Ali sits in a small, run-down, unheated house in one of London’s poorer suburbs, hoping the British government will save his life but fearing it will issue what he considers a death sentence.
Ali, who is afraid to give his full name, says he was a neighborhood executive in Algiers of the Islamic Salvation Front, which has been involved in a five-year war with Algeria’s military government. He says he was arrested, tortured and threatened with death twice before he fled in 1993 and came to Britain.
Home Office officials rejected Ali’s request for political asylum on grounds that they do not believe his story.
Ali, 34, appealed the ruling and said there is no doubt that he will be killed if he is sent home. Ryad Khassioui, a 20-year-old Algerian, was shot dead by police in Algiers shortly after he was was sent home in 1994 because his application for asylum was rejected.
Along with most other European countries, Britain is being accused by human rights groups and refugee organizations of abandoning a tradition of hospitality to those facing persecution or threats to their lives in their own countries. Across the continent, legal and administrative walls are being built against immigrants and asylum seekers.
Some critics of government policy claim Prime Minister John Major’s Conservative government, facing an election in the next 17 months, is “playing the race card” by getting tough on immigrants.
Ali shares that view.
“I don’t trust this government,” he said. “They put our lives at risk only to win an election.”
But Britain’s position is little different from that of other European governments. All are harmonizing their policy on immigration and asylum so that no one country can be singled out as a haven.
Richard Dunstan of Amnesty International said European ministers decided on a tough new approach in secret meetings, which prevented input from the European Parliament, human rights groups and refugee organizations.
The new approach comes against a background of right-wing, anti-immigrant parties piling on political pressure in France and Austria, and neo-Nazis staging violent attacks on immigrants in Germany. Politically, the cause of asylum seekers is not popular: all European countries face stubbornly high levels of unemployment and all are seeking ways to cut crippling social welfare costs.
Germany is the main destination for people fleeing from the former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe. In 1993, Germany took in 471,000 people, while Italy took in 194,000. Britain receives just 40,000 refugees a year, and for several consecutive years it has accepted on average just 4 percent of asylum applications, compared with about 35 percent before 1993.
But 16 percent of British applicants get “exceptional leave to stay,” usually for three years. This status carries fewer rights than those granted asylum.
Refugee organizations concede that many so-called refugees are economic migrants looking for a better life rather than fleeing persecution. But they say that government measures blur this distinction and make it difficult for legitimate asylum seekers to make their case.
In Britain, parliament is debating an Immigration and Asylum Bill that is virtually certain to be adopted by early summer without major change.
If it passes, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, among others, has expressed concern that Britain will be violating its obligations under international conventions.
Critics of Major’s government say Britain is resorting to subterfuge, which distorts the true situation of asylum seekers.
Just before Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni writer and political leader, was executed in Nigeria last November, the Home Office said there was no persecution of the Ogonis, a tribe living in eastern Nigeria.
Saro-Wiwa, and others executed along with him, were then in prison. At the time, Nigerian authorities were conducting a systematic campaign of harassment against the Ogonis, who claimed their land was being despoiled by oil exploration and they were not given an adequate share of oil revenues.
Refugee organizations say that if Saro-Wiwa had applied for asylum under Britain’s present rules, he probably would have been turned down. In 1994, only one of 4,000 Nigerian asylum applicants was accepted.
Home Secretary Michael Howard takes issue with the notion that Britain is turning its back on its international obligations to shelter political refugees.
“We will continue our traditional assistance to those in genuine fear of persecution,” Howard said. “But we need to take action to stem the flow of undeserving asylum seekers.”
Claude Moraes of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants said: “The stunning thing is that Britain and France take very low numbers of immigrants. There is no flood of people, and the costs are relatively small. The government has blown this out of proportion.”
The British bill will put a wide range of people on a “fast track” appeals procedure and will bar them from taking appeals beyond the Home Office to the courts.
Amnesty International’s Dunstan says it is “inevitable the Home Office will make errors in fact or judgment” in deciding cases, and the fast-track procedure will not give applicants adequate time to prepare appeals.
The bill also empowers the home secretary to draw up a “white list” of countries that are deemed to present no risk to refugees being sent back. Refugee groups say the list already drawn up includes India and Pakistan, both countries with documented records of human rights abuses, including torture of prisoners in Pakistan.
The bill further provides that refugees coming to Britain from “safe” third countries have no right to have their cases examined on their merits but must be returned to those countries. But some nations are unwilling to take back such refugees, with the result they are bounced back and forth between countries.
When they arrive, most refugees don’t ask immediately for asylum because they fear being turned back, especially if they had to flee with false documents, refugee groups say.
Ali is one of about 20,000 Algerians who have sought asylum in Britain since his country was plunged into virtual warfare in 1991. Only 30 have been granted asylum, according to Dr. Mohammed Sekkoum, chairman of the Algerian Refugee Council. “The government doesn’t regard us as human beings now,” he said.
While many Algerian refugees are, like Ali, members of the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front, others are former Algerian police officers who say they fled to avoid being murdered by the Front.
Under new guidelines coming into effect throughout Europe, the former police officers would appear to stand little chance of gaining asylum. Governments are interpreting international law to mean they only need to give asylum to people facing persecution or death threats from governments, not those threatened by political organizations.
Ali said he fled Algeria with a forged French identity card after he had twice been arrested and tortured. Since he left, he said, police killed his brother and brother-in-law.
Ali spent three days in France but, convinced that French security services cooperate with the Algerian government, felt unsafe and went to Britain. Since citizens of European Union countries are not questioned by immigration authorities at ports and airports, he got in easily.
Three days later, he said, he destroyed his forged French identity card, went to the Home Office and explained his circumstances. Officials agreed to consider his request for asylum.
In June 1995, the Home Office advised Ali his application had been refused. Officials told him they were not satisfied that he was a member of the Salvation Front’s neighborhood executive, and said the fact his wife got a passport to join him in 1994 showed he was not in danger.
“They don’t understand how it works in a Third World country,” Ali said. “If you know someone, you can get a passport.”
Ali appealed the Home Office decision, but his appeal has not yet been heard.
