Bishop hits out at how we treat asylum seekers

Dec 12 2009 by Alastair Craig, The Journal

A LEADING Church of England figure has launched a withering attack on the Government’s treatment of asylum seekers, describing hundreds in the North East as “absolutely destitute”.

The Right Reverend Martin Wharton, Bishop of Newcastle, told an asylum conference that conditions some refugees live in across Northumberland, Tyneside and Durham are worse than Victorian workhouses.

He claims 300 asylum seekers are living in appalling conditions in his city alone and that Government policy treated them as “less than human”.

Bishop Wharton cited the case of Elizabeth Kiwunga, 34, who fled to Darlington in 2006 because of the torture and rape she had suffered as a result of her husband’s political stance in Uganda.

Ms Kiwunga was seized by police from her home last year and taken to a detention centre in Bedfordshire with her children, Marie, three, and John, six months, and was told she would be sent back.

Speaking at a conference organised by the North of England Refugee Service, Bishop Wharton called on the Government – which he branded shameful – to radically alter its policy on deportation and the human rights of asylum seekers.

Bishop Wharton said: “In the UK we have one of the worst human rights records in Europe. This is something of which we should be truly ashamed.

“Our Government’s continuing refusal to allow asylum seekers to work is something to be ashamed of. The fact that destitution is part of our Government’s policy in the treatment of asylum seekers is something to be ashamed of.

“The inhumane way in which people are treated by the UK Border Agency – collecting them early in the morning without the chance to wash or dress properly, without the chance to pack appropriate clothes and personal belongings, often separating parents from young children is something to be ashamed of.

“We must keep lobbying our Government for changes to their policies and processes.”

Figures released in January revealed that 3,635 people in the North East were now supported by the National Asylum Support Service.

Bishop Wharton said at Newcastle’s Civic Centre: “These are people with truly awful and harrowing stories – not people who are economic units to be considered in budgets or numbers to be considered in statistics.