Hassanat Aliyu and her daughters deported the day after International
Women’s Day and the night before Mother’s Day
‘My children do not know where they are, we can’t stay in Nigeria. Why
has the British government treated us like this?’ Hassanat speaking from Nigeria.
Hassanat Aliyu (Home Office Reference Number: A1432864/5) and her
daughters Teniola, Adunola and Shaniola were yet more victims of Britain’s racist
immigration laws, uprooted from their community and deported on Saturday 9th
March, 10.20pm to Nigeria, Lagos, which will undoubtedly cause stress and psychological damage to the family members. Asylum seekers are criminalised, assumed to be
liars and held with racist contempt for daring to seek safety and refuge in Britain, often fleeing from countries which have
been exploited and plundered by Britain,
Nigeria
being no exception. Two million barrels of oil a day are now extracted in the
Niger Delta but the majority of Nigerians still live in extreme levels of
poverty. British company Shell has a major oil contract in Nigeria and has
spent £242m in four years to maintain a 1200-strong private militia to protect
its parasitic operations. The British government in turn protects this by
denying any human rights violations in Nigeria.
The young family had made a life for themselves in Britain.
Hassanat fled Nigeria
in 2006, because her eldest daughter Teniola, who was barely one year old at
the time, was threatened with Female Genital Cutting (FGC). They were both
trafficked to Britain and
lived in London for four years, later claiming
asylum and moving to Byker where the two eldest sisters attended Byker Primary
School. Teniola has spent her formative years in Britain and
Adunola, five, and Shaniola, three years old, were both born here.
The government claims to
support victims of trafficking and girls at risk of FGC yet they have directly
contradicted this with their actions; they have knowingly put Hassanat and her
daughters in danger. The UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees)
and other agencies of the United Nations have stated that refugee and asylum
status should be granted to women and girls fleeing their country to escape
genital cutting. The British government committed to opt into the EU’s
directive on human trafficking in July 2011. The directive is focused on
'prevention and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its
victims'. The government have promised to tackle human trafficking and their
commitment to better protect the victims, realising that in many instances
those who are exploited never fully recover from their traumatic experience.
UKBA refer to the prison as pre-departure accommodation, however if you do not have the freedom to leave then it is a prison, plain and simple. Nick Clegg announced in 2010 that child detention would be ended by May 2011, promising that the government would end the ‘shameful practice that last year alone saw more than 1,000 children – 1,000 innocent children – imprisoned. Children literally taken from their homes, without warning, and placed behind bars…That practice, the practice we inherited, ends here.’ Last year 226 children were put into detention centres – the barbaric, racist practice continues.
After almost three days being held in a prison that Hassanat’s family
should not have had to endure a single second in, they were bundled into a van
early on the morning of Saturday 9th March, Hassanat’s mobile phone
taken off her so TCAR, her friends and the press could not find out what was
happening to them, and driven 50 miles to Heathrow Airport with nine ‘escorts’
aka plain clothed immigration police, reportedly from private company Reliance,
seven of them men and only two women. Two of them told her they were actually
former police officers. They arrived at 2pm, were held in a small room for
seven hours until 9pm, her children were very distressed and crying, not
knowing what was happening, taken in another van to the airport terminal and bundled
onto a commercial Virgin Atlantic flight, the day after IWD and when, loyal to
the British state, Sir Richard Branson owner of Virgin tweeted his promises to
help ‘end violence against women’. Hassanat was sat at the back of the plane in
the middle aisle surrounded by immigration police. Two of the nine sat behind
her, one on either side of her, two on the same row as her on the right-hand
side aisle, and two on the same row as her on the left-hand side aisle. Her own
children were not allowed to sit next to her to be comforted, instead separated
by this police cordon. Hassanat shouted to try and let the passengers know they
were being taken against their will and was told by the officers that if she
shouted again they were going to handcuff her and put something over her mouth.
She wanted to speak to her kids and get them to scream and shout but she was
afraid of what the immigration police would do. After the nearly 8 hour, 3,110
mile flight they arrived in Lagos
at 6am, Sunday 10th March, Mother’s Day. The squadron of British officers
wiped their hands and dumped the family with immigration officers in Nigeria and a
measly £300 – no place to stay, no job, no school, no support, no connection to
any communities.
We have put Hassanat in touch with women’s human rights charities in Lagos and will stay in
contact with her.
Tyneside Community Action Against Racism would like to thank everyone
who has been involved in this public, political campaign to stop their
deportation. This is a very sad time for us all. We must remember that with one
person being deported from Britain
every eight minutes, it is the racist system as whole we need to organise
against and link this struggle up with all anti-deportation campaigns to help
build a strong movement against racism. We have learned a lot of lessons that
we will use to continue this fight, not just for Hassanat, Teniola, Adunola and
Shaniola but for and with all the people the British state oppresses and
exploits in this country and around the world.
Together, together, together we are stronger!
