A Kurdish father, a former torture victim, is distraught at the prospect of being deported on Wednesday without his child. The man’s son was not at their Brighton address when the immigration service raided it on Monday, and his whereabouts now are unknown, but the Home Office still insists the father must be forcibly removed from Britain.
Ekrem Ovunc, 41, has been refused asylum, although British doctors have confirmed he has physical injuries and scarring consistent with torture. His grandfather, father and uncle were both killed by the Turkish authorities, and he is terrified of being returned; like many in Turkey’s Kurdish minority, he fears he will face further arrest and imprisonment for his ethnicity and believed political sympathies.
He was first arrested and tortured in Turkey after, he says, handing out leaflets in support of the Kurdish independence organisation, PKK. He escaped to Britain in 2000 and has received medication and counselling for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. following four separate arrests and periods of torture which, he says, included electric shocks, cold water torture and solitary confinement.
His asylum claim was rejected, however, because the immigration service did not accept that he had a “well-founded fear of persecution”, or would have to live in the south east of Turkey where, “The Secrteary of State…accepts that the conflict has cost many thousands of lives, including those of non-combatants.”
Turkey’s continuing poor record on human rights is a key reason that Britain wants to delay its accession to the EU.
Reports by charities such as Amnesty International and Asylum Aid have also confirmed that Kurdish deportees to Turkey have faced imprisonment and further maltreatment.
The father and son, Ibrahim, 17, who was attending a Brighton school, were forcibly detained at an immigration holding centre for three weeks this March, and told upon release that they would imminently be deported. His pastoral tutor at the Brighton and Hove Sixth Form College, where Ibrahim was studying, confirms that his attendance and concentration seriously deteriorated following their detention.
Ms Jacy Marks wrote that his previously “excellent progress” stalled, and the “polite, well mannered and helpful” boy became “withdrawn, disengaged
and very precoccupied”, due to his “extreme concern over his uncertain future and detention.”
The boy became so afraid of another dawn raid and deportation that he started to stay out at night, sleeping rough or with friends. It is not known where he was when their lodgings were raided on Monday.
His father’s doctor, Dr Steadman, and psychiatrist Dr denise Bound, informed the immigration service that their patient had been suicidal when he arrived in Britain, and his despair was consistent with the terrible experiences he described. He was for a time placed in psychiatric intensive care, to protect him from suicide. Dr Steadman believed there was a “high risk of suicide” now, if he were deported, and that it would be “inhuman and degrading” to return him to the country where he had been persecuted. Campaigners are calling for the Home Office to halt the deportation and allow this vulnerable father and son to remain in Britain.
Ekrem Ovunc, 41, has been refused asylum, although British doctors have confirmed he has physical injuries and scarring consistent with torture. His grandfather, father and uncle were both killed by the Turkish authorities, and he is terrified of being returned; like many in Turkey’s Kurdish minority, he fears he will face further arrest and imprisonment for his ethnicity and believed political sympathies.
He was first arrested and tortured in Turkey after, he says, handing out leaflets in support of the Kurdish independence organisation, PKK. He escaped to Britain in 2000 and has received medication and counselling for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. following four separate arrests and periods of torture which, he says, included electric shocks, cold water torture and solitary confinement.
His asylum claim was rejected, however, because the immigration service did not accept that he had a “well-founded fear of persecution”, or would have to live in the south east of Turkey where, “The Secrteary of State…accepts that the conflict has cost many thousands of lives, including those of non-combatants.”
Turkey’s continuing poor record on human rights is a key reason that Britain wants to delay its accession to the EU.
Reports by charities such as Amnesty International and Asylum Aid have also confirmed that Kurdish deportees to Turkey have faced imprisonment and further maltreatment.
The father and son, Ibrahim, 17, who was attending a Brighton school, were forcibly detained at an immigration holding centre for three weeks this March, and told upon release that they would imminently be deported. His pastoral tutor at the Brighton and Hove Sixth Form College, where Ibrahim was studying, confirms that his attendance and concentration seriously deteriorated following their detention.
Ms Jacy Marks wrote that his previously “excellent progress” stalled, and the “polite, well mannered and helpful” boy became “withdrawn, disengaged
and very precoccupied”, due to his “extreme concern over his uncertain future and detention.”
The boy became so afraid of another dawn raid and deportation that he started to stay out at night, sleeping rough or with friends. It is not known where he was when their lodgings were raided on Monday.
His father’s doctor, Dr Steadman, and psychiatrist Dr denise Bound, informed the immigration service that their patient had been suicidal when he arrived in Britain, and his despair was consistent with the terrible experiences he described. He was for a time placed in psychiatric intensive care, to protect him from suicide. Dr Steadman believed there was a “high risk of suicide” now, if he were deported, and that it would be “inhuman and degrading” to return him to the country where he had been persecuted. Campaigners are calling for the Home Office to halt the deportation and allow this vulnerable father and son to remain in Britain.
2 comments:
STOP PRESS: The father's deportation, planned for this Wednesday (Nov 15), was delayed, following many protests - thank you - but he is still in detention, his future uncertain and his son missing.
just another example of this governments unintelligent intellegence.they are kowtowing to morons and red-necks which we seem to have in abundance in this country
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