|
|
Zimbabwe: Failed Asylum Seekers With Criminal Records Face Local Prison
 |
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
The Zimbabwe Guardian (London)
27 March 2008
Posted to the web 27 March 2008
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has said that an unspecified number of criminals claiming to be Zimbabwean asylum seekers in Britain will be arrested and imprisoned when they are deported from that country.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Chirumanzu recenty, President Mugabe said among those who had sought refuge in Britain were criminals fleeing from the law.
He emphasized if the British government deports these criminals to Zimbabwe, they will be arrested at the airport and detained. Some of the deportees will be asked to pay fines while others will be imprisoned. His statement comes in the wake of letters sent out by the Home Office informing failed Zimbabwean asylum seekers that because their applications for political asylum had failed and they had exhausted their rights of appeal, they had no other basis of stay in Britain and should now make plans to return home.
"Your claim for asylum has been refused," the letters say. "I am now writing to make sure that you know that the Border and Immigration Agency is expecting shortly to be able to enforce returns to Zimbabwe. The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal has now found that there is no general risk on return for failed asylum-seekers." Meanwhile, Donna Covey, chief executive of the Refugee Council, has said it is unacceptable that the British government should be considering forcing asylum seekers to return to Zimbabwe.
UK ministers are preparing to expel hundreds of failed asylum-seekers back to Zimbabwe, seriously undermining Gordon Brown's publicly declared tough stance on Zimbabwe.
Zimbabweans have previously enjoyed protection in the UK under a moratorium on deportations.
The first phase of the new asylum removal drive will target 500 failed asylum-seekers from Zimbabwe living in the north-west of England. In all, more than 1,000 people are likely to be affected in the near future, out of some 7,000 Zimbabwean asylum-seekers in the UK.
In his inagural speech as British PM Gordon Brown promised asylum seekers safe haven in the UK. "The message should go out to anyone facing persecution anywhere from Burma to Zimbabwe: human rights are universal and no injustice can last for ever," he said.
Gordon Brown has been criticised for double standards with regards to immigration policy and one newspaper labelled Brown's policy as "Britain's refugee shame."
President Mugabe, however, made a reassurance that not everyone being deported from the UK faces imprisonment. "Britain is now full of those who fled from here claiming that they were at risk of being arrested for political reasons. We do not want to arrest any of those except those who fled crimes, and those who fled crimes are not the only ones who went to Britain, no," he said.
|
"There are so many of them that you cannot count them on your fingers, a few, those are the ones who have big cases that they fled from here. Those one, their cases will never rot. There in Britain, if they do not want to come back to admit that 'Yes, I stole; I did wrong,' if you are to pay a fine, then you pay a fine, if the penalty means you go to prison, then you go to prison because you stole people's money."
Meanwhile, President Mugabe has warned the MDC that his government will not hesitate to use force if they plan to carry out Kenyan-style violence after the elections. Mugabe was responding to threats by MDC MP for St Mary's Job Sikhala who threatened Kenya-style disturbances if Zanu PF wins.
Police have since declared zero tolerance for politically motivated violence.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 The Zimbabwe Guardian. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
