A VIEW FROM THE EDGE CONVERSATION CLUB NEWSLETTER Issue 78

A view from the edge Doncaster Conversation Club Newsletter

03 June 2021

STANDING ALONGSIDE REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS IN DONCASTER IN THIS ISSUE ‘These are our neighbours’

By Paul FitzPatrick whom is ‘Global Britain’ now a neighbour? The resistance to the ‘dawn raid’ and course, against the backdrop of the attempted deportation of chef Sumit Government’s proposed New Plan Sehdev and mechanic Lakhvir Singh for Immigration and the continuing in Pollokshields, Glasgow, highlighted rhetoric of criminalising people the importance of strong community seeking asylum. links. On that same day another One of the first signs of the UK Indian resident of Glasgow was taken Government’s ‘fair but firm’ New from his bed at 8.30 by five Plan for Immigration is an agreement immigration officers and removed to with India - a Migration and Mobility Dungavel while in the process of Partnership agreement. In the words submitting a fresh asylum claim. This DCC outing of Priti Patel, the ‘historic’ agreement event went unnoticed in the media. Page 3 aims to attract the best and brightest All the contributions to this edition of and support people coming to the UK our newsletter reflect in different through legal routes, while stopping ways on the complex processes the abuse of the system and involved in building community links, speeding up the removal of those especially in a relatively small place who have no right to be in the UK. like Doncaster – in the spatial The agreement will enhance and distribution of asylum housing, in accelerate the processes to return different involvements in different Indian nationals with no legal right to kinds of activities, in maintaining stay in the UK and vice versa, and links with countries of origin, the role ensure greater co-operation around of history in shaping attitudes to organised immigration crime. To Sudan emergency response borders and migration, and, of Page 4 A VIEW FROM THE EDGE DONCASTER CONVERSATION CLUB 2 NEWSLETTER | Issue 78

stss Asylum accommodation system? Where are the specialist Regional Refugee Integration services to signpost you to advice? Strategy in the outlying villages The answer to all of the above is that Migration is undertaking a they are a bus ride away in the town By Julia Burne consultation process to develop a centre. This costs £4.70 – which is new regional Refugee Integration ‘I’m alone in my room. The people in about 12% of the weekly allowance Strategy. They have organised a my house don’t speak my language. of £39.63 per week. series of thematic and sub-regional The people in this village look at me consultation sessions. They are strangely. I feel I’m sitting in my People seeking asylum as a whole particularly keen to have people with grave’. This is a quote from a man in are resilient – they have already had lived experience of seeking Asylum Support Accommodation in to overcome huge issues in their own sanctuary in Yorkshire to attend. one of the villages outside Doncaster. countries and in their journey here. But without a sense of belonging and In the last 6 months the Housing the opportunity to develop networks To register your interest in Providers, Mears, have started to of support, even the most resilient attending, please contact Saulo accommodate people seeking find that their mental health is Cwerner, Integration Strategy asylum in houses in the ex-mining affected. Manager at Migration Yorkshire; villages surrounding Doncaster. you can use the email There are now 18 properties There have been initiatives to Saulo.Cwerner@migrationyorkshir (housing more than 70 people) – engage people seeking asylum with e.org.uk scattered between , local community groups. There are a , Woodlands, Bentley, few outstanding successes (well Migration Yorkshire Consultation Armthorpe, , Stainforth, done Stainforth) – but these Sessions: Thorne and Moorends. The houses successes are for a small handful of are located by Mears and then the 70 or more people who are in • 8 June from 9:30 to 11:30 – approved for use by Doncaster these outlying properties. It has been The Economic Integration of Council. suggested that bikes are the answer Refugees – workshop 1 – but the roads from outlying villages • 9 June from 9:30 to 11:30 – The challenge this presents to the to Doncaster are often dangerous for The Health and Wellbeing of people housed in these properties is people on bikes (without all weather Refugees and Asylum enormous. Imagine – four people, gear, helmets, effective lights) – and Seekers – workshop 1 often with limited English and no not everyone is able to cycle. • 10 June from 9:30 to 11:30 – other languages in common, arriving The Economic Integration of It is unclear exactly why this process from temporary hostel or hotel Refugees – workshop 2 of locating people in the outskirts of accommodation and being left in a • 11 June from 15:00 to 17:00 – Doncaster has gained such smallish town which isn’t ethnically VCS issues in the momentum with the housing diverse. Where do you find food refugee/migration sector – provider Mears (a private company) from ‘home’ or halal meat. How do workshop 1 and the council. It certainly doesn’t you connect with others from your • 14 June from 15:00 to 17:00 – seem to be in the interests of the community - where is the The Health and Wellbeing of people who are the recipients of this opportunity for a chance contact Refugees and Asylum approach. with someone who speaks your Seekers – workshop 2 language? How do you access places • 17 June from 15:00 to 17:00 – of worship – the mosque or the small VCS issues in the Christian Denomination which is so refugee/migration sector – important to you? Where is the workshop 2 college to help improve your English • 30 June from 15:00 to 17:00 – so that you can communicate better. Local refugee integration Where is the community of other issues in people who are in the same asylum sub-regional workshop.

A VIEW FROM THE EDGE DONCASTER CONVERSATION CLUB 3 NEWSLETTER | Issue 78

stss DCC’s first outing in six Donny Doodles

months 10. ‘I fled Syria with just £12….’

Imad Alarnab spent three months crossing from Damascus to Europe, smuggled in lorries via Lebanon, Turkey and North Macedonia. He arrived in the UK in the autumn of 2015 with £12 in his pocket – “enough for the bus fare to Doncaster where my sister lived” – and worked as a car washer and car This outing felt very overdue. In the salesman until he found a way to last 6 months DCC has welcomed cook again.

over 100 individuals seeking asylum We crossed North Bridge and turned to Doncaster. We have tried our best Imad is a Syrian chef. When he left along the north bank of the Don. to offer a welcome – but this has not arrived in the UK as a refugee five The sun shone – and so did the been easy. We are missing our usual years ago, he could barely afford to smiles. drop-in session and have been eat. Meals were regularly skipped

unable to arrange group events other and a Snickers bar could be eked out than football. over a whole day to help him survive. On Monday, the 43-year-old father of three will be celebrating lockdown rules easing with a fairytale twist: Imad will be opening the doors to his very own central restaurant.

“This is not because I am strong or brave,” says Imad, who begins to well up as staff scurry through the restaurant, prepping for their first service. “I am proof that if you try to do something good for people, something good will happen to you. This is a fact.”

And meanwhile, football continues Back in Syria, he had lived a on Wednesdays and Fridays. comfortably affluent life as the The weather forecast was good for the weekend of 29/5/21 – and a owner of three restaurants and group of 23 met at Doncaster several juice bars and coffee shops. Station. It would have been lovely to “Everything I owned was bombed offer the opportunity to even more within six days in 2012,” he says. “We people – but we knew that 30 was lost everything, but I still considered the maximum number. myself the luckiest person – we moved continuously from place to place but I had my family, I had my wife and three daughters.”

Source: The Guardian

A VIEW FROM THE EDGE DONCASTER CONVERSATION CLUB 4 NEWSLETTER | Issue 78

stss Doncaster and the Arrival in Khartoum Sudan emergency Last October, Adam Abdullah wrote in this newsletter about the conditions in Sudan which had inspired the Sudanese community here in Doncaster to gather goods to send to Sudan in response to the emergency situation.

We reported on the departure of a

container from the mosque in 1899 is a significant date. It was the Doncaster on 4 November. year of the publication of Conrad’s Now we are delighted to learn that novel The Heart of Darkness, and the shipment arrived in Port Sudan Voulet could almost be a model for on 7 April and in Khartoum on 17 Conrad’s Captain Kurtz. May. The film references other colonial- The container is loaded in era atrocities such as the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, in which Lord Doncaster. Kitchener oversaw the deaths of 10000 Sudanese, and those We hope to give further details in a perpetrated on the Ovaherero and future edition. Nama peoples of Namibia by the Germans between 1904 and 1908, TV catch-up: African over which presently hang Apocalypse allegations of genocide and the question of reparations. A stunning and profoundly moving film-documentary broadcast on BB2 While the story of Paul Voulet is largely unknown in Europe, it is The journey to Sudan on 22 May and now available on iPlayer. vividly remembered in Niger, which remains one of the poorest and least In this film, Femi Nylander travels to developed countries on earth, not the site of a colonial outrage having benefited from its mineral perpetrated in 1899. He recreates deposits. the story of Paul Voulet, a French army captain who was responsible This film is a brave and welcome for the murder of between 7,000 attempt by the BBC to listen to the and 15,000 Fulani herdsmen in the voices of those who continue to southern Nigerien town of Birni- suffer the consequences of European N’Konni, where he enslaved some colonial involvement in Africa, which 800 women and looted several can help us all to understand its villages along the way. His invasion is continuing impacts on our responsible for the creation of contemporary world, including the modern-day Niger. displacement of millions of people across the globe.

A VIEW FROM THE EDGE DONCASTER CONVERSATION CLUB 5 NEWSLETTER | Issue 78

stss The Ration Challenge Why am I doing this? Because I am This is my fundraising page which human. For 10 years I've sat in my has lots more information about the By Liv Harrison-Little comfortable home being horrified by challenge and enables you to make what I was seeing in the news. A an online donation. Alternatively, if country turned to ruins by a war you wish to donate in person with most didn't want. Millions of people cash, you can find me at Doncaster forced to flee and make dangerous Meeting House most Sundays and I journeys to protect their families. can pay the donation in from my Millions shunned, discriminated own bank. against, turned away or even had their deaths celebrated by people Thank you for reading about my safer countries that did not see their cause. humanity. Simply for the crime of being in the wrong place at the the other side of hope wrong time. I've donated to a few causes with my own money over the I am a regular attender at Doncaster years but I didn't feel that this was Meeting with my wife Beth and our enough. baby daughter Theodora. This year, I am taking part in "The Ration I came cross the Ration Challenge Challenge". The Ration Challenge is and discovered that by taking this a yearly fundraising challenge by challenge and being sponsored to Concern Worldwide that runs from eat in a similar way to refugees for a the 13th to 19th of June. For these week I could do 2 things. Firstly, I seven days I will be eating nothing could probably raise more money for but a mock up of the rations that the cause than I could donate Syrian refugees in camps receive. myself. Secondly, I could use it to This includes 1.92kg of rice, 400g of the other side of hope: journeys connect on a spiritual level in a flour, 330ml of vegetable oil, 85g of in refugee and immigrant comparatively small way with what dried chickpeas, 1 tin of kidney literature is a new, UK-based, these people have to go through. To print and online literary beans, 170g of lentils and 120g of feel a little of what they are feel magazine, edited by immigrants another protein such as sardines, when they have no choice but to eat and refugees. tofu or soya mince (I'm using soya these basic rations. To eat the same mince). Across the whole week, this thing day after day. To remind Funded by Arts Council , is very little food. Any extras myself that I am the same as they and supported by ArtReach and including salt, a spice, tea Journeys Festival International, are - a human being. The only thing or other foods are only allowed if I their purpose is to serve and that separates them and me is meet certain fundraising goals. The celebrate the refugee and location and timing. Democracy, food will be bland, stodgy and immigrant communities politics and secure living are fragile nutritionally incomplete. Once the worldwide. This is their and fickle and at any point any one website: othersideofhope.com week is over, I can go back to my of us could run into bad luck either abundant and varied regular diet but alone or as an entire country and find Call for submissions a Syrian refugee lives on these ourselves begging others for help. fiction & poetry (no theme; open rations provided by charity and to refugees and immigrants) whatever they can grow, forage, non-fiction, book reviews & To find out more and/or donate trade, make or buy once they find author interviews (open to please visit work. They do this year after year in everyone; theme: migration)

basic, crowded camps until they can https://www.rationchallenge.org.uk/ move on. We pay £100 per published olivia-harrison-little author for the print issue, and £50 for the online issue. A VIEW FROM THE EDGE DONCASTER CONVERSATION CLUB 6 NEWSLETTER | Issue 78

stss The new Aspen Cards however, we fear it is only set to Less reported news worsen as the new rules continue to have an impact on asylum This is what the new Aspen card 1. UK Asylum statistics cases.” looks like. The government has published Source: ECRE its immigration statistics for the year March 2020 to March 2021. Within the 12-month reporting 2. Jesuit Refugee Service period, asylum applications in the UK fell to 26,903, which is a 24 % JRS recommends a new set of core decrease compared to the principles for a radically reformed previous year. With this modest asylum system: one founded on justice, designed for the welfare number, the UK ranks number 17 in Europe as regards asylum of refugees and not for their harm.

The transition to the new card applications per capita while on a global scale, forced They argue a newly reformed should have been completed over displacement has grown. In asylum system should aim to: the weekend of May 22-23 for all 2020, the number of forcibly 1. enshrine protection and transparency at the heart of the displaced people exceeded 80 people seeking asylum. asylum determination process, million – more than the UK’s in a culture where asylum claimants population. Experience in Doncaster has are seen and heard; mirrored reports of difficulties from The actual development in the 2. provide borders which are open across the country: either no card, or number of asylum applications in to those in need of protection; 3. support asylum claimants and a card which cannot be activated, or the UK clearly contradicts the government’s rhetoric, with Home refugees to live in dignity, and one declined in shops. Secretary Priti Patel stating the participate fully in wider social, UK asylum system was economic, and political life; Lines were down at Migrant Help. “collapsing under the pressure of 4. foster a society that welcomes, parallel illegal routes to asylum, protects, promotes, and integrates Previously the facilities management facilitated by criminal smugglers.” those seeking sanctuary as our neighbours. company Sodexo had the Home While the government pursues a

Office contract to manage the further reduction of asylum Source: JRS distribution of money to people applications with its New Plan for Immigration, the asylum system seeking asylum. This changed on 21 itself continues to malfunction . Haiku corner May to Prepaid Financial Services. even with reduced arrivals. The PFS came under fire last month from backlog in asylum cases further Ireland’s central bank because of increased to a new record high. At the end of March 2021, 66,185 significant money-laundering risks. people were waiting for an outcome on their initial asylum claim.

Enver Solomon, CEO of the Refugee Council, responded to the newly published statistics saying: “We remain deeply concerned by the record high Here is freedom. numbers of people waiting in Together. Living. Playing. limbo on news of their fate, unable to begin new lives. This Now. could easily be resolved through And always the smiles. additional resourcing and more effective decision making, A VIEW FROM THE EDGE DONCASTER CONVERSATION CLUB 7 NEWSLETTER | Issue 78

stss Book Review detain asylum seekers on a small asylum seekers, and island about 80 km from undocumented immigrants around Copenhagen, where the facilities the world, operating in a legal grey proposed had previously been used area that hides terrible human for experiments on diseased rights abuses from the international animals. The Bangladeshi community. Built to temporarily government proposed to build up a house eight hundred migrants in silt island, Thengar Char, one transit, the immigrant “reception inundated during the monsoon centre” on the Italian island of season, to hold one hundred Lampedusa has held thousands of thousand Rohingya refugees North African refugees under relocated from Cox’s Bazaar. inhumane conditions for weeks on end. Australia’s use of Christmas Mountz details how states use the Island as a detention centre for geographic inaccessibility of places asylum seekers has enabled like Christmas Island, almost a successive governments to The Death of Asylum: Hidden thousand miles off the Australian imprison migrants from Asia and Geographies of the Enforcement mainland, to isolate asylum seekers Africa, including the Sudanese Archipelago far from the scrutiny of human rights activist Abdul Aziz humanitarian NGOs, human rights Muhamat, held there for five years. By Alison Mountz groups, journalists, and their own citizens. By focusing on In this book, Alison Mountz traces University of Minnesota Press 2020 borderlands and spaces of transit the global chain of remote sites between regions, The Death of used by states of the Global North ISBN: 978-0816697113 Asylum shows how remote to confine migrants fleeing violence detention centres effectively curtail and poverty, using cruel measures By Paul FitzPatrick the basic human right to seek that, if unchecked, will lead to the asylum, forcing refugees to take death of asylum as an ethical ideal. ‘No man is an island entire of itself; more dangerous risks to escape Through unprecedented access to every an is a piece of the continent, war, famine, and oppression. offshore detention centres and a part of the main. If a clod be immigrant-processing facilities, washed away by the sea, Europe is Islands in this book are a metaphor Mountz illustrates how authorities in the less,, as well as if a promontory for the exclusion of people seeking the United States, the European were, as well as a manor of thy asylum. Although the writer is Union, and Australia have created a friends were or of thine own were. Canadian and the study is focussed new and shadowy geopolitical Any man’s death diminishes me, on the EU, Canada, the USA and formation allowing them to because I am involved in mankind. Australia, I think it provides relevant externalize their borders to distant And therefore never send to know background to the current Home islands where harsh treatment and for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for Secretary’s thinking on asylum, with deadly force deprive migrants of thee’. its assumptions that more border basic human rights. John Donne’s famous words frame enforcement, more aggressive This is a sobering text. Its theme is this book by Alison Mountz, for this interception, detention and the death of asylum, not merely its is a book about islands. Very deportation will deter people from limitation. She is writing an specific islands, like Lampedusa, crossing borders. Over the last five obituary, mourning the loss of an Malta, the Canary Islands, Lesvos, years, as rates of dislocation have ethical ideal. In what she calls ‘the Christmas island, Nauru, Manus, reached ever higher levels, states enforcement archipelago, Island Mayotte, Guam. And locations have retreated from refugee communities have transitioned from which function rather like islands, resettlement. As children have safe haven to carceral space, with whose remoteness prevents crossed borders, news coverage those detained increasingly isolated scrutiny and awareness. Camps and politicians have framed their and segregated from each other. and detention centres function arrival as evidence of the abuse of She asks us as spectators to take rather like islands, as do Ceuta and a generous immigration and asylum political action, to bring to light what Melilla, highly fortified enclaves. system which has not been is hidden and to draw attention to (An enclave means a place where performing its deterrent function. the machinery of exclusion, for, in people are locked in, with a key). In Remote detention centres confine the end, no man, or woman, is an December 2018, the Danish tens of thousands of refugees, island. Parliament passed legislation to A VIEW FROM THE EDGE DONCASTER CONVERSATION CLUB 8 NEWSLETTER | Issue 78

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To receive a copy of this newsletter by email, send a message to A view from [email protected] Please send your contributions and suggestions to the same address. the edge Doncaster Conversation Club offers opportunities for local people Doncaster and people who have sought asylum in the UK to join together to share friendship, while offering support and practical help. Conversation The Club seeks to create a relaxed, friendly and supportive environment, Club and works on the principles of Ownership – everyone can get involved Newsletter Impartiality – it is not affiliated to any political or religious body Confidentiality – what you say is private Respect – for each other’s differences and individuality.

Based at the DCC is pleased to acknowledge the support of Doncaster Society of Friends (Quakers), The Red Cross, The Refugee Council, Migrant Help, The Doncaster Clinical Commissioning Group, St Leger Quaker Meeting House Homes, Club Doncaster Foundation, Ongo M25 Services, YMCA, DARTS, CAST, Fareshare, The Brelms Trust, The Ruth Hayman Off St James St Trust and Doncaster Minster. Doncaster DN1 3RH The Doncaster Conversation Club is run entirely by volunteers with the support of occasional grants for specific activities, currently from the Allen Lane Foundation, and the Wharfedale Trust

Picture credits: Hayder al Jayyash

The views expressed in this newsletter are those of the individual contributors.

Paul FitzPatrick Doncaster Conversation Club Doncaster, South Yorkshire

Registered Charity number 1159775 Issue 78

03 June 2021