|
“Refugee”
defines as any person who is unable or
unwilling to return to his/her home country
because of persecution of a well-founded
fear of persecution on account of race,
religion, nationality, and membership in a
particular social group, or political
opinion.
A
case in point is a mother of seven kids in
Britain.
1)
She is a single mother trying to
raise seven kids;
2)
She belongs to the Reer Hamar
Community, which has almost ceased to exist;
3)
Her younger sister (a member of the
same clan) was granted refugee status;
4)
The immigration judge (s) and
officials from the Home Office (Britain’s
Interior Ministry) were fully aware that the
security situation in Southern Somalia has
deteriorated since 1991;
5)
The weaker clans in the minority
groups are now worse off;
6)
That her father was mercilessly
killed in the continuing clan conflicts;
7)
That her mother’s whereabouts is
still unknown;
8)
That a violent armed gangs loyal to a
dozens of warlords and freelancers rule
freely in almost 95% of Southern Somalia,
including the capital;
9)
That even the newly elected
government and parliament in exile in
neighbouring Kenya are unable to relocate to
the country they were elected to rule,
citing insecurity;
10)
Because of their light skins, unwary
Reer Hamars, is being used by the Somali
warlords as “Arab terrorists” belonging
to the Al-Qaeda network in order to
stimulate money from US intelligent agents.
Many of these innocent people are
languishing in US detention centers without
access to legal council; As recently as 2004
a number of Reer Hamars and Bravans have
been apprehended and handed over to CIA
agents who kidnapped them out of the
country, while the warlords have been
laughing all the way to their bank accounts
abroad.
This single mother of
seven has failed four times to win an appeal
to stay in Britain on compassionate grounds.
On two occasions officials from the Home
Office failed to appear at the court
hearing. On another occasion she was accused
of failing to appear before the judge,
although she had traveled a long distance by
bus to appear before the immigration judge.
To prove, she had retained her bus ticket,
showing the exact date and time of her
journey to the court house. Again, she
failed refugee claimant and has been ordered
expelled.
A huge number of
Somali refugees arrived in Britain to seek
asylum in the immediate aftermath of the
civil war in their own country. These
included war criminals and riff-raffs that
should have been deported or taken to war
crimes tribunals, but are still there
smiling somewhere. Needless to say there was
huge outcry from the Conservative Party and
a section of the British public, and the
media. As a result the Immigration
Department was ordered to initiate
deportation procedure. They did. They
arrested bona fide refugees who they
considered as soft target. These included
couples with children, single mothers who
lost their husbands in the civil war, the
elderly and members of the minority clans,
and the consequence of removing genuine
refugees, were in general, ill-conceived and
in many cases, potentially cruel.
They are being pushed
in two different directions—between the
Home Office (Britain’s Interior Ministry)
and immigration judges and finally snapped.
No wonder many who lost their appeals often
hear voices and are unstable, and unhinged.
Back to the single
mother with the seven kids: In our view the
Home Office officials who repeatedly failed
to appear at the hearing have created a
major handicap in handling the case.
Evidently, this was a derelict of duty and
contempt of court, and for breaching court
order, and that appropriate action should
have been taken against them.
We are of the opinion
that this mother and her children should be
allowed to remain in Britain on
compassionate ground, as the risk to deport
her to war-torn Somalia is very grave. As a
member of the oppressed ethnic minority
clans she and her children would face
irreparable harm if they were returned to
lawless Somalia, a view shared by Amnesty
International and other human rights groups.
THE
CASE AGAINST OMAR JAMAL
Another case in point is Omar
Jamal in Minneapolis (in the US State of
Minnesota). Omar’s Advocacy Center was
instrumental in helping Somali refugees
realize that there’s justice and fairness
for everyone in the United States, and he
embarked upon rectifying injustice and
hostilities against the newcomers, not only
in the State of Minnesota but the rest of
the United States as well.
Omar catapulted to
fame among his people when he came to the
assistance of illiterate helpless refugees
until he himself became a victim of
immigration officials, who accused him of
lying at his own immigration hearing decades
ago, at a time when he and his fellow
country were traumatized and shell shocked
following the brutal civil war in their own
country, that still continues with no end in
sight. The immigration honchos called him a
person of interest, whatever that means and
initiated deportation order against him.
Only heartless people
would send the refugees back to that
inferno, where street gangs make their own
rules. Even members of the new Somali
cabinet-in-exile expressed fears of their
country’s safety unless peace keepers are
sent there to protect them and disarm the
more than 60,000 militia gunmen loyal to the
warlords and the freelancers.
The significant
qualities of this young man cannot be
underestimated. Like the great Civil Rights
leader of the 1960s, Martin Luther King Jr.
Omar Jamal for a very long time was able to
expound, expose and extricate Immigration
authorities many wrongs. And like Martin
Luther King Jr. his tactics of protest and
advocacy involved non-violent and passive
resistance to injustice committed against
his countrymen.
U.S. Department of
Homeland Security was quoted by The Star
Tribune newspaper as saying that 3,568
Somalis nationwide have been ruled
deportable. Most are on parole, but Keyse
Jama, a young Somali, is still behind bars
after five years of legal battle. On
Wednesday the US Supreme Court decided 5-4
that the US government can deliver deportees
into a country without a government
accepting them at the other end!
The most infuriating
part is that immigration officials and
courts turn down appeals without interviews.
These measures are designed to shield tears
and destructions their decisions would
cause, even in cases where children are
involved.
Now, the tough
question that needs to be asked is: who is
going to protect the refugees in a country
where the new local industry is kidnapping
for ransom, and when an elected
government-in-exile is requesting
peacekeeping forces to protect them from
predators in their own country—a country
they were supposed to rule?
Commentary
by
M.M. Afrah©2005
Afrah95@hotmail.com
Mr.
Afrah is an outspoken Author/Journalist and
a member of the Canadian Journalists for
Free Expression (CJFE) and the New
York-based Committee to Protect Journalists
(CPJ). He contributes hard-hitting articles
to Canadian and international newspapers and
magazines on the Somalia situation
"through the eyes of a man who covered
the country for more than two decades".
|
COMMENTARY BY M.M. AFRAH
