the New Londoners issue 2 by migrants resource centre

Londoners The New

Building understanding between communities

www.thenewlondoners.co.uk

2008

Vouchers

Life on £5 a day

Travel

Escape to London

Mark Haddon 10-11 ‘How did we end up treating people like this?

Fashion

Brick Lane style

Music

Eugene Hütz: The mellow fellow from Bordello

MR DARCY ‘S NEW ROLE – REFUGEE CAMPAIGNER

Colin Firth tells The New Londoners why he ignores calls for actors to shut up and keep out of politics, why he is an active campaigner for an unpopular cause and how the fate of an 18-year-old Nigerian boy was the tipping point. Interview, pages 6-7

CHINATOWN FIGHTS BACK

THE government has awoken a sleeping dragon with its raids on restaurants in London’s Chinatown and clampdown on undocumented workers. TheresultisincreasingpoliticisationofBritain’s traditionally apolitical Chinese community. “Business people just want to do business, and not get involved in politics,” Chi Chan, former communication officer for the Chinese Immigration Concern Committee (CICC) but speaking in his personal capacity, told The New Londoners. “But they are increasingly being asked to involve themselves in various immigration-

related bureaucratic procedures, for which they rarely have the time or the training.” Soho restaurateurs accuse the government of failing to understand how the catering industry works, and that “in trying to stop one problem, it’s created lots more,” says Chan. There’s a lot of money at stake: Britain’s 7,000 Chinese restaurants and 16,000 takeaways have an annual turnover estimated at £3 billion, and the total value of the Chinese catering trade is put at £4.9 billion. The community has teamed up with the Bangladeshi and Turkish communities, which suffer similar problems, to

form the Ethnic Catering Alliance (ECA). Indian and Pakistani restaurateurs have expressed interest in joining the group. The group’s basic message is that “the government has failed to consider the real implication of its immigration policies on all communities,” thus “placing these communities in a discriminatory position which has caused real difficulties for ethnic catering industries such as excessive overtime hours, tens of thousands of staff shortages and in several cases, closures of these small and medium businesses.” Chinatown gets political, pages 12-13

SPORT | The 7-year-old tennis prospect and the 6ft 9in star

2 The New Londoners PICTURE: WWW.FRIENDSOFQUEENSMARKET.ORG.UK

Most asylumseekers now from Iraq IRAQ is now the source of most applications for refugee status in industrialised countries. The number of Iraqis applying for asylum almost doubled from 22,900 in 2006 to 45,200 in 2007. Nevertheless, Iraqi asylum-seekers in industrialised countries represent only 1 per cent of the estimated 4.5 million Iraqis uprooted by the conflict. The vast majority of uprooted Iraqis have stayed in Iraq (over 2.5 million) or are in Syria and Jordan (2 million). After Iraq, the next four countries of origin of asylum applicants in 2007 were the Russian Federation (18,800), China (17,100), Serbia (15,400) and Pakistan (14,300), according to the United Nations refugee agency. Overall, the 338,000 new applications for refugee status submitted in industrialised countries last year represented a 10 per cent increase over 2006. This marks a reversal of a five-year downward trend in asylum applications largely because of the increased numbers from Iraq. The United States was the main destination for asylum-seekers, with an estimated 49,200 new asylum claims. Sweden was second with 36,200 claims, primarily because 41 per cent of the total asylum applications by Iraqis were launched in Sweden. After the United States and Sweden, most asylum-seekers headed for France (29,200), Canada (28,300) and the United Kingdom (27,900). The British figure represents in a fall in the number of asylumseekers from the previous year. Germany, The Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Slovenia, Finland and France also saw numbers fall. Half of all asylum applications were submitted by asylum-seekers from Asia (which includes the Middle East). Africa was second (21 per cent of all claims), followed by Europe (15 per cent), Latin America and the Caribbean (12 per cent) and North America (1 per cent).

Refugee camp in Trafalgar Square A MOCK refugee camp and a Darfuri village will be set up in Trafalgar Square on Tuesday 17 June. The exhibition, organised by the UN refugee agency, is designed to give visitors a glimpse of life in a refugee camp and to serve as a reminder that most of the 33 million globally displaced people live in the world’s poorest countries. The agency says Darfur is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and that the agency is caring for 250,000 Darfuri refugees in border camps along the frontier in neighbouring Chad. The organisation has repeatedly appealed for governments and parties on the ground to address the root causes of the Darfur conflict, which it describes as “the epicentre of instability in the region.”

God save the Queen’s Market A FIGHT is on to save the 100-year-old Queen’s Market – described in a report as “London’s most ethnically diverse”. The market is used extensively by women from ethnic minority backgrounds: African, Afro-Caribbean, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Indian, Lithuanian, Pakistani, Polish, and what one trader categorised as “old East End English”. It specialises in cheap food, pots, pans, cloth, and haberdashery. The campaign group, Friends of Queen’s Market, point out that the

majority of shops and stalls are African, Asian, African and West Indian. In a book published this year, Real England, Paul Kingsnorth says Queen’s is “one of the most weird and wonderful places in the capital: a dazzling medley of colour, languages, shops, stalls, merchandise and movement. It is a lifeline for the people on low incomes: the things that are sold here, from halibut to haberdashery, are almost unbelievably cheap.” Campaigners accuse Newham Council of deliberately neglecting the market

– located in Upton Street, east London – in order to pave the way for a takeover by developers. St Modwen Properties plan to build a shopping mall and a 30-storey block of flats on the site. Campaigners drew first blood when Asda-Walmart pulled out amidst local controversy over the plans. Market activist Saif Osmani – who lives two minutes from Queen’s – told The New Londoners that the council was considering its decision. It appears determined to go ahead: Newham’s

‘New Labour’ Mayor, Sir Robin Wales, describes the market as “dirty, smelly and tatty” and has said he would never shop there. But Osmani warns that a pro-development decision could backfire on the council: “There’s such a mix of people in this campaign and the last thing the council wants is a grassroots, community campaign.” And, he adds, there is a possibility that campaigners would seek a judicial review if the decision goes in favour of demolition.

Letter from the Publisher IT gives me great pleasure to introduce the second issue of The New Londoners, the voices and stories of some of the newcomers who have made London

their home. The great success and excellent reception of last year’s issue made us even more determined to continue this endeav-

our at building understanding between London communities new and old. The New Londoners won the Highly Commended prize in the Mayor of London Press Awards 2007 in two categories: Best coverage in faith, black, Asian or minority ethnic press and Best visual/ creative material. This free annual paper allows you to travel the amazing journeys of migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers, and shares their lives, hopes, joys and successes as well as their pain, the injustices they have faced and their struggles to build a new life. New Londoners bring with them a wealth of talent, skills and culture to add to the vibrancy and success of this historically welcoming city, and this newspaper prides itself on being a platform for celebrating their contribution. The New Londoners also brings out facts that dispel the myths surrounding newcomers as a result of unfair

and inaccurate coverage in parts of the media. My colleagues and I from the Refugee Media Action Group at the Migrants Resource Centre very much enjoyed working on producing the paper. We hope that you will enjoy reading this exciting new issue. The New Londoners is produced on a voluntary basis with generous support and invaluable contributions from members of the project, individual migrants and refugees as well as British journalists. We are also grateful for our collaboration with the following organisations: Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum, OneWorld UK, The Guardian, Refugee Council, UNHCR, The Children’s Society, City Parochial and Oxfam, which is also funding this edition of the newspaper. NAZEK RAMADAN

MRC media and policy project

The New Londoners 3

Migration Museum looks to Boris Johnson for help

ne of the organisations hoping to benefit from a change of policy at City Hall following Boris Johnson’s mayoral victory is 19 Princelet Street – London’s unique museum of migration. All the museum’s attempts to get

financial support from Ken Livingstone’s administration failed. “We’ve asked to meet Johnson, to tell him that he’s got an amazing cultural asset in London, both in terms of education and general interest,” says the museum’s founder, Susie Symes. “It’s a site of international impor-

tance,” she says of the atmospheric 18th century Spitalfields house. It has been a refuge for Huguenots escaping religious persecution in France, for Jews and Bangladeshis and for Irish people planning anti-fascist activities in the 1930s. The building is so dilapidated that it is on the Endangered Buildings List,

Migrants and refugees failing to claim tax credits MOST migrants and members of ethnic minorities in London do not claim the tax-related benefits to which they are entitled, according to The Migrants Resource Centre. The London-based MRC - which works with thousands of migrants, refugees and ethnic minorities - says a survey found that 80 per cent of its client groups are not aware of their entitlement to the Working Families Tax Credit. It is planning a government-funded programme designed to help members of ethnic communities get back £1.5 million of their own money in paid taxes – “a step out of the poverty trap”, says the MRC. Research by unbiased.co.uk, which

represents independent financial advisors, shows that the total amount of unclaimed tax credits in the UK stands at £3.6 billion. David Elms, chief executive of unbiased.co.uk, said, “People are quite simply missing out on record quantities of free money by failing to claim tax credits to which they are entitled. The system has been set up to help those on lower incomes, and if you don’t claim your credit, it expires.” Working Families Tax Credit, introduced in October 1999 to boost the incomes of low-earning families, has benefited only one in ten families in London, compared with one in six in Britain as a whole. This means

that ethnic minority communities are particularly affected, as the proportion of ethnic groups in London is far higher than elsewhere. Reasons for the low take-up by ethnic minorities include unfamiliarity with the taxation and credit system, lack of trust and the complexity of the application procedure. The Revenue and Customs Department has launched a drive to ensure that the hardest-to-reach communities get their tax allowances and credits.

For information on Better Off: www.migrantsresourcecentre.org.uk

and Symes estimates that £3 million is required to do essential repairs and enable it to open on a regular basis. At present the museum opens only about 15 days a year – including every day throughout Refugee Week (15-22 June). Symes says that if the struggling institution could get Greater London

Authority support, “there are enough open-minded, globally aware institutions in London who understand that it’s a vital institution and would come up with matching funds.” But, she adds, “We need the new Mayor and the political parties to take it seriously, and to give a lead.”

A helping hand for women refugee academics AN Iraqi-born academic at a London university is helping highly-qualified women refugees get established in Britain. “Being of Iraqi origin, I have been in contact with so many Iraqi academic refugees since the invasion in 2003,” explains Dr Nadje Al-Ali, director of gender studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). “Several hundred academics have been killed and many forced to flee. I have been trying to help friends and colleagues, but have often felt very helpless.” Now the School has received a grant that will enable Dr Al-Ali to continue her efforts on a formal basis. The initial funding will pay for help and guidance for three academics - two from Iraq and one from Sudan. One of the academics who will be affiliated to SOAS under the programme told The New Londoners:

“This project is a new contribution to academic cooperation. An opportunity to enhance the participant’s academic skills.” SOAS is optimistic about finding further funds to enable the scheme to continue, but Dr Al-Ali says, “Even if we are unable to get more, SOAS is committed to host three or four female academic refugees every year.” Why only women? “Given the fact that female academic refugees tend to suffer from double marginalisation – both as women and as refugees – I felt it was important to start a special programme for them,” she says. SOAS intends to develop a resource and educational package to encourage other universities around the UK to set up their own pioneering schemes for female academic refugees. CATHERYN CHEETHAM

4 The New Londoners ‘Only if you were brought up during the war’ The New Londoners asked a handful of passers-by whether they could live on £5 a day and how they would spend it (pictures: Sebastien Bernaert): James “No, it is not possible, not now in this day and age. I spent £5 at the parking meter just now.” Mr Nelson, retired “I certainly couldn’t. You just can’t, even if you live sensibly like me. During the war we learned to live sensibly. You can buy a leg of lamb for £16 and live on it all week, but young people today weren’t taught to live like this. The times have changed. Nowadays, people throw food away. If you only had to spend on food, you could possibly live on £5 a day, but only if you were brought up during the war.”

Philip, cheese-monger (above) “No, it is not possible. You would spend more than £5 a day just eating, and then there’s travelling, entertaining - you need probably £20 per day for that.”

Life on £5 a day

Debbie, in advertising “No, it is not possible in London ... maybe if you live further out. If you had to buy only food you could maybe live on £5 a day. I would only buy pasta, food from tins.”

SPE CIM EN

bout 9,000 asylum-seekers are living here on just £35 a week, paid out in vouchers. This payment must cover all living expenses except accommodation. The vouchers can be spent only at specific shops, and only on certain items. So there is no money for travel, phones, clothes or any other needs. Usually the voucher must be spent on a

Diary of an asylum-seeker Ali, 33, from Iraq

Gabriel, driver (above) “No, it is not possible. But if I had to, food would be my priority. I would buy cheap bread in Sainsbury’s for 20p. I have tried to live on £30 per week before: I know how it is. I spent three months like that until I found a job. The cheap food you have to get is not healthy. You cannot really taste the food. I got stressed, couldn’t sleep; was just thinking all the time about how to spend the pennies. I do think there are many people in London living on just £5 a day – many immigrants who are just desperate to survive – but I don’t think most people are aware of this.”

Meron, sales assistant (above) “No, it is not enough. A pack of cigarettes is £5 in itself. I need money for transportation to get to work. If I had to live on only £5 I would spend it on cigarettes. But I would get very depressed if I had to live that way for a long time.”

Patrick, in advertising (above) “No, I couldn’t even get to work and back – that alone is £5 per day. If I only had to buy food, then maybe I could. I would buy sandwiches, bread, milk, beans and eggs... the cheapest kinds of food.”

Monday I get the £35 voucher and go to the supermarket. I buy food: chicken, vegetables, cheese. I spend all the money on food. Tuesday £0 left. I go to college to study English. I walk. Wednesday £0 left. I walk to college. I also walk to my volunteer job. Thursday £0 left. I walk to my volunteer job. Friday £0 left. I walk to college. I go to a charity to ask for more food, because when I spend the voucher at the supermarket I get food that is on sale, so it goes bad after a couple of days. Saturday £0 left. Sunday £0 left.

single occasion, as no change can be given. The voucher scheme is intended as short-term support for asylum-seekers whose application for asylum has been refused, who are destitute and who are waiting to return home: many are unable to return immediately because of illness, a pending judicial review or because there is no viable route or supporting paperwork. Vouchers are also given to asylumseekers who have launched a fresh claim for asylum because there is new evidence to support their case. Although the use of vouchers is intended to be short-term, many asylum-seekers end up living on £35 vouchers for years. Yet these 9,000 are the “lucky” ones. Many other refused applicants get no support at all. National Audit Office figures for 2005 put the number of refused asylum-seekers living in the UK at between 155,000 and 283,000. Asylum-seekers are not allowed to support themselves in any other way. They are not allowed to work or receive benefits. Many rely on help from friends and charities. This dependence can put severe pressure on mental and physical health, and on relationships: destitution makes it harder for people to integrate. ANNE STOLTENBERG

Case study Sami, asylum-seeker, 25,from Eritrea How does using vouchers affect your social life? I am engaged, I am in love, but we cannot get married because I am not allowed to work, I cannot make money to start a life with her, I cannot make plans for the future. How does using vouchers affect other people’s treatment of you? Sometimes I don’t want to use the vouchers because I don’t want people to look at me that way. People give you funny looks; the cashier is rude to you. When people see you using the vouchers, they know you are an asylum-seeker and they give you the bad eye. How does using vouchers affect your view of yourself? It’s like I am an alien, not a human being. How do vouchers make you feel? I cannot handle it anymore. I am 25 but I cannot get on with my life. I have been here for 10 years and I am not allowed to study, work – it makes me afraid to talk about breathing in case they tell me I can’t do that either.

Boring food and blind hatred Living off £5 a day is hard enough, as I found when I tried it for a week – but there’s also the insults and potential violence to deal with. I discovered that cheap food is skilfully hidden in supermarkets, and I learned how difficult careful shopping on an extremely tight budget can be for someone who does not speak much English or doesn’t know where to go for bargains. I spent the week living on bread, peanut butter and pasta. After a few days of bland food in small amounts, I found there was simply nothing to look forward to: everything felt slow and blank. The little things with which we reward ourselves are completely denied to refused asylum-seekers. I see it more clearly now as a sort of slow, crushing absence of enjoyment of anything; and for them, always the fear of nowhere to sleep, of no safe place, and of being forced back to the worst situations imaginable.

Twenty-fours hours sleeping rough taught me how damaging casual insults and bad feeling can be over a sustained period. I was joined for this by around 20 members of STAR (Student Action for Refugees) and Amnesty, so we could look out for each other and were in a relatively safe place; people even brought us hot tea. But abuse from big groups of ignorant and often drunk students and locals was sometimes frightening. The sheer intensity of blind hatred against asylum-seekers was horrifying. A lot of patient counter-arguing is needed to try to disabuse people of their prejudices. Fortunately, I felt the whole week had been worthwhile when I logged onto my sponsorship page and found that one of the people we’d spoken to had donated money. KATHRYN BIRD

Kathryn Bird is a third-year student of English at the University of Leeds.

Sohel, distributes thelondonpaper (above) “I would buy liquid – juice. The phone is important: I am always connecting to people. I would need a weekly card for transport. No, I don’t think anyone can live on just £5 per day. It is impossible.” Andy, Sky worker “No, it is not possible in London – probably somewhere else, but not in London. If I had to live on £5, I would spend money on transport, 90p each way, £2 for lunch and get a half pint at the end of the day.”

Miriam, nanny (above) “No, because I couldn’t eat, couldn’t travel. I wouldn’t get to do a whole lot of those things – entertainment, travel, food. But I am sure there are some who have to live on £5 per day.”

Elisa, student “I don’t think so because I need to buy food, clothes, to call home, travel expenses, internet, plus I need to pay for college and books for my studies. If I had to live on £5 day I couldn’t go to college, which means I don’t have a future because learning the language here is so important. I couldn’t buy any materials for studying, I would have to buy only food. But this would not be possible for me as I need transportation etc. as well. Living on £35 per week is impossible.”

3 The New Londoner The New Londoners 5

Iraq to London About Iraq

Iraq, in an area once home to some of the earliest civilisations, is now the battleground of several forces competing for control. The deadly power struggle was triggered when foreign forces, led by the United States, invaded to topple the government of Saddam Hussein in 2003. A new government is now in place, supported by thousands of American troops. But it faces a host of crises, the chief among them security and civil order. Insurgents regularly target civilians as well as security forces. Tensions between Shia and Sunni Muslims have spilled over into sectarian violence. Kirkuk, which lies in Kurdistan, is the centre of the northern Iraqi petroleum industry: it is a historically and ethnically mixed city. According to Human Rights Watch, from the 1991 Gulf War until 2003, the former Iraqi government systematically expelled an estimated 120,000 Kurds, Turkmens and some Assyrians from Kirkuk and other towns and villages in this oil-rich region. Traveller’s name: Seham Nationality: Iraqi Kurd Age: 51 Sex: female

Family status: married mother of two Occupation: teacher and poet for 24 years Departure date: 2003 Money: departed with money from selling her gold jewellery Reason for ﬂeeing: because she documented daily life under Saddam Hussein’s regime in her books and diaries her life was in danger. Getting there Taxi, lorry, car and airplane Journey time: six weeks

ne day while I was at my neighbour’s house, I saw my husband seized by security officers from our home. It was horrific. I saw it all take place from my neighbour’s window; they took him away along with all my papers,

books and diaries. I knew at that moment that if they caught me I’d be imprisoned again. I’d already been imprisoned for three years and knew the awful things that they did to me there – I couldn’t let this happen again. I called my sister in desperation and asked if there was any way that her husband could help me get to the UK where my son and daughter were living. He agreed to help me and organised a trafficker to whom I paid a large sum of money. Some days later my brother in law took me by taxi to meet the trafficker for the first time. I was only allowed to take a small amount of clothes with me and nothing else. The first part of my long journey to London was made on the back of a lorry loaded with boxes and sacks of fruit and vegetables. The trafficker put me in a sack, giving me some fruit, biscuits and apples for the journey ahead. I will never forget this. I was then loaded onto the lorry with the other sacks of vegetables and fruit. We travelled for seven long days from Kirkuk to Turkey like this. I was tossed from side to side, not being able to see where I was but only hearing when we stopped at security controls. Every four-to-five hours we stopped in small villages at the traffickers’ friends’ houses. Only then would they let me out of the sack to use the toilet and get some food. As we continued our journey, my body desperately wanted to sleep but my mind was filled worry and couldn’t

shut down. We didn’t stop at the Iraqi Turkish border. I was told not to take any official papers with me. Luckily I didn’t need any. When we arrived in southern Turkey I felt like I was in paradise as we left the lorry and got into a car. There were three other Kurdish people in the car, also fleeing Iraq. They seemed like nice people but the trafficker told me never to speak to anyone on the journey, so we continued our journey to Istanbul in total silence. When we got to Istanbul, we stayed in a flat for two weeks, just waiting. There were two rooms and about 15 people staying there, including women and children. There was only one proper toilet, so people started to use the bedroom as a toilet too. It was disgusting. There were mattresses but it was impossible to sleep. They brought us food, but everything was dirty. They also gave us soap and water to wash ourselves but there was never enough water to rinse the soap from your body. There are no words to adequately describe the suffering we felt and the sound of the children crying. The only thoughts that kept me sane were being reunited with my daughter and son in England. I believed that our fate was in God’s hands. The traffickers told us they were going to take us to Greece by boat and that there was a chance we might capsize. They said this was our only option and we had to

decide if we wanted to take the risk. I was frightened that I would end up dead in the belly of a fish and begged them to take me on a plane instead. I wasn’t afraid of dying but I was worried about my children. I told the traffickers I could try to get more money from my brother-in-law. Some days later the trafficker brought me a forged Italian passport and took me to the airport. At the airport in Istanbul, a woman at passport control checked my passport and started speaking me to me in Italian, a language I don’t speak. I knew I was in serious trouble, but I pretended not to hear very well. Miraculously she let me through. On the plane, the trafficker was still with me, sitting on another part of the plane. He told me to never look at him. When we landed at Heathrow, he said: Sit here, and wait for me. Don’t move, I’ll be back in one hour.” Two hours passed, then three, and there was no sign of him. He’d left me stranded. Hours later, a policewoman came up to me. I said to her, “Please, I have a daughter here, can you help me?” She was so kind and called my daughter and son who eventually came to meet me at the airport. The next day I went to the Home Office in London and claimed asylum; this was in March 2003 - by coincidence it was also my birthday – one I would never forget.

“I couldn’t let this happen again”

GREAT ESCAPES two refugees describe their journeys to freedom

Eritrea to London About Eritrea

A former Italian colony, Eritrea was occupied by the British in 1941. Disputes over its independence resulted in soured relations with neighbouring Ethiopia. In 1998 border disagreements with Ethiopia erupted into open conflict resulting in thousands of dead soldiers on both sides. The conflict ended when a peace deal was struck in 2000, but the border disputes remain unresolved with the countries separated by a security zone and patrolled by UN forces. Two-thirds of the 4.9 million population receive food aid. Economic problems are further compounded by the disproportionate number of Eritreans, including women, who are in the army rather than in the workforce. (Source: news.bbc. co.uk/1/hi/world/ africa/country_profiles)

Getting there Walking, bus, truck, taxi, boat, and airplane Journey time: 2 years

hen I told my parents about my plan to leave Eritrea, they argued with me, insisting that I shouldn’t go. They were terrified that I’d be killed but I left anyway on a Sunday night at 1am without any official papers. It was the first time that I’d ever left my country. I walked to Sudan, asking for directions along the way and drinking cows milk as I passed through small villages. I arrived exhausted in Sudan four days later on a Thursday afternoon. When I got to Kassala (Sudan), I was so weak with hunger and thirst that I ended up spending one week in hospital. For two days I couldn’t talk, but finally on the third day I was fit enough to continue my journey. I changed some of the money I had brought in the black market and took a bus to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, where I met my uncle, who advised me to stay in Khartoum. I didn’t like Sudan as people kept asking me why I wasn’t a

“After three days (on the boat) the driver lost the compass – it fell into the sea...”

Traveller’s name: Hadi Nationality: Eritrean Age: 13 Sex: male Family status: child Departure date: 2003 Money: departed with 2,000 Nakfa (£35) Reason for ﬂeeing: received a letter of conscription from the military to become a child soldier

Muslim - I’m Christian. One day I heard that some people were travelling to Libya by truck so I decided to join them. There were 40 people in the truck who very kindly helped me to pay the $500 to the boss [the trafficker]. We drove through the desert for 25 days and after 20 days I ran out of food and water. When the driver stopped to check the truck and go for a pee, I managed to drink some water from his container and steal some cigarettes from his jacket to give to the other refugees. We arrived in Libya, in the middle of the Sahara desert at Kufra, a little transit village between Khartoum and the costal Libyan towns. There were lots of refugees there, just like me. From Kufra, we took a $100 taxi trip (10 people in each car) to Benghazi, the second largest city in Libya. And then from Benghazi, we took a $20 coach trip to Tripoli. Luckily for me, the other refugees had money and helped me out. On the road from Benghazi to Tripoli we were stopped by soldiers and asked to show our passports and official papers. I didn’t have any, not even forged ones, so they sent me back to Benghazi alone. After two days in Benghazi I took another bus and the same thing happened. The third and final time I was lucky. I took a night bus and this time the soldiers were asleep. I stayed in Tripoli for six months, washing dishes in a café from 8 am till 1 am to save some money. All the waiters were

GRAPHICS: ANAS AWAD

Sudanese and spoke Arabic which I didn’t understand. In Tripoli I met another trafficker who told me that if I paid him $1,200 he could take me by boat to Malta. I asked to see the boat first and then paid him the $1,200. There were 35 people on the boat from Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Eritrea and an Egyptian driver. I was the only child on the boat – I was now 14 years old. After three days of just seeing water and sky and no other boats the driver lost the compass – it fell into the sea! Potentially lost at sea and with no food and water, people started crying and praying, in desperation. After a total of six days we finally got to Malta. Within five hours of arriving in Malta I was put in a prison for children and was surrounded by crazy dogs. It was a horrible time. After two months and 25 days I was finally released and then put in a home for young people. After

one year in Malta, the Maltese government sent me by plane to Italy with travel documents that would only get me to Italy. They warned me not to return to Malta.

When I arrived in Italy I was taken aside and intensively questioned about why I’d come to Italy: eventually they allowed me in. After three days in Italy I got a train to Paris and then Calais, where I hid under a lorry which went to Dover. From Dover the lorry drove for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, at 1am the driver stopped the lorry and went to sleep. I got out of the lorry and staggered along the road for five minutes until I saw a drunk man: “Excuse me, I need police.” “F**k off.” “Excuse me, Sir, this country for me is new, I need police.” “Are you new to the country?” “Yes, I need police.” A police van soon arrived with a policeman and a policewoman. They checked my pockets and found some dollars and euros and then put me in prison at 2am. The next morning, the immigration people and a solicitor came to see me. It was almost two years since I’d left my home. SOURCES: http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Kirkuk http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/ middle_east/country_profiles

6 The New Londoners

‘I am used to hearing calls for actors to shut up, but I’m a citizen and a voter as well’

Despite his many and varied acting roles, for many people Colin Firth is and always will remain “Mr Darcy”. He once commented, “I dare say it will be my saving grace when the only employment available to me is opening supermarkets dressed in breeches and a wig.” But there’s another, less wellknown side to Firth – his commitment to refugee rights. ● interview

loody awful” is how Colin Firth described trying to spend £35 on a week’s supermarket shopping with Cherie Blair’s father, fellow actor Tony Booth. “They were so inadequate,” he said of the vouchers asylum-seekers awaiting deportation are given by the government. “You really have to make the choice between toothpaste or milk. You have to sacrifice extremely basic things.” The vouchers so-called failed asylumseekers receive have to be spent in specified supermarkets in exchange for

a week’s worth of food and toiletries. To add to the ordeal, Firth says: “The attention you get at the checkout queue when you’re handing over your voucher is basically a badge of humiliation.” The experiment is just one of the campaigns in which Firth, who lives in west London, has been involved when he has not been working on film projects. His upcoming releases include Mamma Mia with Hollywood actress Meryl Streep; a Michael Winterbottom film, Genova, in which Firth plays the father of two girls, set in the wake of their mother’s death; and Then She Found Me, starring and directed by Helen Hunt. Other works out this year include Easy Virtue, an adaptation of a Noel Coward play, and A Christmas Carol with Jim

Carrey. He is not short of roles and his popularity is at an all-time high. So speaking out on a subject, even though it is one which he feels passionately about and discusses animatedly, is a daunting prospect for Firth. “Having a profile as an actor - and being known for a six-part mini-series (Pride and Prejudice) above everything else - makes you a very blunt instrument. It’s a conflicted position of being the last person anyone wants to hear preaching, and at the same time having access to the media while a lot of very vulnerable people, who have absolutely no voice at all, are asking you to speak for them. “Eventually you find it’s hard to look yourself in the eye if you just keep saying no. There was a time when I refused to speak publicly, not only on

“This is not melodrama. People are being terrorised year after year”

the issues that people were asking me to speak about, but also those about which I feel strongly myself. “I’m used to hearing calls for actors to shut up; but I’m a citizen and a voter as well – and I’m not very interested in censorship.” Asylum is an unglamorous subject, but five minutes with the A-lister and you see this is a topic that is close to his heart. Firth’s mother has long campaigned for the rights of refugees. He tells me how she took the government to court to block the deportation of Kurds and how she helped Vietnamese boat people. Growing up, Firth says, “these were the people at our dinner table.” The family moved around a lot during the actor’s childhood but more than anything, he notes, “the house was always teeming with people who were not English. “I can - unlike so many of the angry and frightened people around us - claim to know a great many asylum-seekers and refugees. I count some of them among my very close friends. It is offensive to me that the term ‘asylum-seeker’ can be used to dehumanise them.” But he admits speaking out is not without drawbacks.

“It’s not easy to represent such a universally unpopular point of view. And yet the problem is thriving because there are no voices to counter the headlines. If reasonable people don’t deal with this then we become complicit in something which is utterly horrific and which undermines us as a civilised society. “We cannot be the people that permit this stuff, these midnight flights with screaming people, children being deported and being taken to their deaths. “This is not melodrama. People are being terrorised year after year in a country which has a responsibility to give them refuge.” The fate of an 18-year-old Nigerian boy was the tipping point for Firth. Almost 10 years ago, he was shocked to read an article about the young Campsfield House detainee who had attempted suicide. “He had tried to kill himself. A courageous young man stands up to a brutal dictator at great risk to his own life, manages to escape to Britain (who were very vocal in condemning that regime at the time) and then we lock

The New Londoners 7

PICTURE: SEBASTIEN BERNAERT

him up and subject him to appalling racial abuse - this wonderful, thriving individual.” The story of his alleged treatment in detention near Oxford angered Firth into action. “The boy was treated here as he had been in Nigeria. I simply wouldn’t be a part of that. There is a view,” Firth adds, “that asylum-seekers are, at worst, vermin; at best, not our problem.” When we meet, Firth has just been to see Nick Clegg at the House of Commons to talk about the treatment of people who come to the UK seeking asylum. He asked the leader of the Liberal Democrats if he would keep his views on the subject the closer he got to office. It is a pertinent question for Firth who blames the Labour government, in part, for the current distaste in Britain for asylum-seekers. “What I find shocking about this Labour government is that there was really never any need to pander to the tabloids. At the time they were elected they were enjoying extraordinary popularity, and instead of spending their political capital on changing negative perceptions - and pursuing the humane asylum policies they espoused when

they were in opposition - they squandered it on cheap populism; they played to the lowest common denominator.” t is since 1997, Firth says, “that the word asylum-seeker has become dirty.” But his biggest bugbear is that not enough is done to counter the myths. “Basically it is open season. The first thing we do in this country – when we’re panicked – is blame the ‘other’. “I find this credulity and hysteria very disturbing. There is so little to fear and yet fear is rampant.” Hostility towards those that come looking for sanctuary from those who have never met a refugee or an asylumseeker astounds him. “One of my closest friends at school in Winchester was an arrant racist,” Firth recalls. “He hated all the foreigners he hadn’t met, but the three he knew, refugees who had escaped Idi Amin, he really liked!” “The idea that asylum-seekers come here to sponge doesn’t stand up to the first glance let alone scrutiny. To cross three continents, say goodbye to family, go through that heartbreak, travel in refrigerator trucks or underneath trains, just so you can sit around and get a £35 voucher - which will barely get you

through the first morning in London - is not the same person who will sit there and think ‘Great, I’ll get free benefits’.” The child of parents born in India, Firth says his biggest blessing is his exposure to different cultures. “All of us in this country are founded on a huge number of influences. That’s why I love London. This city wouldn’t be worth living in were it not for its diversity.” But he admits recent terrorist atrocities, predominantly 11 September 2001 and 7 July 2005, have set the clock back. So much so, that today hostilities are reaching a new high. “I think something very sinister is happening; negative innuendos are to be found among the old mainstays of tolerance; reactionary attitudes among the Guardian readers and in the dining rooms of Islington; talk of numbers and control – where is this leading?” When it comes to assimilation, Firth believes it is up to Londoners to help newcomers fit in. “The onus is on people with power to make it easier for others to integrate,” he says. “It’s up to those of us who have a vote and a voice to use our imagination and facilitate that sort of integration. “The fact that more British people

live abroad than foreign nationals live here means the notion we are deluged doesn’t stand up.” If anything, Britain is losing out. Firth says there are 1,100 doctors and 1,500 teachers who are immigrants in the UK who want to work but are not allowed. “There is an abundance of opportunity that’s being wasted.” On a trip to Ethiopia a few years ago, Firth was struck by how beautiful and green the country was and the paradox of how parents were lucky if children reached their fifth birthdays. But he discovered that people were not remotely interested in Firth taking back tales of their hardships. Instead, people asked him to tell Britain ‘We make great coffee in Ethiopia and we work hard to produce it, please pay us a fair price.’ The notion that people come here to sponge is nonsensical.” The actor is not yet sure how new Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson will handle community relations. He won’t be drawn to speculate on what Johnson may or may not do, but does point out that Johnson’s track record has not always been good. He refers to Johnson’s past racial gaffes, and says: “We can only go on

a tally of what he has said and done in the past and it doesn’t fill me with optimism. But it may be that now he has a position of responsibility and is in control of such an ethnically diverse city that he has to take a more imaginative approach. “We know what is at stake here. Concern about racial integration is not a marginal issue, it concerns all of us this city.” Referring to a recent think-tank report which found that of all the migrant workers from Eastern Europe who have arrived in England since 2004, half have gone back, Firth said he could have foreseen such a development: “I knew that, without a crystal ball. I should think people will be here as long as it takes them to get themselves on their feet and then they are going to be out of here. No-one wants to leave their home. If you took away all the border controls I wonder what would actually happen? You have to have a far bigger reason than wanting a £35 voucher to make that journey. “I think we’re going to miss the Poles when they leave.” WIDIANE MOUSSA, a reporter for thelondonpaper

8 The New Londoners

Mind your language: banning asylum or saving sanctuary? The charity-funded Independent Asylum Commission believes most British people want to offer protection to those who need it but admits that there are flaws in the system. Jonathan Cox, the Commission’s coordinator, looks at public perceptions of the issue.

olitically correct brigade strikes over word ‘asylum’” screamed the headline in the Sun following the Independent Asylum Commission’s first report of conclusions and recommendations, Saving Sanctuary, in May. “Should we ban the word ‘asylum’?” the BBC asked. Delighted as we were to see the Commission’s report taken seriously by the nation’s biggest-selling newspaper and most influential broadcaster, it was frustrating to see the Commission’s report reduced to a debate about terminology. Words are important, but Saving Sanctuary made 64 recommendations for action needed to secure the UK’s proud tradition of providing sanctuary to those fleeing persecution. The Commission has spent 18 months conducting the largest and most comprehensive enquiry into the UK asylum system ever undertaken. The 12 Commissioners consulted ordinary people about what sort of an asylum system they wanted in the UK. Their “Citizens Speak” consultation alone involved 520 people from across the UK taking part in ‘People’s Commissions’, with groups as diverse as Oxford students, elderly people at a home in Somerset,

“... all I know is that they are all bloody foreigners!” Young Farmers in Herefordshire, a book club in London and trainee air cabin crew in south Wales recommending the core principles that should underpin UK asylum policy. They also commissioned a national opinion poll, and 16 focus groups in eight cities across the UK. So what do the public really think about asylum? For a start, they do not understand what the term means. One typical focus group response was that “...to most people the term asylum seeker just means anybody coming to live off our state system.” The public often confuse asylum with economic migration, and there were frequent references to ‘Polish asylum

Giving testimony to the Commission at one of its seven public hearings PICTURES: SARAH BOOKER

seekers’, and even ‘French asylum seekers’ coming to the UK to work. One honest focus group participant, asked to distinguish between asylum seekers, refugees, economic migrants and illegal immigrants, said: “... all I know is that they are all bloody foreigners!” Secondly, the word ‘asylum’ has an image problem – it gives people negative vibes. The public more strongly associ-

ated the word ‘asylum’ with mental health than with people fleeing persecution, and only 18 per cent of people consider the term to be ‘positive’ or ‘very positive’. Furthermore, the public perceives that on the whole asylum seekers are treated better than they would like: another participant in the research commented: “Asylum seekers go to a car auction and get free housing, mobile phone, phone

credit to search for jobs, and vouchers for a free car.” But it is not all bad news. The public are strongly committed to the idea of providing sanctuary to those fleeing persecution and 65 per cent of opinion poll respondents said they were ‘very’ or ‘quite’ proud of the UK’s tradition of providing sanctuary to people fleeing persecution. And ‘sanctuary’ is the crucial word. Not only do people understand what it means (unlike asylum), they can personally relate to it (unlike asylum), and they see it as a positive word (unlike asylum). When polled, 81 per cent of the public said that sanctuary was a ‘positive’ or ‘very positive’ word, and over 50 per cent had somewhere that they considered to be a personal sanctuary – ranging from reading a book in the bath, to walking in the country, and seeking refuge at Old Trafford! The British public does want to provide sanctuary to those who are fleeing persecution, but there is a bleak outlook for this noble tradition of ours unless we win back public trust and confidence. To do that, we must have an asylum system that is in line with the mainstream consensus values of the British public, and we must make that system more effective. And yes, we must also mind our language. Asylum is a legal and technical term that will have its place in the courtroom. But for politicians, media, refugee advocates and anyone else who wants to convey messages to the public about people fleeing persecution, the term ‘asylum’ is best avoided. You can download the Independent Asylum Commission’s reports and opinion poll results at www.independentasylumcommission.org.uk.

3 The New Londoner The New Londoners 9

‘I fight for refugees because of my mother’s experiences’ Nicky Gavron, who was London’s deputy mayor for four years until Boris Johnson unseated Ken Livingstone in May, explains her special affection for London – which dates back to her mother’s arrival here as a refugee from Nazi Germany.

he situation that refugees and asylum-seekers face in our great city has a personal resonance for me as I wouldn’t be here in London were it not for my refugee mother. In 1936, as a teenager, she was chosen to dance before Hitler in the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics - before the authorities discovered she was Jewish. From that moment on, her whole life changed. She was made to wear the yellow star and suffer persecution. Fearing for her safety, her parents sent her to London alone, aged 17. Sadly, many of her relatives were not so lucky. London was a safe haven for her. As a female refugee the only jobs allowed were in domestic service or nursing and my mother chose nursing. When her training was almost complete, her hospital was turned into a military hospital and she was expelled because she was German. As a result, although she had always worked as a nurse, she was never paid the full rate she was entitled to. Like many refugees living in Britain today, my mum suffered discrimination and inequality of opportunity. Growing up in a post-war English provincial town, I was very aware of my mother’s experience of these problems. She never fulfilled her aspirations and potential. That is why throughout my life and political career, I have fought for the rights of refugees and minorities to have the same rights to decent hous-

Gavron: Appreciative of diversity, (below) Gavron at City Hall refugee meeting

education and to health and safety. Which is why Mayor Livingstone set out a strategy for refugee integration, working with London boroughs, the Home Office and refugee representatives. We also set up the Board for Refugee Integration in London, involving key stakeholders and more importantly, refugees themselves. The Mayor now has new powers over housing and skills in London. The Mayor’s Housing Strategy, which was developed in draft by Mayor Livingstone, will be revised by his successor, Boris Johnson, and it is vital that this addresses the needs and experience of London’s refugee and asylum-seeking communities. The new London Skills and Employment Board is an excellent opportunity to provide refugees with better training and pathways to work. It also could provide better ways for assessing and converting foreign qualifications. Unfortunately, the British media too often peddles negative stereotypes of asylum-seekers and refugees, assisted by the growing problem of destitution among those who come to this country. If they were allowed to work from the outset, this situation would be transformed. It is rarely recognised that many of London’s refugees and asylum-seekers are highly educated people – academics, scientists, doctors, lawyers, teachers and nurses – who have years of experience and technical skills which are in short supply in today’s Britain. So there are basic steps that the government could take to help refugees and asylumseekers. Allowing them to work, and investigating a regularisation scheme for immigrants who have been in the country for a number of years, would go a long way towards solving some of the problems of poverty and exclusion. Increased investment in housing will help greatly, too – but we need to look at some of the legal and regulatory barriers to accommodation that stand in the way of too many refugees. Engaging with migrants and refugees directly was a central focus for our administration at City Hall. I believe we did a good job but we intended to go so much further. Now that we are in opposition, with a new Mayor, I will continue to press for the measures that are needed for refugees and migrants in our city. I hope the new Mayor will continue to engage with refugees and migrants, that he will soon publish his own Refugee Integration Strategy and that he will build on what we have begun.

“Its number one strength – diversity”

ing and healthcare and the same opportunities of education and training as other British citizens. I have had a lot of contact with refugee communities during my time as a local councillor, London Assembly Member and as Deputy Mayor. I have heard many difficult yet inspiring stories from those who have come to this country and I am fully aware that London owes a huge debt to its immigrants for the positive contribution that they have made, and continue to make, to almost every aspect of London life. There’s a cultural debt for the diversity of vibrant literature, music, language and the performing arts. A physical debt – how many migrants’ hands built London? A social debt – to the nurses, doctors, social workers and teachers

who have raised, cared for and educated generations of Londoners. And an economic debt – with immigrants making a massive entrepreneurial contribution to London’s economy. It is migrants and refugees from different backgrounds and cultures that makes London such a unique city and gives it its number one strength – its diversity. With over 350 languages spoken, London really is the world in one city. Overwhelmingly, Londoners are appreciative of diversity. But remaining problems must be confronted. Working with Ken [Livingstone], it was my job as Deputy Mayor to not only encourage and celebrate our diversity, but also to tackle head-on manifestations of racial and religious prejudice and discrimination. We sought to build harmonious community relations using the simple formula that in this city everyone can express their heritage, faith and culture – as long as they respect the rights of

others to do the same. Attacks on multiculturalism can all too easily feed on ignorance about other cultures and religious faiths, which can lead to intolerance. We all have a duty to fight this. One of the achievements I’m proudest of is that we have introduced official celebrations and festivals for many of London’s communities. Events such as St Patrick’s Day, Chinese New Year, Vaisakhi, Chanukah, Ramadan and Diwali are now enjoyed by people from a wide range of backgrounds. Celebrating and respecting the cultures of all Londoners makes it easier to confront intolerance. Yet people from all communities still face exceptional barriers in London. The lack of decent affordable housing and overcrowding is a huge impediment to gaining employment, better

500 years late, it’s time to educate the public Britain’s 300,000 Gypsies and Travellers are working alongside central government, local authorities, schools and heritage organisations throughout June to celebrate the first national Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month. The celebration comes 90 years after the black community embraced Black History Month to promote integration, understanding and tolerance. Lessons, exhibitions, concerts, fairs and film screenings are being held all over the country, including a “Pavee Celidh” in Hammersmith organised by Irish Travellers on 26-27 June.

“For too long these people have been shunned by sections of society, leading to a mutual distrust which has had an impact on the education of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children,” said Lord Andrew Adonis, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Children, Schools and Families, who earlier this year committed resources and political support for the History Month. “I fully endorse this opportunity to raise awareness and explore Gypsy, Roma and Traveller culture as an opportunity to tackle prejudice and celebrate the achievements of these communities,” he added.

Patricia Knight, History Month national coordinator, pointed out last week that “Britain’s 300,000 Gypsies, Roma and Travellers have lived, worked and travelled throughout Britain for over 500 years, yet we have been almost entirely written out of British history. “Go to most museums, libraries and schools and nothing about our history and culture is kept or taught. The result is a widespread ignorance about who we are, which sometimes turns to hatred, fear and misunderstanding, but always has an impact on Gypsy and Traveller lives.”

That is why, she added, communities are coming together this month, “to begin the long overdue task of educating the British public about who we are and where we come from. “We’re doing it for one simple reason: if people do not realise that we were an important part of Britain’s past, they will never accept us as a crucial part of Britain’s future.” For details of public events planned during the month, see the Gypsy, Roma, Traveller History Month magazine at: www.grthm.co.uk/ downloads/GRTHM_Magazine.pdf

10 The New Londoners

How did we end Novelist Mark Haddon was asked by Oxfam to meet and write about a group of asylumseekers at the Migrants Resource Centre in London. His report was published in The Observer on Sunday and now in a shorter version in The New Londoners.

ergey, Mariam, Margaret... How did we end up treating human beings in this way?’ Nothing has made me this angry in a long time. We bellyache about the abuse of human rights overseas. But there are thousands of people living here, right now, in one of the richest countries in the world, forced to live in poverty. They are denied basic rights and services which the rest of us take for granted. And this is not an accident. This is government policy. And we should be ashamed of it. The first person I get to meet is Sergey. Sergey is a doctor from Armenia, 47 years old, a married man with two sons of ten and eleven. I’ve seen photographs of Sergey before we meet. He is square-jawed and good-looking with close-cropped black hair. But the photographs were taken a year ago and when he comes into the room I don’t recognise him. He has lost several stone. He walks slowly and has trouble breathing. Every so often he has to pause and gather his energy before carrying on. When he talks, however, his eyes light up. He is passionate and a lot funnier than most of us would be in his position. He is not only a good man, but good company, too. He apologises repeatedly for his poor English and tells me that he would not be here were it not for the kindness of the staff at the centre. This is his story. “When I was in Armenia I was very happy. Everything was OK for me, for my family, thank you God. I have a new car. In the city I have a good home. I have four hectares of land. I have horses. With my friends every week I have a picnic, a barbecue. I was lucky, lucky, lucky. I had popularity because I help many people to survive. It is my duty as a doctor. So everybody knows me. In the street they say, ‘Hello, Doctor.’ The police know me. They say, ‘Hello, Doctor.’ Even the Russian KGB, they say, ‘Hello Doctor.’ “But after Soviet Union break up, there is life without law. There is mafia. There is killing, many times. My friends. My neighbours. Tomorrow maybe me.” Quite by chance Sergey was witness to the murder of a politician. He tells me the details but asks me not to print them in case it puts his family in danger. “Police officers, they come to me and ask what I see. I say nothing. I am afraid. I have wife and children. I cover everything up. After that my life was worst, worst, worst. My friends tell me, ‘KGB looking for you. And if KGB want to kill you, they will kill you.’” With the help of friends, Sergey managed to escape from Armenia hidden in a truck, sending his wife and chil-

dren to stay with relatives. He reached England after nine days and assumed that he would finally be safe. He was refused asylum and became homeless. “I sleep in road. I sleep in park. In playground for children. And I catch this killer illness. One time, this person wake me up and say, Hey, how are you doing? I look down and see all this blood. Ambulance come and take me to hospital.” While sleeping rough, Sergey had contracted hepatitis C, one of the ten per cent of sufferers who get the disease for unknown reasons, though living on the street cannot be good for anyone’s health. He got no treatment and, as often happens, the disease led to cirrhosis of the liver. Sergey will be dead within two years. A transplant could save his life, but he doesn’t qualify for one because of his asylum status. Eventually, Sergey found his way to the Hounslow Law Centre. They got him registered with the National Asylum Support Service. He was given a room in a shared house and seen by a doctor who told him he should eat three meals a day, with plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. Sergey has to do this on £35 of vouchers each week. These have to be spent on food and basic toiletries and nothing else. They have to be spent in one supermarket and that supermarket is not allowed to give him any change. He is not allowed to earn any more money. Some time after he escaped from Armenia, Sergey’s wife managed to get to Italy. She now works as a cleaner and lives in a single room with their sons. They are forbidden from visiting their father, and Sergey is forbidden from visiting them. Sergey could be saving people’s lives. He is not asking for money. He wants to work. He is an innocent man who has committed no offence. His only mistake was to hope that when he reached the UK he would be treated like a human being. And Sergey is not alone.

y host at The Migrants Resource Centre is the indefatigable Nazek Ramadan, who herself fled the war in Lebanon in the mid-80s and who runs many of the projects at the centre. Nazek is like a particularly efficient big sister and when Sergey lists the people to whom he is most grateful over the past few years, Nazek comes in just behind God, and just in front of Mario Marin-Cotrini, the MRC’s legal adviser.

The centre does exactly what it says on the tin. It offers refugees and asylum-seekers advice, practical help, language lessons, a crèche, computer access and a place to meet other people in the same boat. Nazek and her colleagues, however, realise that one of the biggest problems asylum-seekers have to face is the way

Sergey: “There is killing, many times” PICTURES: SOPHIA EVANS

they are portrayed in the media. Everyone I spoke to at the centre said they were treated well by the public until they admitted that they were asylum-seekers. One of them said he was relieved when he became destitute because the public treated homeless people better than they treated asylum-seekers. Most of what we have read and hear about asylum-seekers is wrong. For a start, there is no such thing as a ‘bogus’ or ‘illegal’ asylum-seeker, no more than there is a bogus or illegal mortgage-seeker. Everyone has the right to apply for asylum. If they have a justified fear of persecution then the host country is obliged to protect them. This is set down in the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. No country has ever withdrawn from the convention. Consistently, however, the British government and its officials attempt to define its obligations to refugees as narrowly as possible. Sometimes they do this with breath-taking frankness as in this refusal letter from the Home Office to an Algerian woman: “You claim that you were ill treated during detention, tortured and raped.

The secretary of state does not condone any violations of human rights which may have been committed by members of the security forces... (but)... to bring yourself within the scope of the UN Convention, you would have to show that these incidents were not simply the random acts of individuals, but were a sustained pattern or campaign of persecution directed at you by the authorities.” It’s worth reading that paragraph again. The Home Office is telling this woman that they don’t care if she has been raped, tortured and imprisoned. It will help her only if she can prove that this was done repeatedly and according to some kind of plan. Sometimes the government mounts legal battles to rid itself of refugees, as it did recently when it was condemned by the UN for winning a high court case to return refugees to Baghdad and Basra, thereby setting a precedent for removing refugees to other war zones. Sometimes, the government alters the law itself to make it easier to remove asylum-seekers. In 2004, for example, it became an offence for asylum-seek-

ers to fail to provide a proper immigration document to establish their identity and citizenship. This was hugely controversial. It is almost impossible to obtain a passport in countries such as Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Many asylum-seekers have no choice but to travel using false documents. And most have no knowledge of UK asylum law.

he second person I talk to is Mariam from Ethiopia.

Mariam’s daughters reached the UK long before she did and she spent the first few weeks in this country tracking them down, with help from the Red Cross. I ask her why the three of them chose to come here as opposed to anywhere else. “Outside the UK, you ask people and they say the UK is the father of the world, the carer of the world.” After all she has been through, Mariam still thinks highly of this country. “There are human rights here. There is democracy here. The government is also a good government. The law is good. But when they put it into practice...” The supposed reason for a tough

3 The New Londoners 11

d up like this? asylum policy is to prevent the UK from becoming a soft option for people seeking asylum. But Mariam is no different from anyone else I talk to. She simply had no idea how asylum-seekers were treated here. Just as you or I have no idea how asylum-seekers are treated in Ethiopia, or Armenia. Neither Mariam nor Sergey came here expecting to be supported by the state. But neither did they know that the state would stop them working to support themselves. In truth the numbers of asylum-seekers who come to the UK, or to any other country, rises most dramatically when major conflicts erupt around the world: the break-up of Yugoslavia, for example, or the war in Iraq. Mariam found her daughters and applied for asylum. Soon after this she was told by the Home Office that she was being ‘dispersed’ to Glasgow with only one of her daughters. Dispersal is intended to be a way of sharing the job of housing asylum-seekers among councils thought out the UK. But it is often used in way that seems designed to make staying in this country as uncomfortable as possible. Mariam is not allowed to do paid work, but not working is clearly impossible for her and she devotes much of her time to voluntary organisations around London. Mariam and I talk about politics and I ask who she’d vote for if she was eligible. She says, ‘Labour. Because I am on the side of people, of the working class’. It sounds odd, coming from Mariam, because there is something of the old-fashioned conservative about her. As there is about Sergey. As there is about all the people I speak to. These are people who believe in the importance of family, of duty, of self-reliance, of hard work. Getting to the UK takes money. It takes connections. It takes determination. The sheer difficulty of the process acts as a brutal filter. These are not just ordinary people in trouble who deserve our sympathy. These are extraordinary people who have done something momentous to save their lives, or the lives of their families, and who deserve our admiration for it. he third person I meet is Margaret. She is broken and sad and I feel bad that she’s travelled across London leaving her children with a friend in order to see me. She is nervous and can’t bring herself to meet my eye. She stares at her hands or glances over to Nazek for reassurance. I start by asking why she had to leave Uganda and I regret it immediately. It’s a horrible story and she has to stop several times because she is crying. I tell her we can talk about something else, but she insists. I realise later what a stupid question it is. It’s the one every refugee gets asked when they apply for asylum. It‘s the one asked in every newspaper article about the subject, every television report, every radio programme. Is this person’s claim justified? Did these things really happen to them? You couldn’t spend five minutes with Sergey, or Mariam, or Margaret without believing their stories. But to ask whether they might be lying is to miss the point. The point is this: imagine what it must be like to live this kind of life, to leave everything behind, your

borough. This would mean removing her daughter from school all over again. Margaret decided her daughter’s life had been disrupted enough. So she and her daughters now live on a friend’s floor.

Mark Haddon with Nazek Ramadan from the MRC.

job, your family your home. To travel to Stuttgart in the back of a truck. Or Oslo. Or Rotterdam. Any place where you don’t speak the language. You have no friends. You sleep in the street, or share a house with strangers who speak yet another language. Imagine living on £35 of Asda vouchers a week. Imagine not being able to see your family. Then ask yourself what kind of experience would make this kind of life preferable to going home? This is the situation in which asylumseekers find themselves. For those with children it is worse. In 2005, Margaret and her two children were taken to Yarl’s Wood detention centre. Her youngest was a year old. “They told me they were deporting me. I didn’t know what was going on. My daughter was taken out of school. It was a very difficult time for us because they don’t tell you when you are going to come out of detention. You have to communicate through a solicitor. It was like a prison. If you have kids it is difficult because you cannot go outside. They can only play in this one big room with everyone. But kids need to run around. They need their freedom. “There was no education and the food was really horrible. Burgers and chips almost every day. And it was served at one time, so if your child is sleeping they don’t eat. And when my baby was sick I was not allowed to have Kalpol in the room because they said I might kill him.” Margaret’s lawyer applied for judicial review and after six weeks she was finally released. The following year she was detained again. By this time she was receiving psychiatric treatment. “They came to my house very early in the morning and they packed everything I owned. I told them I was sick. They said, ‘We are not here for a joke.’ “They took my kids to another room and called the police to help them take us to Harmondsworth detention centre. I was there for ten days. They took my kids away and didn’t say where they were taking them. Then they locked me up. They don’t speak to you. They just bring you food. They think you can eat without seeing your children. I told them I wanted to see my children but they would not talk to me.” Margaret was eventually told that she would be reunited with her children at Gatwick airport on the flight which

PICTURES: SOPHIA EVANS

was to take her back to Uganda. “There were five big men and two women who came carrying my children. When we reach the plane I tell them I am not going. They start abusing me, using all kinds of words. They wanted to put handcuffs on me but I refused. I was screaming and the kids were crying because they did not understand what was happening. One man got hold of my head and another sat on my back and forced me down. Then the pilot came and told them to offload me.” Pilots have intervened in this way on a number of occasions. Many people, when they are manhandled onto a plane, become distraught, as well you might if you were raped, tortured or imprisoned in the country you’re being sent back to. But people who act in this way can be charged with various offences, resulting in criminal records which will seriously undermine any asylum claim. Margaret was put into a van and driven to a police station. “I could not even sit because of the pain in my neck and my back. They were using all this kind of language. ‘You fucking idiot. Why did you refuse to go?’ They said they would tell the police I had hit them. They said I would be arrested and get a criminal record. “We got to the police station and they said I had assaulted them. But the police were so good to me. They said, ‘We are going to listen to both sides. And we have to take you to a hospital to get photographs of your injuries in case there is a court case.’” Margaret and her children were taken back to Yarl’s Wood and kept there for another four months. “The place was so dirty. It was horrible. My kids used to cry. My daughter kept on asking when we would leave. I did not know what to tell her.” When she was eventually released Margaret was given accommodation by the National Asylum Support Service (NASS) and she found her daughter a place at a local school. NASS then told her they were going to move her to different accommodation in another

ow did we end up treating human beings in this way?

Mario, the MRC’s legal adviser, came to the UK in 1978, with his wife and sister-in-law, after escaping from Colombia where the government had 68,000 of its opponents behind bars. They were terrified and knew nothing about asylum law. All the immigration officials who dealt with their claim, however, were helpful, courteous and surprisingly knowledgeable about Colombian politics. The three of them were granted temporary admission. The following year they were given full refugee status. “I can only be grateful to the UK for the protection offered to me and my family during those difficult days... After nearly 30 years here, I have two children and one grand-daughter. We feel British. When I come back to the UK after visiting my elderly parents I always feel as if I am coming home.” Mario’s is not an isolated case. I’ve spoken to a number of refugees who arrived in the UK ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. Most were impressed and surprised by the warmth of the welcome they received, and none of them went through the demeaning experiences that many of today’s asylumseekers go through. What happened during those intervening years? Of course, there has always been racism and intolerance, but only in recent times have these sentiments been allowed to drive and shape official government policy. Most people don’t know the number of refugees seeking asylum in this country (in 2007 there were 23,000; a tiny fraction of the 700,000 people from overseas who were allowed to register for work in the UK). Most people don’t know an asylum-seeker. Most people can’t point to a way in which the presence of asylum-seekers has affected their lives in any way, for better or worse. Consequently the prejudice asylum-seekers face is based on almost total ignorance. The government could change this. It could treat asylum-seekers well and present this as a badge of national pride. It could let them work and celebrate their contribution to the economy. It would be cheaper. And it would have little effect on the numbers of people seeking asylum here. The government does not do it, in large part, because it wants to curry favour with the editors and readers of the tabloid press which have done more than any other body to stir up hatred of asylum-seekers. It’s not simply that many of the stories are false, and that most are deliberately misleading. It is the relentless negativity of the whole campaign. And the depressing fact that this is where the majority of people get their information about asylum-seekers from.

“These are not ordinary people”

hortly after Sergey was told that he had a fatal illness he received a letter from the Home Office informing him that he was being removed from the country. The MRC got in touch to explain that he was seriously ill. They wrote back saying that this was no problem. They would provide a medical team to fly with him back to Armenia.

He was taken to Colnbrook detention centre where he was placed in a room measuring eight foot by twelve. He was locked up for twenty-three-and-a-half hours a day and let out for 30 minutes to exercise. There was a camera in one corner monitoring his movements. With only days to go before he was put on a plane, Mario Marin-Cotrini threatened the Home Office with Judicial Review and they released him. Until a couple of weeks ago, Sergey was living in a shared house with two other men. One of them had serious mental health problems. When this man received a letter saying that he was going to be evicted he became distraught and decided to set light to the house. Fortunately, Sergey smelt smoke woke up immediately and was able to get out of the house in time. He rang 999 and two policemen arrived along with the fire engine. They asked him to come back to the station to answer a few questions. He was more than happy to help. They handcuffed him, locked him in a cell overnight and told him to report back with the a solicitor. I ask Sergey what he wants from life. “For myself I want to be kind. If you are cold I can give you this jacket. But this jacket, it is rubbish. If you say you need money I have no money to give you. What has happened to me? I try to be kind, to be kind, to be kind. I want my two sons learning that. To be kind. To be polite. To be gentlemen. I am their father, I am the head of the family, but I cannot help. I am like a dead man here.”

ust before I leave at the end of day Mariam comes up to me with a folder. In it she has kept all the certificates and awards she has received for her voluntary work. We look through them together. At the back of the file, however, are all her letters from the Borders and Immigration Agency concerning the progress of her asylum case. I ask if I can read them. She tells me to go ahead.

They are mostly boilerplate stuff, acknowledging the receipt of papers and informing her of delays. But I notice that at the bottom of every letter is a slogan written in capital letters. ‘WORKING FOR A SAFE, JUST AND TOLERANT SOCIETY’. ● Mark Haddon is a novelist, poet and TV dramatist and screen writer. His best-known book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, won the Whitbread and the Commonwealth Writers Best First Book prizes. He is also known for his Agent Z books for children, one of which was made into a BBC children’s sitcom. The MRC is the publisher of The New Londoners: www.migrants resourcecentre.org.uk

12 The New Londoners

The New Londoners The New 3Londoners 13

Chinatown gets political L

ast October the Border Immigration Agency (BIA) made a dawn raid on restaurants in London’s Chinatown, arresting around 40 undocumented workers, classified as “illegal” by the authorities. The event was filmed by the BBC, which had been explicitly asked by the BIA to be present with a view to “naming and shaming” the guilty parties – that is, the offending restaurant owners who were subsequently fined and told to get their businesses in order. London’s Chinese community was outraged by the raids, and especially by the BBC’s involvement. Many Chinese people viewed the deliberate use of mass media coverage as a deliberate form of public humiliation. “The Chinese community understand that the BIA is just doing its job, but why did the BBC have to get involved?”, asks Chi Chan, former communication officer for the Chinese Immigration Concern Committee (CICC). The CICC was set up in the wake of the raids as a way for local Chinese people to express their concern with what they view as a seriously misguided approach to the complicated issue of undocumented workers, not only in Chinatown but throughout the country. Some of those accused of being “illegal immigrants” eventually turned out to have papers, so the charges against their employers were dropped. But the BIA’s heavy-handed approach led many members of London’s Chinese community “to wake up to the fact that they’re facing a big issue,” says Chan. “Business people just want to do business, and not get involved in politics, but they are increasingly being asked to involve themselves in various immigration-related bureaucratic procedures, for which they rarely have the time or the training.” The result has been the politicisation of large swathes of the Chinese community. Spurred on by the CICC, many Chinatown restaurants have become much more organised in recent months. A week after the Chinatown raid, restaurants closed down for half a day in protest. The CICC also arranged a meeting with the director of the BIA at which he was lambasted for approving BBC involvement in the raids. At a subsequent meeting between the BIA and two elected spokespeople for Chinatown’s restaurant owners, the agency emphasised the employers’ fundamental responsibility not to employ undocumented workers – a point not lost on the restaurateurs, still reeling from the high-profile raid a year earlier of David Xu’s restaurant in Lincolnshire. Xu was the victim of a big scare operation by the BIA (again involving local media) resulting

Members of Britain’s Chinese community make a huge economic and cultural contribution to Britain, and its cuisine has become part of the British diet. But they tend to keep a low political profile. Until now... in the arrest of four workers at his Great Fortune restaurant in Messingham. He insisted the workers had valid permits, which were later revealed to be fakes. Initial fines of £5,000 per undocumented worker were upped to £10,000 by the courts. Xu was also accused by various media of being a “snakehead” – a derogatory term for leaders of gangs responsible for importing illegal migrant workers – which can lead to jail sentences of up to 14 years. The trade magazine Caterer and Hotel Keeper reported that 46-year-old Xu and his wife Lu Xu, 44, were convicted of breaching immigration law by employing illegal immigrants: “Now a Proceeds of Crime hearing before Bradford Crown Court has heard that the couple benefited by almost £1 million by employing illegal immigrants. Evidence was given that David Xu’s available assets totalled £244,000 and his wife had £242,000 in available assets. It was these amounts they were ordered to hand over.” After the case, Barbara Petchey, Humberside Chief Crown Prosecutor, said: “Confiscation is not just there to hit drug dealers and money launderers: it applies to all criminals who benefit from their crimes.” The case – and what many Chinese consider to be the insensitive attitude of the BIA and the BBC – shook up the Chinese community, which consequently felt the urgent need to campaign around the issue of undocumented workers. Chan says these workers “are just trying to making a living while the authorities make it impossible for them to work with the proper papers.

The Ethnic Catering Association’s demands ● recognise the unique characteristic of ethnic catering, and put the occupations in these businesses on the Occupations Shortage List ● stop all disruptive BIA actions ● recognise urgently our industry as an area of skill shortage and relax the rules accordingly to allow urgent recruitment

● recognise the unique language characteristic of ethnic catering ● work with our communities and invest in training programmes, which would resolve long-term labour problems in the British ethnic catering businesses and provide employment opportunities for local people

“The bigger picture, which the authorities don’t take into consideration,” he adds, “is that Chinatown has traditionally suffered from labour shortages, which have now been exacerbated by a harsher regime towards undocumented workers” – such as the removal of asylum-seekers’ right to work while their asylum requests are processed. Angered by the Xu case and the Chinatown raids, the Chinese Immigration Concern Committee adopted three concrete steps: to commission a report into the catering industry; to campaign against the raids; and to initiate talks with the government and parliament on the broader question of UK immigration. Its basic argument is that the government’s new immigration policies have not been thought through. “The government doesn’t understand how the catering industry works, so in trying to stop one problem, it’s created lots more,” says Chan. These problems include hardship for restaurant workers who end up doing longer hours, or restaurants having to scale down their operations – both direct consequences of a law that forbids asylum-seekers from seeking gainful employment. In an attempt to rectify the situation, the UK Border Agency (UKBA, the new name for the BIA) established the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to advise the government on which occupations should end up on the Shortage Occupations List (SOL). The agency said MAC “will provide independent, transparent and evidence-based advice to government on where labour market shortages exist that can sensibly be filled by migration.” Although the committee’s goals sound sensible, the glut of new acronyms hints at the way in which the authorities’ bureaucratic tendencies

tend to trump common sense. For example, one of the MAC’s key roles is to designate shortage occupations through a points-based system. But restaurant workers fail to make the grade – which the CICC describes as “ridiculous”. Chan considers that the main problem is that the government’s much-heralded re-jigging of the current immigration system is “basically in response to the political right,” particularly the Daily Mail. “As a result, the government is not taking into account lots of practical, everyday issues.” He cites the new requirement that immigrants must have a certain level of English in order to be granted permission to work here as an example of the government “putting the cart before the horse.” Given the urgent need for Chinese catering staff, and the many Chinese asylum-seekers willing and able to fill these posts, the CICC is calling for a major rethink on the issue. The group has teamed up with the Bangladeshi and Turkish communities, which suffer similar problems, to form the Ethnic Catering Alliance (ECA). Indian and Pakistani restaurateurs have expressed interest in joining the group. In April, the ECA held a demonstration in Trafalgar Square to raise awareness of the issue and make five pressing demands, including the regularisation of undocumented workers. The same day the alliance petitioned the Prime Minister, campaigned at the Houses of Parliament and lobbied various ministers. The group’s basic message is that “the government has failed to consider the real implication of its immigration policies on all communities,” thus “placing these communities in a discriminatory position which has caused real difficulties for ethnic catering industries such as excessive overtime hours, tens of thousands of staff shortages and in several cases, closures of these small and medium businesses.” The number of undocumented workers from China and elsewhere is a sign of globalisation’s dark side. Often smuggled in by “snakeheads” (a term considered a term of abuse by many local Chinese residents), their tales of woe are legion: from nightmare journeys across continents – packed like sardines in the back of trucks – to stories of financial extortion and bonded labour,

PICTURES: CHI CHAN

Chinatown demonstration: the CICC’s basic argument is that the government’s new immigration policies have not been thought through

often ending in dire financial difficulties and sometimes even death, undocumented immigrant workers have come to epitomise all that is wrong with global capitalism. According to UK government figures, the number of undocumented Chinese immigrant workers is 7,000-10,000. Deportations take between three and seven years to carry out, partly because the Chinese government says the UK needs to prove that those caught are actually from China – and not, for example, ethnic Chinese from Malaysia or other Asian countries, as many

turn out to be. “In 2007, around 500 were deported,” says Chan. “So, do the math.” Another problem is that many of those detained by the UK Border Agency are legitimate Chinese citizens but cannot prove it because they left China with no papers – a typical ploy of the “snakeheads.” The CICC says that the long-term solution is to clear the backlog but, just as importantly – and more urgently – the short-term problem needs to be tackled. Chan says a clear demonstration that the current system isn’t working is that “illegals” arrested by the authorities are often released back to their former employers, “but under the condition that they don’t work.” The CICC therefore proposes that, for practical reasons, asylum-seekers be allowed to work temporarily until their applications have been decided. Chan says UK Border Agency officials are “very sympathetic” to the CICC’s claims but are under enormous political pressure to “get tough on immigration.” JAMES SMITH

Hard work – if you can get it LONDON’S original Chinatown was created at the turn of the 19th century, around Limehouse docks. Some Chinese were made redundant and therefore had no option but to stay, while others jumped ship to avoid their next voyage. Chinese shops, laundries and cafes sprang up, and the Chinese proved their organisational abilities by founding the Ching Yee trade union. Many of London’s original Chinese immigrants and their descendents were forced to flee East London during the Second World War, when Limehouse was among the areas hit by German bombs. Some left the city and resettled all over the country: the Chinese are the most dispersed immigrant community in the UK. The 2001 census showed that 353 of the nation’s 354 census areas had Chinese populations – the only exception being the Isle of Scilly. But many Chinese remained in the capital, moving in large numbers to the site of the current Chinatown. During the 1950s and ‘60s, a new wave of Chinese immigrants came to the UK, with further expansion taking place in the late ‘60s and ‘70s. What Londoners now think of as Chinatown started with just a few shops in Soho’s Gerrard Street in the late 1940s. Since then, it has expanded to become the area south of Shaftsbury

Food business ● In 1908 Britain got its ﬁrst mainstream Chinese restaurant when the Cathay opened just off London’s Piccadilly Circus. Since then, the number of Chinese eateries in the UK has mushroomed, with around 7,000 restaurants and 16,000 takeaways throughout the land. They are now second only to Indian restaurants (many of which are in fact Bangladeshi-owned). ● Annual turnover of Chinese restaurants: £1.7 billion ● Annual turnover of Chinese takeaways: £1.3 billion ● Annual turnover of Chinese catering trade: £4.9 billion ● Business rates paid by Chinese catering businesses: £86 million Sources: caterersearch, The Observer and The Independent

Avenue, east of Rupert Street, west of Charing Cross Road and north of Leicester Square. The restaurant boom transformed some dingy Soho backstreets into a prosperous, commercial area. The first formal acknowledgement of the

area’s distinctive Chinese flavour was the inclusion of Chinese script on the area’s street signs. Then, in the 1970s and ‘80s the heart of the area was pedestrianised, and in 1984 pagodas were added. Chinatown’s more recent prosperity has been due to people such as Kwan Yip, who came to the area from China in the 1980s. “Since then, running a restaurant in Chinatown has become much more competitive,” says Yip, “largely because of increased competition from other cuisines, plus the high cost of rent and rates.” Central London’s high living costs make it difficult to hire staff, so Yip has to work long hours. “I devote myself to the restaurant until one or two in the morning every day, including weekends,” says Yip, who is desperate for a day off. His chances – and those of many of his colleagues – of getting some much-needed rest are slim. The reason, says Jabez Lam, coordinator for the Chinese Immigrants Concern Committee, is that Chinese restaurants are suffering from more severe staff shortages following government drives against unregistered workers: “By raiding Chinese restaurants and pursuing high-profile prosecution cases, the government wants to send a message that ‘illegals’ will not be tolerated,” he says.

14 The New Londoners

Hamid goes shopping – for his soul “a station on my journey of life”

Lucy Kralj, clinical coordinator of the Helen Bamber Foundation, meets three people whose experiences attest to the nature of human cruelty – and to the capacity to survive, and (below) describes the highs and low of working with survivors.

She felt she had no reason to care about her life any more and simply ran into the bush. But her hardships didn’t end there: she was ultimately trafficked into prostitution, first to Italy and then to Britain. Following a raid on the brothel in which she was being held, Alice was imprisoned for immigration offences. On her release, her asylum claim was fast-tracked. She has now, finally, been recognised as a victim of trafficking and her asylum claim is being processed. Next to Alice is Hamid. He is from Iran and tells me that he comes to the Foundation to do his shopping - “shopping for my soul”. Two years ago Hamid was on the street, homeless, destitute and terrified. He was a “failed asylum seeker,” his claim deemed “incredible” and dismissed by both the Home Office and the judiciary. In Iran, Hamid was imprisoned and tortured for seven years. As a result, he is physically disabled. He suffers from complex traumatic stress disorder and his mental health problems were deteriorating dramatically with every night that he spent pacing the streets of London, too afraid to sit and rest. Later he made a fresh claim for asylum, and now has refugee status. Hamid is sharing baklava with Alice, who is in turn insisting that Faduma and the receptionist also share the sweet. Hamid has brought newspapers for the reception area and has written a poem that he believes will offer encouragement to other displaced and dispossessed clients – “they are now my brothers and sisters. This is my home and these are my people ... a good station for me on my journey of life.”

wo women sit quietly, waiting for the chance to speak about their shocking experiences, and to be heard. Faduma from Somalia is 25 – and has survived multiple rapes, attacks by government militia, forced marriage, years of domestic abuse and latterly slavery and sex trafficking. To add insult to injury, the immigration authorities have told her that part of her account is incredible and that although officials acknowledge that she has suffered rape and violence at the hands of militia and abuse at the hands of her husband, they think she could return to another part of Somalia. Not surprisingly, after what she been through, Faduma cannot bear to return. She remains in the UK, with no access to public funds, destitute, staying every night with a different member of the Somali community. She sits silently, gazing out of the window. On the chair next to her in the waiting room of the Helen Bamber Foundation in Museum Street, near the British Museum, is Alice. As a child in Uganda, Alice was physically and sexually abused. She was subsequently abducted by rebel soldiers and spent her teenage years forced to work as a “wife” for a rebel commander. She managed to escape after her twoyear-old son died of malaria.

Bamber: a solemn promise

Keeping Helen Bamber’s 60-year promise IN 1945 the young Helen Bamber made a solemn promise to the people she cradled in her arms in Belsen concentration camp at the end of the Second World War. She vowed that their stories would be told, that they would not be forgotten. To this day, she continues to keep her promise. I make a similar undertaking to the clients with whom we work at the Helen Bamber Foundation. Each week, hundreds of people attend the foundation’s offices in search of humanity, protection, sanctuary, refuge and healing. In the hope of meeting some of these needs, our work involves human connection, bearing witness, and finding the courage to speak the unspeakable and believe the unimaginable. As a team we bear witness to survivors of multiple abuses in the modern world. “Remember,” wrote Holocaust survivor Ellie Wiesel, “do not forget, but at the same time you

will never know”. These words strike to the heart of the experience of many asylum-seekers who are forced to “tell their stories” in various capacities throughout the asylum process. They recount stories of atrocity, persecution, torture and horror to various officials and members of the judiciary, all too frequently to be met with disbelief and allegations that their accounts are not credible. I would like to believe in a world in which torture is not credible – yet it is perpetrated in over 132 countries. Although Britain is a country at war, we remain relatively protected from the realities of torture and human rights violations: the bombs are falling not here but on the streets of Baghdad and Kirkutz, Kabul and Helnand, and allegations of torture persist offshore in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. The dispossessed masses are perceived as a nuisance, “invading our shores”. Torture and human

rights violations are part of the daily reality of vast numbers of the world’s population. These people are unable to turn a blind eye and utter the word “incredible”. Trauma is a part of life so familiar that it is strange to imagine a world in which one does not have to live in constant fear. The concept of a “safe place” is one so alien that it is this that lies beyond imagination and not the reality of atrocity, dubbed “incredible”. Certainly, my own worldview has altered since my life was crossed by the people with whom I work. My world is much more diverse – infinitely richer and yet much poorer; comparatively safe and yet much more dreadful; full of colour and yet much, much darker. Every day I bear witness to the truly ugly nature of human cruelty, but this in turn makes the truly beautiful so much more clearly visible. In the midst of all this diversity there remains

two constants that seem to follow the world’s displaced wherever they travel: rejection and dispossession. As I write, the headlines are full of images and accounts from South Africa where refugees who have already fled from their homes are again being chased, persecuted, violated and killed; of Burmese whose military government is denying foreign aid in the aftermath of cyclone Nargis; of the persecution of Tibetans by the Chinese authorities; of Darfurians fleeing government militia; of Zimbabwe’s despotic leader torturing those who dare to oppose. And those are but the stories that make the international headlines. The majority of the world’s dispossessed remain voiceless, their plight never to be understood and their stories never to be heard. Helen Bamber Foundation: www.helenbamber. org/

The New Londoners 15

re are s e h T “ park nd n e e r g re a e h w everylove the I ity of s r e v di res.” cultuVenezuela son, Jack

What do you most appreciate about London? The New Londoners finds out what visitors like about the capital. Pictures by Sebastien Bernaert ● Eilyn, from Costa Rica: “The multiculturalism.” ● Osman, Sudan: “The museums and the Piccadilly area, because it’s lively.” ● Martina, Italy: “The multi-ethnicity.”

“I like the Thame river s.” Fawzia , Alge ria

● Jasmin, Bosnia: “The ﬂowers in Hyde Park: they remind me of the smell that doesn’t exist in my country.” ● Fornier, Colombia: “I like the parks and the architecture.”

● Sarah, Iraq: “I like the London tube: you can go everywhere very quickly and the map is very easy to read. I really like to use it!”

● Raheema, Bangladesh: “The opportunity of studying.”

● Mariam, Eritrea: “I like the freedom of speech.”

● Canan, Turkey: “It’s the best place to meet friends with different cultures.”

● Vijay, India: “It’s the best city of the world, because of the clubs and the casinos.” ● Azhar, Pakistan: “I love Southall, because of the Asian community.” ● Manivong, Laos: “They give opportunity for the women and equal rights.”

● Gaye, Turkey: “I can have a lot of relationships with people.” ● Thomas, Germany: “There are a lot of cultural things that you can do for free: visiting museums, the Southbank Centre....”

● Alibaba, Egypt: “The liberty.”

● Ozden, Turkey: “People don’t care and don’t interfere in your private life.”

● Dragos, Romania: “I like the communication: I’ve been here for two days and I can communicate with other people.”

● Ambra, Italy: “I can never be bored in London, because there is always something new to do, like cultural events, exhibitions, concerts...”

16 The New Londoners The immigration issue – and the treatment of asylumseekers in particular – has become a hot political potato. The New Londoners asked the three main political parties to clarify their positions.

Laying down the

party line

Nick Logan, Home Office spokesperson

LABOUR

Damien Green

CONSERVATIVE

Nick Clegg

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS

Shouldn’t failed asylumseekers who are appealing Home Office decisions or awaiting deportation be given given cash instead of vouchers?

Vouchers provide a limited and temporary form of support for those who are about to leave the UK. Cash is not provided as this could form an incentive to stay in the UK or even act as a pull factor. Vouchers are accepted by supermarkets and a variety of other outlets so essential living needs can be provided. Providers have worked with certain shops to ensure that certain dietary needs can also be met (such as halal meat).

Many of the problems affecting individual asylum seekers have been caused by the unacceptable delays in the system, which have led to destitution and illegal working. A better system would take decisions more quickly, and thus minimise the need for long-term subsidies, in the form of cash or vouchers.

Vouchers can stigmatise and demean asylum seekers. They were scrapped in 2002 by David Blunkett, who described them as “too slow, vulnerable to fraud, and felt to be unfair by asylum seekers and local communities.” Vouchers remain not the most efﬁcient way of delivering support to those who desperately need it.

Is it ever justifiable for children to be held in detention centres?

To deport people we need to detain people. We do not detain people lightly, and this is especially true of families with children. But the detention of families and children will continue to happen when those who have no right to stay in the UK will not leave voluntarily. Families with children are detained only where absolutely necessary, for as short a period as possible and in accommodation designated for families. We are currently piloting a project with a voluntary group as an alternative to detention in Kent.

There has to be some reserve power for detention, but obviously it should be used as little as possible for families with children.

Detention centres are not the place for children. They should only be held there in the most extreme circumstances, such as if they and their family were being removed the next day. They certainly shouldn’t be used to routinely hold children.

Should asylumseekers be allowed to work, rather than, in many cases, being forced into destitution?

It is not Government policy to allow asylum seekers to work. Entering the country for economic reasons is not the same as seeking asylum and it is important to maintain the distinction between the two. Giving asylum seekers or failed asylum seekers permission to work would be likely to encourage asylum applications from those without a well founded fear of persecution, hence slowing down the processing of applications made by genuine refugees and undermining the integrity of the managed migration system. This is why we do not generally allow asylum seekers to work while their claim for asylum is under consideration. We maintain an exception where asylum seekers have been waiting 12 months for a decision where this delay cannot be attributed to them. This is standard practice in countries which have implemented the EC Directive on reception of asylum seekers.

No answer

Since being banned from working in 2002 until they receive a positive decision, asylum seekers are forced to depend on government support, cannot contribute to the UK taxation system and are barred from using the wealth of skills and experience they bring to the UK. The Liberal Democrats would end this situation by allowing them to work and access employment services two months after making an application. Beneﬁts would only be paid if the individual is unable to work or no work is available. This would aid integration, lower community tensions and greatly reduce dependence on welfare and social housing.

Do you think the government has a responsibility to admit more Iraqi asylum-seekers?

Each and every asylum and human rights claim, including those from Iraqi nationals, is considered on its individual merits in accordance with our obligations under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The Government is committed to providing protection for those individuals found to be genuinely in need. If an asylum or human rights application is refused the applicant has a right of appeal to an independent judge to ensure that we provide protection to those asylum seekers who need it. The UK Border Agency will only remove those individuals whom we and the independent courts are satisﬁed to not be in need of international protection and are able to return home without facing a well-founded fear of persecution or serious harm. We prefer people to leave voluntary but if necessary we will enforce their return. We do not enforce return unless we are satisﬁed that it is safe to do so. We do not accept that it is unsafe for Iraqis to return home. Voluntary returns are possible to all parts of Iraq and Iraqi failed asylum seekers may return home voluntarily, with the assistance of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Over 3,300 Iraqis left voluntarily between 2000 and 2007.

Certainly Iraqis who have put their lives at risk by working for the UK have a great moral call on this country.

It is not appropriate to set quotas on asylum – people fleeing from tyranny and oppression must always be offered refuge in this country. Genuine Iraqi asylumseekers fleeing persecution should be granted asylum in Britain but every case must be judged on its merits. However, the asylum system must be overhauled to provide a service which is efficient, effective, timely and fair for all.

The New Londoners 17

Three poems What price £3000? My house was in the middle of the valley Huge as a whole detention centre Where orchards and roses sat side by side The courtyard was massive With benches, chairs and ponds Filled with laughter, love and happiness all round. Inside, there were many quarters Each as big as a whole floor in Euro Tower Furnished with silk and silver and what not The comfort was great, security diminishing fast Until the word came that it was time to run Before I would be killed for speaking my mind.

The mother of all struggles An inspirational evening at the Young Vic as the reality of a refugee detentioon centre goes on stage

others Day, 2008 - an evening to remember for 400 people at London’s Young Vic theatre who listened to the stories of women and child refugees who had been detained in Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre, near Bedford. The audience for Motherland (above) included a 14-year-old Turkish refugee, Meltem Avcil, who had been locked up for three months “It’s because we dream of living in a country where women and children will

not be treated in this way that we came together that day at the Young Vic,” Natasha Walter, founder of Women for Refugee Women, who organised the production, told The New Londoners. “And I believe we will not stop working until we have achieved this reality.” Actor Juliet Stevenson, who directed Motherland and read the story of Cennet Avcil, explains: “I’ve been involved with refugee issues for many years, but the main impulse for Motherland was visiting Yarl’s Wood with Natasha and

with the Yarl’s Wood Befrienders, Gill Butler and Heather Jones. “It was a huge day. We met Meltem and Cennet Avcil and another family with a young daughter called Anna. We were so shocked by talking to these young girls who were locked up with their mothers, who were clearly so traumatised both by the persecution that they had fled from and by their treatment in the UK. As we travelled back from having met these women and their children, we both felt these stories must be told. “So we said, let’s find a way of telling them in a wider forum. And we found there was no shortage of interest when we asked other people to get involved. Everyone said yes. “What was great about Motherland

was that we had so much feedback, people saying – much as I did after that visit to Yarl’s Wood – ‘My God, I just didn’t know... I just didn’t know what is happening right under our noses.’ Many people just don’t know about places like Yarl’s Wood. It’s completely off the radar. “Although the first impulse with Motherland was to make people aware of all this, we were also determined that people should have a sense of empowerment at the event. We didn’t want them to simply come out depressed and demoralised about what the government is doing, but to feel enabled to do something about it. “And that seems to be what happened. People came out saying ‘What are we going to do about about this?’”

A sari with a tweed and heather motif?

Fatema Khatoon Hossain: “Bonds”

A SARI with a Welsh leek and daffodil pattern? Tweed with a heather motif? With buttons instead of sequins? The suggestions come from Susan Roberts, director of the London-based Bridging Arts group and organiser of the British Bridal Sari competition. “Traditionally, the embroidery and beading of bridal saris reflects the traditions of South Asia,” she says. “But this year we are looking for something new, a British design with British embroidery, embellishment and needlework which will be magnificent in its own way.” The prize is £250. Closing date for entries – in the form of a 20 centimetre square swatch – is 31 August. Fatema Khatoon Hossain is already at work on hers. “I’m basing my own design around two overlapping wedding rings, beautiful birds sitting on a tree branch and a basket of scented lavender flowers,” she explains. “To me, marriage doesn’t mean becoming one but rather two separate individuals who have made a blessed commitment to create strong bonds in certain areas of life.”

She says the key to contemporary British brides’ hopes and aspirations is that they are not afraid to try something different “and I hope we will see this from the designs put forward.” She has told friends who felt they were not good embroiderers, “It’s a project where even a relative beginner to embroidery and sewing, like myself, can put forward a vision of the hopes of the modern British bride.” “After all we’re not competing with the fabulously richly embroidered wedding saris we see in shop windows or glossy magazines; we’re just creating a pattern on a swatch of fabric.” And for others interested but unsure of their skills, Bridging Arts is running workshops in June and July. Roberts admits that nowadays only older Asian women wear saris all the time, but points to a growing trend among younger Asian women of wearing the garment for special occasions – such as weddings. Entry forms: www.bridging-arts.com or call 020 8749 9010.

An arduous journey it was to cross the ocean Then all the forests, crossroads and checkpoints The huge sadness in me, the fear infinite Until I could feel my feet had landed Some concrete it was I did not know where Searched and numbered and to a shelter I was led. The place felt morbid with cockroaches and stench It all felt unreal with voices my ears just could not recall To a room I got sent to get more shocks and dreads My hole was so small memories of my prison days recurred In my mind’s eye I saw the same four walls The colours were different, the air just as stale. Then the offer came for a ‘voluntary return’ A £1000 it was and now it’s £3000 for me to die again The years have flown by, my youth, my soul drained up Who will bring me back all I had and have not? Who is there to listen? Who will go and tell? This is not about cash but all I was and am not? ● Mariam Behrang (Iran) is a multilingual poet in exile who works closely with asylum-seekers and refugees and their communities in the UK

Belonging Since I belong nowhere, I’d like to come and do my Not-belonging here. Will you help me fit in...to my clothes? Or are you busy trying yours on for size. ● Nora Armani (Egypt) is a multilingual British writer/performer who works in Europe, the Middle East and the US

World Geography I have seen the East and the West and have come to understand: It makes no difference where we live People are one and the same It is borders that are the divides. World geography Is a loving poem For me and for you. ● Jaleh Esfahani (Iran) published more than 20 volumes of poetry before her death in London in2007

18 The New Londoners Helen “This dress is traditional and I feel really happy to wear it, I walk everywhere with it. People take pictures and I really appreciate practising my tradition.”

Chantel Konning

Kenea Suzuki

Marina Alibhai

“Japanese designers are very good and their stitch is very nice. Colour and material is very nice. English colours are no good, but English print is very nice.”

“I bought the scarf with my mum in Lisbon in the market. It is traditional Portuguese – the colours, material, patterns. It feels good, like having a bit of home with me.”

“The fabric is from Ghana. I am wearing a wrapped top with pockets, which I made. I live in London, so it is very important to wear this as it keeps me linked to where I am from. I have different textures for different occasions: it is the colours, prints and what they mean, because each thing has a different meaning. This is an intertwined eight circle inﬁnity knot – a symbol of eternity.”

Brick Lane style Marie-Claire Frederick

There’s no longer a single, accepted style for what we wear: the fashion industry still has influence, but many people like to mix and match, drawing on a variety of sources and designs. The New Londoners takes a Words: Nela Milic Pictures: Sebastien Bernaert look at street fashion in Brick Lane.

“I am wearing Gap jeans and degabi from Ethiopia. I chose it because of the weather. It is made from cotton and it is cool, it’s quite good to wear and if it is cold it is even nicer - it makes you warm. It is given to me by an Ethiopian lady and I like the colours, but it is mainly about the warmth of this fabric. I am from West Africa, but this still makes me feel unique because people from Ethiopia look at me as I’ve got something they admire.”

Migel

Gema Valencia

“My clothes are from my country (Peru) – the natural spirit of Pachamama. Trousers are from the animal and the colours are natural painting; they are traditional and it is a special design - Inca tribe paintings. I like my style: it feels natural, free.”

“I am wearing leather sandals from Brazil and Turkish trousers, because I like to mix styles, old and new, and different cultures, and this is a great culture for doing that because you see so much around. In the neighbourhood where I live there is a lot of Turkish people and they are surprised that I am wearing these trousers, because they wouldn’t.”

Preethi Nallu “This scarf was made in India and the earrings are from India, too. They are part of my culture and I am quite proud to wear them and I feel comfortable in them. I like to mix and match like I am wearing jeans with something traditional. I would like to think that they [the Indian community] think I have a good taste.”

Radha Mohan “I am wearing chada from India which reminds me of Indian tradition. The blanket is to keep warm and to be able to remind me of a simple way of living.”

The New Londoners 19

The mellow fellow from the Bordello PICTURE: DANNY NORTH

Gypsy punk meets the world

you have got a family everywhere you go, so... I feel perfectly home these days in Rio de Janeiro, for example... I swear I haven’t felt more connected to the soil in my life! And there is a community here of Kalderash Roma which is keen to hang out. I come and play for them, and they go: “No way! I was born here in Brazil but my grandpa sang this song!” (Kalderash are a widespread Roma community who traditionally are smiths and metal workers.)

● interview

ugene Hütz, 36-year-old lead singer of New Yorkbased gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello, left his native Ukraine after his parents heard about the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown on the radio and decided to flee. The musician, whose grandmother was a Roma gypsy – Europe’s most oppressed minority – spent seven years travelling through Poland, Hungary, Austria and Italy. He finally arrived in the US as a political refugee in 1990. An active campaigner for Roma rights, his background and experiences as an immigrant feature strongly in his music. His anarchic energy and exuberant handlebar moustache also feature strongly. Here he takes time out from a trip to Brazil for an email interview with The New Londoners about his life - and about London, where he performed with Madonna at Wembley’s Live Earth concert last July.

“London – it’s got chicks, it’s got culture, so let’s go!”

Q Have you lived or spent time in London? What are your impressions? AYeah, I’m quite often in London, playing, DJ-ing, some other projects... I think they think I’m a real artist or something! And I also worked on a ﬁlm in London, so that ensured a whole month of being there. And, you know, I like it. I actually think it’s everything that people think New York is. It’s hard but full of swing and it’s depressing but has pockets of real blasting life and fun... and it’s full of hard core characters. Then you get to New York and think: Man, this is peanuts here... it even seems 10 times less expansive after your ‘hood!.. but you know, it’s got chicks, it’s got culture, so lets go!!!

Q What are your earliest memories of life in the Ukraine? A Making lots of spit-bubbles.

Q What projects are you working on? A Oh, where do we start? I’m making a new Electronic record with Romanian singers and dancers, who have never been on stage before. It’s called MITITIKA, and we are premiering live here in Rio. Also, gearing up to do an acoustic full-on Romany band with my Roma friends from Russia and Ukraine and France. Plus a new Gogol Bordello record is in the works. There is also a script I wrote, so will see... I’m in Brazil, you know, it just keeps coming to you!

Q When and why did you and your family leave the Ukraine? A 100 reasons, most importantly to avoid mandatory draft and not to be treated as antisociety element... my upbringing was qualiﬁed as AntiSoviet by the time I got out of high school, and that rep(utation) followed all around... Q How were you treated by people in the host countries? Did you have a favourite place? A I think Italy was our favourite, even though it was just as tough legalwise: no permissions for temp work, no nothing, typical crappy conditions, too many people per room in refugee motel... but I guess Italians were most generous with change for washing their car windows on intersections!... and it’s a very beautiful country... Eventually I ended up working for cash in the winery, so last memories really polished out the whole thing... Q How did you make your eventual journey to America, ending up in Vermont? A Our original refugee programme that dealt with Russian-Ukrainian

WIDIANE MOUSSA, a reporter for thelondonpaper

Roma facts Hütz, on stage and on tour PICTURE: GOGOLBORDELLO.COM

people ran out of money, so this other programme that dealt with Romanians, Bosnians, other people from Balkans, took us and found a sponsor for us in Vermont, so we went... our other option was South Africa, so ... not a rock ’n’ roll centre exactly... Q What was life like there? How did it compare to Europe? I found it to be very rural and

cowboyish... luckily I was already schooled in the rural ways of life, and even fascinated with them a bit, because of my time in evacuation in times of the Chernobyl explosion... but as soon as possible I hit New York, because I was a LOT more fascinated with that! Q How did people initially react to your music, which is heavily inﬂuenced by your culture? A If you deliver your music or art

with utmost degree of brutal honesty, which involves honesty to yourself of course, too, people will always relate to it. The foreignness of it becomes irrelevant... the delivery defines the reception. Q Would you define yourself as a refugee? A Oh no, obviously I’m much more of a border patrol officer! Q Having lived in so many countries how do you define ‘home’? A It’s where my family is, and luckily I have a very big family... with Romanies

● There are about 15 million Roma, often referred to as Gypsies, who come originally from the Indian subcontinent. ● Roma communities in Europe have been enslaved, sterilised, subjected to enforced assimilation, ghettoised, attacked, murdered, and imprisoned and killed in Nazi extermination camps, and continue to face widespread discrimination. ● Roma have lived in Britain since the early 1500s. Their population in the UK is estimated at 120,000. ● Roma music has inﬂuenced classical composers such as Brahms and Liszt, ﬂamenco, jazz and bolero.

Listings

20 The New Londoners

Hundreds of events take place in Refugee Week, 16-22 June: here is a selection of London events

Sunday 15 June Celebrating Sanctuary established and emerging refugee musicians, dancers and artists celebrate the cultural contribution of refugees to the UK. This daylong festival launches Refugee Week in London and provides a platform for new performances and artworks. Stalls selling dishes and drinks from all over the world. Bernie Spain Gardens, Upper Ground, South Bank, 2-7pm. Info: 020 7346 6752/ www.myspace. com/celebratingsanctuary. Flowers of thoughts - a special gift for someone special. Museum of London, 150 London Wall, 12.30-2.30pm. Info: 0870 444 3850/ info@museumoﬂondon. org.uk.

Mond

Escape to Safety, an interactive multimedia installation built into a 12.5m box-trailer that enables you to experience something of what it is like to be a refugee seeking asylum in Britain, 8.50am 16-20 June, Woodberry Down Community Primary School. Info: 020 8800 5758/ woodberrydown@hotmail.com. HUNT - a specially commissioned play for 10-16-year-olds exploring one person’s experience of war and conflict, produced by Kazzum, a young people’s theatre and participative arts company, 16-20 June. Wilton’s Music Hall, Graces Alley, off Ensign Street. Times and booking 020 7539 3500/ info@kazzum.org. PEOPLE ON THE MOVE: The challenges of Displacement in the 21st Century - UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres delivers the 2008 International Rescue Committee UK Annual Lecture at 7pm, The Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore. Info: 020 7692 2737/ events@ircuk. org. Refugee Encounters - Londonbased authors from around the world explore how encounters between new and host communities influence their views of each other and of the world around them. Writers include Vesna Maric from Bosnia and Kurdish poet Choman Hardi. They discuss their choices as writers that reflect their new homelands and the different meanings of being a migrant or exiled writer, 79pm, Southbank Centre, £7. Info: www.southbankcentre.co.uk Human Cargo, Caroline Moorehead, author and activist, talks about her book “Human Cargo: A journey among refugees”, a take on refugee experiences around the world. Plus a speaker from Amnesty International on the Still Human Still Here campaign, Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn, free, 8-9.30pm. Organised by Kilburn Amnesty Group. Info: 07940 006783

Tuesday 17 June SHARED Futures – launch of the SHARED Futures training resource pack and DVD which provide good practice on supporting the integration of refugee children and young people in school and the wider community. Starts 9.30am, Regent’s College Conference Centre, Inner Circle. Info: 07910 773110/ duncanlittle1234@hotmail.com. Stories of the world - Celebrate Refugee Week with storyteller Seema Anand who shares stories, similarity and difference

between the peoples, cultures and ideas of the world, Museum of London, 150 London Wall, 34pm. Info: 0870 444 3850.

Thursday 19 June Islington Refugee Forum and Islington Council Refugee Week Event - to celebrate refugee contributions to the borough. It will include a welcome by the Mayor of Islington, an international food fair and an afternoon of dancing and music, 10.30am- 3.00pm, Islington Central Library, 2 Fieldway Crescent, Islington. Info: 020 7527 7140/ zoe.batten@islington. gov.uk Still Human Still Here, screening of Nick Broomfield film, 7pm, followed by contributions from Diane Abbott MP, Jan Shaw of Amnesty International, Eddie Barnes and Megan Redmond from Hackney Refugee & Migrant Support Group, Marilyn Bonzo and other refugees talking about their experiences, Café OTO, 18-22 Ashwin Street. Info: 07984729321/ ulrike. schmidt@candi.ac.uk. United Nations Conference for Students: Focus on Refugee Issues, student presentation and question time with panel, 1.30-4pm, free, Gwyneth Rickus Building, Brentfield Road. Info: 02089373344/ laura.uku@brent. gov.uk Refuge In films, a festival developed by a group of young refugees to give voice to young people and address issues of representation of refugees and migrants in the film industry, 19- 22 June. Refuge in films present a programme of films about immigration and refuge at the BFI, and will also organise visual workshops for young people: check with BFI for details, Belvedere Road, South Bank. Info: 07903494703/ refugeinfilms@gmail.com. Multicultural Celebration, programme of events showcasing the cultures of Hammersmith’s refugee residents and will include singing, dancing and a chance to try cuisines from around the globe, 6-9pm, Hammersmith Town Hall, King Street. Info: 020 7386 9060/ samantha@hfrf.org.

ay 20

Removing Barriers and Connecting Communities, an opportunity for refugee families and the wider communities to get together for a celebration event led by the Refugee Arts Project (RAP) in partnership with many other organisations, 11am-5pm, speakers, theatre training, stressbuster workshops, seminar workshop on refugees, health information workshops on HIV-Aids, tuberculosis etc., housing information sessions, stalls, followed by folk music and dance 5-7pm, Hackney Community College Campus, Falkirk Street. Info: 07875 046 785/ refugeearts@hotmail.com. Refugees into Teaching @ World Refugee Day, celebrate the contribution of refugee teachers in London and publicise the current opportunity for graduate refugees who wish to undertake a free teacher training course at the Institute of Education, University of London; speakers panel 5.30-6.30pm, followed by discussion; light refreshment & cultural/musical show by refugee artists from 7pm, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell

Square. Info: 0207 4715564/ theodros@reconnectonline.org.uk

Saturday 21 June New Voices Party in the Park, family day out with singers, dancers and drummers from across the globe, plus a kidz corner with interactive sessions, sustainable food with demonstrations and stalls providing information on the services available to new and existing communities in the Tower Hamlets area; Bethnal Green 1-6pm. Info: 0207 729 7985/ admin@praxis.org.uk. The Sleep-Out - RenéCassin is supporting the JustFair Campaign to raise awareness of the plight of destitute failed asylum-seekers. Join for a night of story-telling and learning how to make a difference, 11.45pm-8am, The Jewish Community House, Chatsworth Road (Kilburn). Info: 020 7443 5130/ info@renecassin. org.

Sunday 22 June The Face of Friendship – celebrate, appreciate and interact with adults and children rather than refugees; see and hear how they have found friendship, integration and a home in the UK. An interactive event with music, icebreakers, speeches and closing prayers, Ursuline High School, Morland Road, Ilford, 47pm. Info: 0208 270 5822/ lachai. roi@hotmail.co.uk. Process at the Roundhouse, platform for London’s up and coming poets, 12-18-years-old, and established artists. Event produced by the winner of the Roundhouse Poetry Slam 2006!, 5pm, £2 under-18s, £3 over-18s, tickets on the door only, The Roundhouse Studios, Chalk Farm Road, Camden. Info: 07943803678/ louisantwi@hotmail.co.uk Asylum Dialogues – is drawn from real-life conversations and explores everyday encounters between asylum-seekers and British people, challenging preconceptions. Scripted by Sonja Linden, it is a new iceandfire theatre production, 6.30pm, Tricycle Theatre, 269 Kilburn High Road. Info: 07913513567/ www. iceandfire.co.uk/afhr. Every story is a travel story. Featuring videos and short films, it brings together the works of six international artists who tackle issues of geographical and psychological displacement through the stories they narrate, perform and re-enact, 7pm, Candid Arts Trust Projection Room, Torrens Street, Angel. Info: 07726709211/ gaia@gaiatedone. com/ everystory@gmail.com.

Tuesday 24 June Refuge in Art – Students at Ernest Bevin College are participating in theatre, poetry, painting and photography projects for Refugee Week. There will be a performance of a production produced by them in partnership with Talawa Theatre Company, a poetry reading and a work with Somali poet A. Ali, plus art and photography exhibit completed by students in partnership with Htein Lin and Charlotte Bromley Davenport respectively; 4.306.30pm, Ernest Bevin College Main Hall, Beechcroft Road. Info: 020 8672 8582.

Carnival Spirit, display of some of the best local talent, for all ages, with live music, dancing, international food, arts and crafts activities, children’s area, and more, 1-5pm, Community Hall, Thurlow Street. Info: 07729217486/ anna@sdcas.org. uk/ srcf_eltayeb@btconnect.com.

All-week events 19 Princelet Street, rare opportunity to visit this house in Spitalfields showing Britain’s history as a country of immigration. The shabby frontage of the unrestored Huguenot master silk weaver’s home conceals a rare surviving synagogue. The building is open during Refugee Week but otherwise closed to the public. Discover the stories of waves of newcomers – including Huguenots, Irish, Jews, Bengalis and Somalis - who have shaped this area and the nation. Info: 020 7247 5352/ information @19princeletstreet.org.uk/ www.19princeletstreet.org.uk Refugee Week Radio, an online community radio project which provides a platform for refugee individuals and groups, discusses relevant issues and publicises Refugee Week events until 30 June. A mixture of live and downloadable audio will be available from the website: www.refugeeweekradio. net . Contributors and items from anywhere in the country welcomed. Info: 020 8684 2445/ cathy@refugeeweekradio.net/ www.refugeeweekradio.net. The Promised Lands - Freud’s Exiles, exhibition showing how two pseudo-ideologies, nationalism and anti-semitism, affected Freud’s life. In 1938, at the age of 82, Freud was driven by the Nazis from his home in Vienna and became a “displaced person”. He found refuge in England. He had long dreamed of adopting British nationality but that wish remained unfulfilled: did he find peace in London? Every day from mid-day, 20 Maresfield Gardens. Info: 7435 2002. Visions of freedom - For artist Behnam Askari, freedom is an issue of huge relevance. Behnam was born in Iran but cannot return there, Watermans Arts Centre, 40 High Street, Brentford. Info: O2O8 2321010/ pauline. levis@btopenworldcom. Lewisham Refugee Week – celebration of refugees’ contributions to the UK. Info: Lewisham Refugee Network/ 0208 6940323/ info@lrn.org.uk. Refugee Celebration Week -Watermans is celebrating the contribution of refuges in Hounslow and West London through events including taster workshops in art and dance, film screenings, an art exhibition and a showcase of music, drama, film and dance, 5pm, Watermans, 40 High Street, Brentford. Info: 0208 232 1041/ katie@watermans. org.uk.

See www.refugeeweek.org. uk/Events/ for other events in London and in the rest of the country

The New Londoners 21

Fashion secrets of the subconscious It’s personal rather than political

Perisic: “I wanted to create a space for a mixture of artisticmediums alongside my own designs”

● fashion

PICTURES: SEBASTIEN BERNAERT

ragana Perisic came to London from Serbia to find a part for her motorbike. But her liking for biking turned into a passion for fashion, so she stayed, went on a course and is now an independent designer with her own boutique. “I like to think about my clothes as subtle, timeless and comfortable,” she says. “I give the wearer elements of surprise and an added value through quality and attention to the finest point of detail. “I love playing with different parts of one garment, taking them from places where one expects them to belong and placing them on less obvious parts of the body.” Do her designs have a Serbian influence? She’s doubtful: “I’m quite personal”, she says, before admitting, “My background comes through because lots of things come through the subconscious.” Though she has been designing and making clothes in London for nine years, the shop in Cheshire Street is a relatively new venture. Customers sit on scarlet velvet fold-down cinema chairs among jars of cotton spools or relax around the table in front of the shop with a coffee. She enjoyed working from home, but says the boutique provides an opportunity to meet other artists and show their works. “I wanted to create a space where a mixture of artistic mediums by people I admire could be shown alongside my own designs,” Perisic explains. The current exhibition is of illustrations by Rosie Emerson (“Emerson recycles and layers existing imagery in conjunction with the traditional disciplines of drawing and painting”, says the artist’s website).

Recently she has responded to requests from men and has started men’s made-to-measure jackets and coats. She has also branched out with a boutique in Belgrade. The clothes are her own idiosyncratic creations, but the shop is in a conference centre – “You can’t really be creative there so I’m looking for another space.” Perisic enjoys the community of her street and tries to keep the whole business local: the furniture in the shop was made in Brick Lane, she works with

textile agents from east London, she buys fabrics that are produced 10 minutes walk away. She eats locally, too. “My favourite cinema, Rich Mix is around the corner where you can have daily lunch or see films in the evening.” Will she take her art and fashion to a larger venue? “I wouldn’t want to be in Chelsea. My clients say that I should be kept as a secret!” NELA MILIC

When artists twin

Addisalem Bezuwork and Senayt Samuel: two of the twinned artists

TAKE two artists from a country, one who is a refugee or a migrant and one who has stayed at home, get them to start an online conversation – and wait to see what emerges. That’s the fascinating starting point for imagine art after. And the results of the twinning? Funny, dramatic, insightful – even life-changing. “I must confess this dialogue ... has actually changed me. What we have shared over the past six weeks has been important,” Olumuyiwa Osifuye in Lagos told Leo Asemota in London. “For me it has been a matter of life and death. Through it all, it has been life-affirming,” replied Asemota. For Awni Sami in Iraqi Kurdistan and Estabrak in London the start was hesitant: “He’s not Iraqi – well, he is, but he’s from Kurdistan.” Estabrak, a young woman, had few expectations

that an older male would take her seriously (“All the Arab men around me, particularly the Iraqis, just saw me as a young girl.”) And their painting styles were worlds apart. But their dialogue, in the words of the project’s curator, Breda Beban (who herself moved from the Balkans to Britain at very short notice in 1991 for political reasons), was “phenomenally tender and surprisingly honest and open, and I think it changed both artists.” It certainly did in one respect: while participating in the project, Estabrak came out to her family as a lesbian. It is recorded in a filmed interview with her aunt that is part of the project’s artistic output. Denis Hyka, from Albania, said the project had transformed his life, making him visible both personally

and professionally. Not all the eight pairings are so successful. Two Afghans conducted what was essentially two monologues. But even some of the failures were fascinating. Tatjana Strugar in Belgrade and Sinisa Savic in London were on the point of a temporary “life swap”, but at the last moment, for a variety of reasons, it didn’t happen. Yet their sixweek correspondence – online and publicly accessible – was so intense that it made readers late for work. “So much was written overnight that some of us would get up in the morning and read it before we set out,” recalls Beban. After the dialogues, the artists’ work was shown at Tate Britain earlier this year. Now a new set of artists is being sought: the deadline for applications is 1 July. www.imagineartafter.net

22 The New Londoners Hassan and his shrine (far left)

Mariam and her bedside table (below)

Bridging the

cultural gap at King’s Cross A New Londoners reporter previews the city’s newest art space.

oday I got off the tube at King’s Cross and made the short walk to Charlton Street where I entered the distinctive network of alleyways that typify a Palestinian refugee camp. Here, more than 12,000 people, some of the descendants of 750,000 Palestinians forced to flee their homeland in the wake of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, are squeezed into just 1 square kilometre of space, inadequate infrastructure, overcrowding, poverty and unemployment being their lot as they enter their sixth decade in exile. I move around the camp Shatila in Lebanon, scene of the notorious massacre in 1982. All available wall space is plastered with posters, graffiti and street art. One depiction particularly stands out, a Dabke dancer framed by red stage curtains.

I get lost, the web of passageways leading in all directions. At one point I am elevated above the camp with a 360degree panoramic view. Throughout the Middle East, Palestinian refugees live in concrete labyrinths three storeys high, one for each generation born in exile, causing camps to assume the guise of lopsided cities and the supposedly temporary to manifest increasingly as the potentially permanent. I enter the home of Mariam, a 90-year-oldwoman. Propped up in bed, she tells her family’s story, the story of the Nakba (the Catastrophe - the Palestinian displacement). I have unprecedented access to her home and explore the trinkets on her shelves, the rosary beads on her doorknob. I visit Hassan, sitting in his

shrine, contemplating the history that has brought him here, fingering a string of blue prayer beads as he explains his eclectic collection of objects - Muslim and Christian, secular and religious, all illuminated by fairy lights. I meet three generations of the AlAwwal family, Rasheed (42), his mother sitting regally in her armchair

and his son, Abdul. I am reminded of the Nakba, not just as a past event but as an ongoing experience affecting the future. At 16, Abdul is well aware of his status as a refugee. He speaks of his unhappiness in the camp and the lack of recreational facilities. And then the boy who wants to play becomes the man who chose to stay. “During the war of 2006, many families left the camp but I chose to stay with my father and saw rockets light up the sky.” My visits are part of a new interactive touch-screen tour of Shatila soon to be unveiled at Europe’s first Palestinian gallery. The installation is composed of 3,000 photographs by John Nassari, curator of The Palestine Gallery and photographer Guilham Alandry whose expertise in capturing 360-degree images created the panoramas of the camp. Presented on 60-inch screens in a slick, well lit, contemporary space, the interactive is not unlike an arcade game in which players explore cities. An unique resource, it is accompanied by a com-

Rasheed Al-Awwal

prehensive guide to the Israel/Palestine conflict in both English and Arabic. This commentary brings even the walls of the camp to life, translating graffiti and contextualising posters as you run your fingers across the screen. According to Communications and Events Officer, Sami Metwasi, “the gallery will also offer artist and youth clubs, develop an oral history archive of Palestinians in the diaspora, as well as conduct regular festivals and film, music, drama, writing and animation courses. We are not a traditional gallery with traditional divides between installations and users. Rather, we aim to use this modern space to bring people together and to bridge gaps between Palestinians and locals.” The Palestine Gallery opens officially on 2nd October but will run a special selection of events and exhibitions during the summer, which will be open to visitors. ISHTIYAQ SHUKRI

The Palestine Gallery, 21-27 Chalton Street, NW1. Tel: 020 7121 6190

3 The New Londoner The New Londoners 23

From The Philippines to Enfield –

next stop Wimbledon “Shots, technique and natural talent”

‘It’s a rarity - she doesn’t cry’ One of Charisma’s coaches, Alan Jones, assesses the new kid on the block.

● interview

I ﬁrst came across Charisma about a year ago when the French Connection Tennis Academy [at Hazelwood, north London, where Jones works], invited kids from all over the country to have an appraisal from us, and Charisma was only one of two kids – out of about 80 – who we picked out for her obvious natural talent. We ﬁrst started coaching her once a week, but now it’s twice a week, plus an extra lesson with me. Coaching someone this young is unusual for us. We used to start with kids of around eight and nine, but Charisma stood out as someone special.

he state of British tennis is often bemoaned at this time of year, as Wimbledon approaches, but that could be set to change – thanks to budding star Charisma Nuqui and her parents, Chris and Irene. Charisma is only seven, but she is already older than was Chris when he came to the UK from The Philippines in 1979. Irene arrived here when she was 13, also from The Philippines. A keen tennis player and fan, Charisma’s dad introduced her to the game aged two – although he claims his daughter probably first heard a ball being hit when she was still in the womb. Having come out of “temporary retirement” at the age of six, Charisma has been training at a club in Enfield for over a year. The New Londoners talked to the now naturalised parents of Britain’s possible next tennis sensation at a tournament in Surbiton. Q How did you first come to the UK? Chris: I came to the UK in 1979 at the age of six with my four siblings; my parents had already left our birthplace to find work – as The Philippines had very few opportunities – and all my parents wanted was for us to have a chance in life. My father was already working in the UK as a waiter and my mother as a book-keeper. They had finally saved enough money to get us over here to join them. I still remember that day at the airport because I refused to go anywhere near my parents, as I grew up without knowing them. To me they were strangers and I just wanted to return home to The Philippines and be with my friends and my aunts who looked after us while my parents worked in the UK. My parents believed at the time that the education system here was second to none, and they wanted nothing more than for us to finish our education. I completed a degree in software engineering and currently work for a software house. I regard the UK as my home simply because I’ve lived most of my life here, although I still have loads of family in The Philippines; my aunts who looked after me when I was still a baby are the only family I truly miss. Irene: I came to live in the UK when

married, which was in my mid-20s. Irene always came to watch even when she was pregnant with Charisma. As soon as Charisma learnt how to walk, when she was around 16 months, she came with me to the courts to watch. When she was three, the GB girls came to our club offering coaching sessions for young kids, so we thought we’d get Charisma to try it out. You could see from a very young age that she had good hand/eye coordination. However, although she was pretty good at it, she didn’t enjoy the sessions very much so we stopped her from going after a month or two. She didn’t play again until she turned six when, out of the blue, she said to me, ‘Dad I want to play tennis’. I nearly cried because it was something I didn’t want to push her into doing as I have heard many stories about pushy parents getting their children involved in tennis. I didn’t want to be labelled as that type of parent because I know I would never get the best out of her. She has now been playing the game for 14 months and in that time she has had interest from the LTA [Lawn Tennis Association] and has undergone try-outs; she has got as far as the regional level, and just missed out on the national level. She has sparked interest with the UK’s top coaches, including Alan Jones, Jo Durie and James Lenton. She has also impressed other coaches, including the ‘father of modern tennis’, Oscar Wegner, and is currently being

Her application is 110 per cent and she has a great sense of humour. In fact, I’ve not had one bad lesson with her. Even with 11-, 12- and 13-year-olds, it’s difﬁcult for them to apply themselves so well. Another big plus is that she’s feisty and willing and, a rarity in one so young, she doesn’t cry; she can cope with adversity. In terms of the future, it’s still too soon to tell, but so far so good. She should get to play in the under-10 nationals before long. A crucial area in our sport is the obsessive parent, but hers seem to have their priorities right. And as for them being immigrants, it just goes to show that wellrounded parents can integrate into this country as much as anyone.

coached by the coaching director of Modern Tennis International, Andy Magrath. However, most of her coaching is still done by me, but the support we’ve been getting has been absolutely phenomenal. Q How is Charisma’s game shaping up? Chris: At the rate she is going I wouldn’t be surprised to see her in one of the Grand Slams. I watch her play sometimes and it seriously puts a lump in my throat. She is probably one of the best seven-year-olds you’ll see playing in this country. If she continues to show enthusiasm, continues to love playing the game and continues to progress, then I believe she will one day not only be a professional, but a potential champion. As well as continuing to work hard in improving and perfecting her strokes, we are trying hard to get her some exposure so that we can hopefully get some form of funding. At the end of the day, tennis is an expensive sport and any ﬁnancial help would be helpful.

‘She first heard tennis balls being hit while still in the womb’

Charisma: “Phenominal support” I was 13. I was accompanied by my sister, who was 18, and my dad – we all came over together to join my mum, who was already living here. My mum left The Philippines when I was 18 months old to work in the UK as a domestic helper. Then, when I was seven, my dad left home to work in Saudi Arabia. My grandfather raised us. I was very sad to go and live in the UK because I was leaving my friends behind, but I was also very excited because I was going to get to know my mum. My dad had to come home from Saudi ﬁrst so that we could all join my mum together. My mum’s reason for us to live in the UK with her was so we could have a better life. I love living the UK, where I

have now been for 21 years. I thank my mum for having the initiative to petition for us to come over to this wonderful country we call home. Q How did Charisma start playing tennis, and how has she developed since ﬁrst picking up a racket? Chris: Charisma has always been exposed to tennis. Even when she was in her mother’s womb, she could probably already hear the sound of a tennis ball being hit! I was introduced to tennis at the age of 12 by my uncle. Although I had to stop playing during my late teens and early 20s, I was always exposed to it. I started playing again when I got

Irene: Charisma’s idols are the Williams sisters, because they are so positive, they are champions and they are very intelligent girls. These are all the qualities I want for both our kids. Charisma is currently reading Serena and Venus’ book, “Serving from the hip.” Charisma is tiny for her age but as soon as she starts hitting, you forget about the height and get wowed with her shots, technique and natural talent.

Game, set and match to the migrants OF the 21 competitors in the International Women’s Open in Eastbourne this week, 14 live outside their country of origin, including half the top ten seeds. Furthermore, eight of the top 14 women’s seeds at Wimbledon are migrants. And 11 of the 23 men playing at this week’s International Nottingham Open are migrants. All their stories are remarkable, but

those of Anna Ivanovic and Ivan Ljubicic are particularly extraordinary. Anna Ivanovic began her career by badgering her parents to let her play at her local club in Serbia. At the age of five she memorised the club’s telephone number, and her parents gave in. In 2003, aged 15, she turned professional. Even war couldn’t halt her progress. In 1999, when she was 11, NATO began bombing her home city of Bel-

grade. But she persevered, practising in the mornings when it was safe to go out. When there was nowhere obvious to play, she used an abandoned swimming pool. Finally, the family decided to move to Switzerland, which is still her home. On 9 June this year Ivanovic became the world No.1, wresting the title from Russia’s Maria Sharapova and becoming the first Serbian woman to win a Grand Slam.

When war in the Balkans erupted, Ivan Ljubicic’s family were Croats living in the Serbian-dominated part of Bosnia. Ljubicic remembers his parents’ feelings and explains: “Day after day they knew of many people who simply disappeared. It was really dangerous.” The family fled when he was 13, and his career started when an Italian club offered to help young Croat refugees.

“I think that’s why countries like Italy struggle to produce top players. The kids have everything. They don’t want to leave their families to go and become professional tennis players.” Is the same true of British tennis? “It could be,” he smiles diplomatically. Source: Neven Crvenkovic, UNHCR Zagreb; Paul Newman, The Independent

Sport

‘I’m Sudanese S and British’ ● Q+A

udan-born Luol Deng is a British professional basketball star who currently plays for the Chicago Bulls in the US. He has not only set a series of goal-scoring records, but has won awards for sportsmanship and best sports role model and is an active supporter of the UN refugee agency’s campaign to open up sports and education opportunities for millions of young refugees around the world.

Martin Losa at The Hub, a community centre in Canning Town, East London PICTURE: SEBASTIEN BERNAERT

The other foreign players WITH all eyes this summer on Euro 2008 in Austria and Switzerland, few football fans in London are aware that the next crop of global stars may be training right under their noses – in less glamorous places such as Leytonstone and Canning Town. One such player is Martin Losa, who came to the UK in 2001 as a 14-year-old asylumseeker from Kenya. While the mainstream media continues to fawn over the glamour clubs doing multi-million pound deals in the Premiership transfer market, Losa is training for another season in one of London’s minor leagues – but with hopes of making the big time some time soon. Losa got his first taste of non-league football in London in 2005-06 with AGBL AFC (the Association of Guinea-Bissau in London, Amateur Football Club). The North London League team finished the season in a respectable mid-table position – but went bankrupt shortly afterwards. The early setback didn’t thwart the young Kenyan’s ambitions, because he was spotted by a scout and was invited him to play for the London Tigers in the Central London League in the 2006-07 season. The team finished in the top ten. Next season he played for London United Academy, which finished sixth in the Middlesex League Division One (Central and East). Now Losa has set his sights even higher – with another possible move abroad. Spurred on by fellow refugee friends – one of whom now plays in the US for the LA Galaxy Academy (the feeder team for David Beckham’s latest foray abroad) – he is hoping to play London United’s pre-season in Saudi Arabia. In the Middle East he reckons his chances of being spotted by another scout would increase. But for now he is just grateful that the trip is even on the cards. A similar preseason jaunt to foreign climes – to Sweden and Denmark for the London Tigers last year – was thwarted when the Home Office refused to issue him with travel documents. Since then, after a six-year wait, the government has finally granted him refugee status, and he can travel to and from the UK with relative ease. One of his friends, James (not his real name), who sometimes plays with Martin in the local park – also plays for the prestigious Arsenal Academy. James, whose parents are from Uganda, is only 13 and met Losa at a sex education class at The Hub, a community centre for young people in Canning Town. Initially discouraged from joining his mates in kickabouts because he thought he wasn’t any good, James started playing football at the age of 12 at Chase Lane School, Chingford. At Arsenal, he says,“we play other Academies like Chelsea and Charlton, and this pre-season we played in Spain.” His favourite team – despite being a young Gunner – is Manchester United, for whom he one day dreams of playing. – JAMES SMITH

You were born in Sudan but have lived in Egypt, England, and the United States. You also represent Great Britain. What nationality do you feel you are? I consider myself to be a Sudanese but I also consider myself to be British as well. I went to school here, made good friends at school as well as on the basketball court in Brixton. England has been good to me and my family. I love it - it’s a big part of me. My family house is there and I’m back there every summer. Why did your family move from Sudan to Egypt and then England, and how has this shaped you as a person? Because of events taking place at the time in Sudan, my family had to ﬂee to Egypt in order to protect our lives. Egypt is next door to Sudan, it was the easiest escape for my family. My father then applied for political asylum in England and we joined him in 1995. I have learned something from every country that I have been to. These countries have made the person I am. It’s shaped me to respect different cultures. Who was your biggest inspiration growing up? My father and my brothers. My father for his work ethic and determination and always doing the best for us no matter what is going on. What has been your greatest achievement so far? I have had great achievements so far, but being able to help people who need help is deﬁnitely the best reward. Who is your sporting hero? I have to say my brothers. What frightens you? Failure. Who is the best player you have ever played with? There are a lot of great players that I had a chance to play with. It’s hard to name one. Luol Deng: “Giving help is the best reward”

If you could choose to be a star in another sport, what would it be? Football [soccer]

PICTURE: UNHCR

Chicago or London? Tough one. A little bit of both. London, of course (init). Chelsea FC or Arsenal? Arsenal.