British guards 'assault and racially abuse' deportees

The front cover of today's Independent carries a shocking story about security guards racially abusing and physically attacking failed asylum-seekers as they are being transported back to their own country.

One of the cases of alleged abuse is that of Armand Tchuibeu, a Cameroon national who claimed asylum in the United Kingdom in February 2000. His application was refused last year. He was then arrested and prepared for removal.

On 29 January 2007 he was collected from Tinsley House removal centre in East Sussex by four escort officers who drove him to Heathrow to catch a 9pm flight to Cameroon, as pictured on the front page from CCTV footage inside the van.

He claims handcuffs were applied to his right arm. Mr Tchuibeu says he told the guards that there was no need to handcuff him as he had no intention of obstructing his removal. But he alleges that officers started to manhandle him and, while his arms were held, one of the officers punched him in his ribs and on his neck and told him words to the effect "You will go to your fucking country today, we will fucking show you what illegal people deserve in our country". Another officer is alleged to have held his head down so they could apply a leg strap.

Eventually, Mr Tchuibeu convinced the escort officers he had been injured and the deportation was aborted. Mr Tchuibeu was taken to the Hillingdon Hospital where he was examined and treated. His knee was placed in a cylinder cast which he wore for four weeks.

Mr Tchuibeu, who is being represented by the London solicitors Birnberg Peirce, is now bringing a civil claim for assault against the security company.

Doctors, lawyers, immigration centre visitors and campaign groups have compiled a list of over 200 cases where they say abuse has taken place.

They say some of the cases they are investigating are worse than the torture and abuse the refugee suffered before making their asylum claim in this country.

This is what happens when immigration is treated as a political football. Certain people come to regard immigrants - I don't think they even understand the difference between immigrant and asylum seeker - as lesser beings who can be abused for the crime of attempting to better themselves by fleeing the poverty and abuse of their own country and seeking another life elsewhere.

None of us had anything to do with where we were born. It's a lottery in which some of us struck it very lucky. However, I do often wonder whether the very people who are most vocal in their condemnation of immigrants would have sought a better life for themselves and their children had they been born in Zimbabwe or Darfur.

Leaving that thought aside, I really hope that the thugs who are abusing these vulnerable people face charges. After all, the only crime these people have committed is coming here to find work, usually the kind of work that most Brits would consider beneath themselves.

But the stories of their treatment at the hands of what can only be described as thugs is simply shocking:

Milton Apollo Okello, 25, who was tortured by the Ugandan security services, claims that, after his asylum claim was rejected, he was frogmarched on to a plane and tied to his seat by British guards.

But when word came through that he had won an eleventh-hour reprieve, Mr Okello claims he was taken to a van and beaten and racially abused. Mr Okello said: "The driver opened the sliding door and I was pushed into the middle of the seat. Two of the officers got on one side of me and the others came in on the other side. Officer A then punched me hard in the face and he said "These black monkeys don't want to go back to their country ..."

A 24-year-old man who escaped to Britain after being imprisoned and tortured in the Republic of Congo claims that when he refused to sign a document presented to him by his escorts, three of them forced both hands backwards. One of the escorts is said to have told him: "This is the key to going home."

A doctor who later conducted an examination of Mr A, wrote: "The fourth metacarpal of the left hand has undoubtedly suffered a fracture. This is highly consistent with excessive use of force during or after a failed attempt to remove him from the UK."

Dr Frank Arnold, a volunteer doctor with the Medical Justice Network, who has examined more than 100 detained asylum-seekers, says many of the injuries suffered during removal are not taken seriously enough by the British immigration authorities.

He said: "Some of these injuries have been so bad that police officers who saw them appear to have been genuinely shocked.

This is what happens when you remove the human face from immigration and asylum. When you treat some people as if they are less than human.

It's a disgrace. And it's a disgrace that falls on all of us.

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Tags: immigration, asylum seekers, abuse, United Kingdom