Afran – not his real name – pictured in Cardiff. Photo by Tom Davies
MOVED INTO OPEN AIR PRISONS OR HOUSED IN FILTHY ACCOMMODATION WITH BLOOD STAINED WALLS, LEFT TO FACE THE BRITISH WINTER IN FLIP FLOPS AND CONSTANTLY SEPARATED FROM THE ONLY PEOPLE THEY KNOW AND TRUST: THIS IS THE SHOCKING TREATMENT OF ASYLUM SEEKERS IN BRITAIN THAT IS LEADING TO A MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS. TOM DAVIES SPOKE TO ONE MAN WHOSE STORY REVEALS THE RACIST AGENDA OF THE UK HOME OFFICE AND MAKES A MOCKERY OF WELSH GOVERNMENT’S CLAIM THAT WALES IS A NATION OF SANCTUARY.
By Tom Davies & SC Cook
When Afran arrived in the UK, he had been wearing the same clothes for weeks.
“I didn’t have any warm clothes,” he recalls. “I had some joggers that I could feel the wind coming through and I could feel the stones under my feet as I walked, because my shoes were so worn down”
Unable to afford anything new and having no money whatsoever, he had no choice but to face the British winter in clothes that were ragged and falling to pieces.
After making a claim for asylum, he was immediately placed in a hostel in London, which he describes as very run down. He had hoped that with a hostel might come the offer of some new basic clothes, but this never came.
Afran is not his real name. He has requested anonymity because like many asylum seekers, he is worried that if he talks openly about his situation and appalling treatment by the UK immigration system, it will negatively affect his claim.
This is his story, which may be disturbing for some to read.
One day, whilst in the hostel, Afran and the other asylum seekers he was with received a letter telling them they would be leaving in less than 24 hours time. There was widespread confusion as many people could not understand the language that the letter had been written in.
Afran was ordered to board a coach. “I asked the bus driver where we were going, but even he didn’t know until we left.”
He describes the situation as incredibly scary, with none of the men knowing what was going to happen to them after they got on the bus. They weren’t aware of it at the time, but they were being transported from London to a disused army barracks in Penally, in the west of Wales. There, things got much worse for Afran and his peers
“It was about 4 in the morning when we got to Penally,” he explains. “The rain was horizontal. It was so windy, I could feel the wind and rain going right through my clothes.”
He describes the camp like a prison; isolated from the nearby community and enclosed in fences and wire. Residents were forced to walk hundreds of metres across the camp, often in pouring rain, to access a toilet or shower, and even then they didn’t always work.
Guards were hostile, harassing people when they tried to leave the camp. Donations from the outside were confiscated and the food wouldn’t be out of place in a prison. Sometimes, uncooked meat was served.
The dorms that Afran and the other residents were given were designed for soldiers to sleep in during the summer, when they were on training exercises and when they knew they had a home to return to. For people who had escaped wars, had no citizenship and no idea when the horror would end, it was traumatising.
For Afran, Penally triggered memories of the oppression he was trying to escape from, and brought back a lot of bad memories.
Despite all this, he tells me that he managed to avoid slipping into depression through regular exercise. This wasn’t the case for everyone, though, and he says that Penally mentally broke many of the asylum seekers inside.
“I managed to stay strong at Penally, I did exercise and got out as much as I could, but most other people there struggled much more than I did,” Afran explains. “Some of them just couldn’t take it, they were in such a bad state.”
“Most people at Penally stayed in their rooms and only came out to get their food, you could tell that something was wrong with them, but they just were left to get on with it”.
Despite the trauma these men had suffered, no mental health support was ever offered to them. Afran had to witness his fellow asylum seekers steadily slide into depression.
“I’m just surprised that they are still alive.”
This is the frontline of Britain’s asylum seeker and refugee mental health crisis, one that is created and made worse by the UK government’s hostile environment policy.
Many who come to Britain have fled from war zones, political persecution, violence and environmental disasters.
But upon arriving in the UK, they are subject to another form of persecution by the UK Home Office, who make their lives deliberately painful and disruptive in a way that often results in serious mental health issues.
Often forced into cramped and dirty living conditions, asylum seekers are moved around the UK with very little notice and no say at all in where they are being sent. Their basic needs, such as clean clothing and a right to privacy, are completely neglected. In addition, they can be separated from their friends, who may be the only people they know and trust in the UK, at a moments notice.
At the most extreme end, asylum seekers – even those who have built links with the local community – can be taken from their homes by uniformed home office guards in the early hours of the morning and be deported.
A large number of asylum seekers already experience some sort of mental health issue when they arrive in Britain. Many suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), after having been forced to leave their homes and families, travel across the world and live in dire conditions with no idea of what might happen in the future.
Research shows that asylum seekers are five times more likely to experience mental health problems than the general population, and more than 61% will experience serious mental distress. But data shows that they are also less likely to receive support for mental health issues than people in the general population.
Dr Friya is a mental health nurse working for a charity in Tenby, in the west of Wales. She has been supporting 11 male asylum seekers, and talked about the mental health issues they face.
She works for the NHS, and was originally asked to provide trauma counselling to the men from Penally through the health service, but was told that due to their citizenship status, they wouldn’t be eligible for NHS treatment.
Because of this, and fears of her own about being identified in her country of birth, we have changed her name.
She says she has seen a worrying trend in the asylum system, with increasing numbers of young men aged between 18 and 35 suffering from mental health issues. Friya says these issues are directly related to the appalling treatment they face from the British state.
“When I was raising funds for some of these lads, when I first met them, they didn’t even have shoes on, and they were in a camp that was supposed to be looking after them,” she explains.
“They had flip flops on, they were freezing, they didn’t have proper coats…I’m just surprised that actually, all of my 11 are still alive, because what they’ve been put through is disgusting.”
“They’ve been taken from London and put into a camp that wasn’t fit for purpose. The food wasn’t very good, they would go without sometimes, they were treated in an inhumane way, racist people coming down shouting at them. It’s just a really sad story.”
“The mental health crisis among refugees is being made worse.”
Afran is from Iranian Kurdistan. He has a calm demeanour as he tells me his story.
Having had a well-paid job when he lived in Iran, he was forced to leave for his own safety after the Iranian government found out that he was involved in opposition political activity.
“When they found out that I was involved in political things, they raided my house, and I just left,” Afran says. “My daughter, she’s four and a half now. And my job, I had a good job that gave me enough money for a good living condition. I had to leave. Because if I stayed or went back, they could arrest me, maybe even execute me as my punishment.”
He says this decision to leave was a huge risk and has seriously affected his whole life and mental health.
Many asylum seekers like Afran risk their lives in order to get to European countries. He did not have enough money to make deals with human traffickers, so decided to walk the majority of the distance to the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic.
This was a long and arduous journey, with enormous challenges along the way.
“Greece was terrible times, I was living outside on the streets because I had no money,” he recalls. “I wasn’t prepared for this situation, it was the start of the pandemic, so I was stuck there for a few months. It was awful because at the time, I just didn’t know what to do.”
After eventually arriving in the U.K, the situation didn’t improve as he was placed in a disused army barracks and treated like a prisoner of war.
When Penally was eventually closed – after determined action by asylum seekers themselves and their supporters – Afran says he was initially excited and hopeful about leaving the camp, as were the others there.
“Because I knew where I was going this time,” he explains,“ Cardiff.
“I enrolled in classes to help with my English and was working on getting a scholarship to Cardiff university to get a degree. And I was happy that I’m just able to tolerate it after six months in Penally. I said to myself I would make use of my time here now in Cardiff and hopefully get somewhere”.
Many of the asylum seekers from Penally were dispersed across Wales, Afran was moved to Cardiff with some others, but his hopes about the future were soon taken away after seeing the new accommodation.
The house he arrived at was in a worse state than Penally. He describes it as filthy and the mess in the rooms as appalling.
On top of this, he recalls how there was a strong smell in the rooms and the actual accommodation was too small and cramped for the amount of people that had been placed there.
Afran explains how he had to clean blood and faeces stains from the bathroom, and that this was one of the worst things he has had to do since arriving in the UK.
The situation for his friend was no better.
“It’s so run down,” Afran says. “He [his friend] is trying his best to clean the place, but everything is broken. The bed is broken, the cabinets are broken. And there are too many people, eight people have to use the same kitchen. He suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), so all he’s been doing is trying to clean the place he’s been given.”
After less than a month in Cardiff, Afran was moved outside of the city and given less than 24 hours’ notice, causing him significant stress and anxiety as it meant leaving his friend and the place he had only just started to acclimatise to.
Luckily, the new accommodation was nicer than the first, but he is now worried about his friend, who is still in Cardiff. Afran had been supporting him with his OCD and helping him to acclimatise to the new environment. Now Afran has been moved out, his friend is struggling much more.
Despite many asylum seekers suffering similar mental health issues, according to Dr Friya they are not receiving any official support from the UK government.
“The mental health crisis among refugees is being made worse because of the terrible accommodation some of them have been placed in”, Dr Friya says. “Cockroach infested kitchen, used cigarette butts everywhere. There’s blood all over the floor and all over the bathroom walls. And also, there’s an awful smell of people smoking. It’s just absolutely disgusting!”
Friya is supporting Afran’s friend who suffers from severe OCD. “His mental health is deteriorating to a point where I feel he’s definitely quite depressed,” she explains. “Yeah, it’s really difficult because my hands are tied at the capacity of what I’m allowed to offer them.”
Asylum seekers are entitled to see a GP, but because of their citizenship status, they do not qualify for counselling or other mental health support services.
While supporting her 11 patients, Dr Friya is not legally allowed to use her therapist training because they are UK citizens. In fact she could lose her job if she is found out to be doing this. This is part of how the racial oppression of asylum seekers is institutionalised in Britain.
Instead, Friya has been allowed to support them with day-to-day life, but is restricted as she is not allowed to be their therapist.
“I feel really embarrassed about what we’ve offered them,” she tells me. “It’s just not enough support compared to what should be given.”
“Change has to happen,” she says. “We can’t continue to treat people like this… we should want to welcome people, and make them feel safe… like they have a hope for the future.”
“But now they don’t feel welcome, they left their old lives, their families, their house. And then they come somewhere with hopes of better life, and actually they’re faced with racism, they’re faced with really bad accommodation, cold food and no mental health support, and they are now traumatised.”
Grassroots opposition to the barbarity of the UK Home Office
This is the refugee story of the modern age: where people from the Global South are denied entry to the Western world, and where they face state persecution and institutionalised racism if they do get through the border.
And while Welsh Government is not legally responsible for immigration policy in Britain, they do have the power to improve the situation for Afran and others, and challenge the UK government. In January 2019, Welsh Government published a plan to make Wales a ‘Nation of Sanctuary’ where they said they wanted to ensure that asylum seekers “are supported to rebuild their lives and make a full contribution to Welsh society.”
How is it then, that over two years later, some of the most vulnerable asylum seekers are placed in cramped accommodation that hasn’t been cleaned, and is filthy to the point of being uninhabitable? Or left to face the winter without any shoes?
More hope can be found in the grassroots opposition to this system, both from asylum seekers themselves and people within Western countries, than in policy documents from Welsh Government.
It is this opposition that forced Penally to close and which recently saw the stunning defeat of a UK Home Office deportation raid of two men in Glasgow.
When hundreds surrounded the immigration van on Kenmure Street, that was holding the two men who moments earlier had been snatched out of their homes, they were rejecting the barbarity of the UK’s border system, which for too long has been sustained by a mainstream political consensus against migrants and refugees.
It infuriated the Home Secretary Priti Patel, who was stunned by the action on Kenmure Street.
Immigration raids like this – where people are taken from their homes by uniformed guards and put in detention ready for deportation – are the sharp end of a dystopian and deeply racialised border system.
For many asylum seekers, however, the more common experience is one of the slow and tortuous journey through the UK immigration system, where they are left in a state of constant limbo and unable to work. They are treated as second class citizens by the UK government and thrown into a state of mental distress.
There are organisations helping them, but without a political solution that addresses the root cause of the problem, this situation will continue. After Kenmure Street, which showed the power of mass direct action, there has been renewed interest in anti-raid networks and organisations of political solidarity.
And in camps like Penally and Napier Barracks, asylum seekers have formed their own unions and organisations to resist the oppression they face.
In Denmark, we see the emergence of a mass movement defending the right of Syrian refugees to stay in the country.
These examples are the basis for defeating a deeply oppressive and racist border system.
