Episode 18 - Nanou, Ruth & Adilia
What is life like as an Asylum Seeker? Why does Britain have an inhumane Asylum system? Why will Britain not expend all the patience and care and thought she possesses to help people in fear for their lives? The dynamics of prejudice, dehumanisation and maltreatment are hardly without historical precedent, they can be traced back to centuries of the slave trade, colonialism and Imperialism authored on this island. So it’s not so much that any of this is new, it is the realisation that the deliberate and calculated nature of the mistreatment serves an incendiary electoral purpose. Beneath the ‘taking back control’ slogans and toughening up the border regime is an inconvenient historical truth. When Britain led the drafting of the 1951 Refugee Convention in the aftermath of the horrors of the second world war, they didn’t envisage that those who’d be arriving on its shores to seek protection would come from outside Europe, hence its initial temporal and geographical restriction, this changed when African, Asian and some Middle Eastern countries signed the 1967 protocol. What Governments of every colour have demonstrated through hostile Immigration rules is their uncomfortable with this reality, but rather than be grounded in truth, they’ve over two decades created a hostile and inhumane Asylum system. So what is one confronted with when they arrive on Britains shores to claim Asylum? We speak to three young women whose lived experience is harrowing. The system is broken and no one should have to endure the hostility and indignity.