Broadcast October 14 2008
Yesterday two men completed a two-week vigil at Westminster. They are both from Manchester, both Christians, and both called Ben. They’ve been sleeping in tents on Parliament Square and surviving on Red Cross emergency parcels. And why ? To draw attention to the government’s policy of making asylum seekers destitute two weeks after their claim been rejected. By refusing to allow asylum seekers to work, and with no benefits being given their situation is indeed bleak. There’s a danger here in using destitution to starve people into returning to an unsafe home country.
You may wonder what’s the big deal if they are “failed” asylum seekers? Well, its not easy to prove an asylum claim, and many of us who actually know and work with people in this situation are concerned that the decisions being made on their cases are not always accurate, and that genuine asylum seekers are being branded as bogus.
There is a woman I know well called Anna. Anna is an asylum seeker from an African country. She was badly tortured there. But she has been refused asylum in the UK, been branded a “failed” asylum seeker and has been made destitute. Now Anna is a devout Christian and lives by faith from day to day – I must admit I am humbled by her faith, and the fact that she is always remarkably grateful just to be alive despite her terrible (and apparently hopeless) situation.
At a time when we are besieged with news of financial uncertainty here’s a story to put many of our own woes into perspective.
Life is about priorities, and all Governments have many responsibilities to juggle.
The Bible says that what matters more than anything else is how a country treats the poorest and weakest amongst them.
Despite the uncertainty of the credit crunch, we remain one of the richest nations on earth. Genuine asylum seekers have lived through personal horrors most of us will never see. They deserve better treatment - and an inhumane policy towards any group of people in the end demeans us all.