Asylum seekers have described the life-threatening situations they fled from, terrifying journeys herded thorough Europe by violent smugglers – and their shock when they learned they faced being sent to Rwanda under UK government plans.
‘They have guns and force and you have nothing’
Hasan, 22, from West Darfur in Sudan, fled his country when he was seriously injured by Janjaweed militia. He reached Libya and was held in a prison, where he was beaten and burned with bits of hot plastic. His captors demanded his family’s phone numbers so they could ask for money from them. But he had no phone numbers and nobody to call. He was sold on to a potato farm. He escaped and found work in an area outside Tripoli, where many other Sudanese refugees gathered.
“Often you are picked up on the street and taken to work – it can be anything, building, cleaning, carrying things,” he said. “Most of the time you don’t get paid and there is nothing you can do. They have guns and force and you have nothing. You can only do the work and hope they will give you something. I lived like this for nine months.”
He managed to save enough money to board an overcrowded boat to Malta and travelled on to Italy and then France. “In Calais it was cold, we were hungry and scared,” he said.
He saw some people on a beach in Calais carrying a small boat down to the shore and boarded it. There were 20 on the boat, he had no lifejacket and he could not swim. After a seven-hour journey, he and the others on the boat reached the UK.
When the Home Office processed him he was horrified to find he was being sent to Rwanda. “Believe me, if I thought Rwanda was a safe option I would have gone there. And if I thought I would be safe in Sudan I would go back there in an instant,” he said.
‘I hoped Rwanda was a city near Liverpool’
Abas, a 20-year-old Kurdish Iraqi man, said he lived in a border area between Iraq and Iran and fell foul of authorities. “I knew Iran would kill me if they caught me,” he said. His family raised money to pay smugglers to transport him to a safe country.
“I knew nothing about the UK government’s plans to send people to Rwanda before I arrived here,” he said. “The smugglers took our phones off us so nobody can track what they’re doing with phone signals,” he said. “I didn’t even know if it was night or day and I didn’t see any news on my phone. We were locked into different places. The smugglers spoke different languages and there were many different nationalities on the dinghy I crossed the Channel in – Somali, Albanian, Kurdish – it was very international.
“After I arrived in the UK I was told I was going to be sent to Rwanda. I didn’t mind because I thought Rwanda was a city in the UK. I hoped it was a city near Liverpool because I support Liverpool FC and thought I might get a chance to see my hero Mohamed Salah.
“When I found Rwanda is a country in Africa and that the Home Office was going to send me there it made me crazy. I nearly had a heart attack. All day and all night I haven’t been able to sleep. Time is ticking. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I thought I was coming to freedom but I’m in prison. This will be the end of my life. It’s not my fault that I’m Kurdish but I feel I’m being punished because of who I am.”
‘Like Ukrainians I’m seeking a safe place’
Ahmed, 28, from Iraq, left his country in the middle of March after a dispute with a powerful member of the government led to him being shot and losing some of his fingers.
“The people in the government tried to kill me three times, so I knew I had to get out quickly. My family paid human traffickers, who were very cruel to me on my journey to the UK. My journey took about two months. The journey across the Channel was the worst. The waves were going up so high around our boat.”
He added: “I don’t have any requests from the UK apart from to keep me here and give me a safe life. I’m an asylum seeker just like Ukrainian asylum seekers, and like them I’m seeking a safe place.”
