As an asylum seeker from Iran, a journalist in exile from a dictatorship, I will always live in fear of authoritarian governments. Repression, callous indifference, casual cruelty – such regimes turn suffering into a project. It’s why I fled my home country. It’s why I risked my life to seek asylum in the United Kingdom.
The Rwanda policy, and the obvious malice of those driving it forward, is proof this disease has infected the UK as well. In that sense my flight was a failure. I didn’t escape authoritarianism when I left Iran.
I was in a hotel room in Sheffield when Boris Johnson announced his plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda in early 2022. I was still in the process of being recognised as a refugee, still vulnerable to rejection and deportation. Even though no flights were scheduled and no letters had been sent, I was so scared they would arrest me that I packed my things and slept in the park. The next night I stayed with a friend in another city.
It took a week to build up the courage to return to the hotel where the Home Office was housing me. The police weren’t outside my door, but I knew they could have been. Life carried on, a little more fearful than before.
Distress as policy, indifference as practice
Even though I now have refugee status, my fear returned at the end of April when the government finally started rounding people up to deport to Rwanda. Not just for myself, but also in empathy with those now being targeted. I know what those liable to deportation endure.
For people seeking asylum and even those already recognised as refugees, Britain does not feel like a safe country anymore
When you constantly experience insecurity, your psyche becomes extremely sensitive to it. You react to the smallest threats. Normal life and trust are impossible in a society that delegitimises you.
For people seeking asylum and even those already recognised as refugees, Britain does not feel like a safe country anymore. It isn’t a safe country anymore, not as long as government officials feel comfortable saying that putting us onto a plane to Rwanda is a “dream” and an “obsession”, as former home secretary Suella Braverman did.
It's the same thing all over again: repression, indifference, cruelty. Suffering as a project.
Those outside government, by and large, just look the other way. Every year there are tragedies in the English Channel, but people are not out in force protesting the situation. Some dedicated people are trying to make a difference. British civil society organisations and student groups do what they can, and sometimes dozens of people come out in force to protect their neighbours from being taken away in immigration raids. Some even come to Dunkirk and Calais to welcome displaced people and work against the inhumane policies of their government. To show that humanity is not dead yet.
Their actions are admirable, and appreciated. But the general public, including many activists and intellectuals, have become numb.
Refugees for refugee rights
We are a part of this society. A part that imagined and fought for life, freedom, equality and democracy in our own countries. Now we have to fight for it here too. It seems that we are never going to experience the prosaic peace of a normal life.
The assertion of authoritarian power requires people who cannot defend themselves. It requires weakened, dehumanised, scapegoated and exhausted people who can be punished for existing. Refugees know this because many of them have been beaten with this stick before. They know its sting when they feel it.
What can we do, then? We must resist with strength and without worry for the right to life. Wherever there is oppression and intimidation, there must be resistance. It’s time for the UK government to learn this lesson.
For my community, we were born and raised within the on-going struggle for Kurdistan. For decades we have fought for our rights: for freedom, equality and autonomy from authoritarian governments. We continue to do so. We will never submit to the racism and campaign of intimidation coming out of this Conservative government.
The Rwanda plan can only be stopped by a collective refusal to participate in it. By a collective decision to respect human rights even when the government has decided to abandon them. Our judiciary, our civil service, our communities, our neighbours, and yes: our asylum seekers. We must all disobey.
We support you. In solidarity, we will win.
