especially since a family was being threatened with deportation. But Jack McConnell and Scottish Labour hiding behind the excuse that Asylum and Immigration is an issue "reserved" for Westminster, refused to comment - even though he had been been escorted by Rachel Daly round her School last year.

The darkest day came on the 22nd of December. Pastor Daly was fetched at 7am to the manager’s office, and told he was to be deported to Angola the nest day. He was refused a phone-call to his supporters, and refused a change of clothes. He was wearing only his pyjamas.

"I asked him, can I get some clothing here? It was the 22nd of december, it was very cold out there. But he was adamant, he refused. I told the manager that , "Ok, those clothes are mine, they are not for the detention centre. Why are you refusing me to protect myself with my own clothes?"

The manager told me that "I am giving the orders here, and I am telling you that you are not getting those clothese, and you will travel the way you are."

It was a freezing twelve hour journey south. The only break was when he was marched through a petrol station, flanked by guards and allowed to use the toilet - but only with the door open, in full view of the public. He was locked up over night in Birmingham. No-one knew where he was.

"I was then left to tremble all my cold night and morning." he says. He was rushed to the airport. "According to the conversation of the policeman driving the car to his colleague, I was supposed to be reunited with my family to be deported together to Luanda."

Fortunately, it was another lie. They didn't have his family, who were still in hiding. And when Daly disappeared from Dungavel, the Asylum and Immigration Directorate was inundated with phone-calls from politicians, lawyers and supporters. The campaign had grown too big, the pressure too great to risk the publicity of splitting up the family, Pastor Daly was returned to Dungavel for a month. The end seemed in sight. But needlessly, they briefly detained his wife and children - perhaps his most painful memory. "They lied to my children. They told me they were coming to visit me."

He emphasises that they were treated well, and that they were only there for one night. But he is still angry.

"I wonder, if they stay there with me for 39 days, I wonder what would have happened to my children" he continues. Other families are not so fortunate. "I saw a three month old baby there. I've seen a another family, with three children from 2-5 years old. You could feel from that family, for instance the 2 year old child was not crying every night, but screaming every night. There was something frustrating that child. The child would just run round the corridor, and the mother was all the time apologetic to us. But we just told the mother, we understand. That's not a place for the child."

Pastor Daly and his family have since been released from Dungavel. They are awaiting the results of a judicial review of their case.

Tom Allan

To obtain audio of the interviews send me an email.