UK: Asylum seekers roll call of death
01 August 2004
The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has published a harrowing "roll call of death of the 180 asylum seekers and undocumented migrants who have died either in the UK or attempting to reach the UK in the past fifteen years." The report, written by Harmit Athwal, finds several significant causes for the deaths. Athwal found that the high risk strategies forced on asylum seekers to enter the UK because of draconian legal barriers accounted for 50% of the cases examined. Another significant factor, accounting for over 25% of the cases examined resulted as an "indirect consequence" of the iniquities of the immigration/asylum system. A further 28 people died in the course of their work, by virtue of being forced into the "black economy". Fifteen people died at the "at the hands of racists or as a consequence of altercations which had a racial dimension" and five died in prison, police or psychiatric custody.
The most numerous cause of death, covering half of the cases investigated, was of people forced to "take dangerous and high risk" methods to enter the country due "to legal barriers in place to prevent them securing visas or work permits to enter legally." The report considers 90 cases in which people had died after being forced to stow away on planes and lorries or attempt to cross the channel in makeshift boats or cling to trains. The report acknowledges that the recorded number of those who died in this manner is only a fraction of the total.
A further 42 people died as "an indirect consequence of the iniquities of the immigration/asylum system." Of these 34 died by their own hand "preferring this to being returned to the country they fled, when asylum claims are turned down." Another four people died accidentally after taking evasive action "at what they presumed to be the arrival of deportation officials".
The number of people who died working in the "black economy" (28) is also an underestimate, as work-related deaths of people who are "illegal" are frequently not reported. Fifteen of the deaths were a consequence of racism, many of the instances arising as a result of the government's dispersal policy, which left the victims isolated and vulnerable. Five of the deaths were in institutions, such as prisons, police stations or psychiatric units, where institutional racism and reckless restraint methods have long been recognised as a major problem.
In the introduction to the work Athwal says:
No section of our society is more vulnerable than asylum seekers and undocumented migrants. Forced by circumstances beyond their control to seek a life outside their home countries, prevented by our laws from working, denied a fair hearing by the asylum system, excluded from health and safety protection at work, kept from social care and welfare, vilified by the media and therefore dehumanised in the popular imagination, their hopes of another life are finally extinguished
Harmit Athwal "Death Trap: The human cost of the war on asylum" (Institute of Race relations) 2004, http://www.irr.org.uk/pdf/death_trap.pdf