Friday, September 14, 2018

The "hostile environment" claims a life

One of the fundamental rules of refugee law is that you do not deport people to be murdered. Guess what the UK is doing?
An Afghan man who sought refuge from the Taliban in the UK has been shot dead in his home town after being deported by the British government.

Zainadin Fazlie had lived in London with his wife, who had refugee status, and their four British-born children. But after committing a number of minor offences, the 47-year-old was sent back to Afghanistan after 16 years in Britain, despite threats to his life.

Last Friday, his wife Samira Fazlie found out he had been shot by Taliban forces after seeing an image of his dead body on Facebook.


Fazlie was deported under the tories' "hostile environment" policy, under which Britain uses whatever pretext it can to throw out anyone non-white. Supposedly, that policy is subject to humanitarian safeguards. Clearly, it is not. Instead, it involves deporting people to be murdered, in clear contravention of the refugee convention and the ECHR.

By deporting him in the face of known threats to his life, the British government effectively killed this man. And the people who signed the papers should be prosecuted as accessories.