Celebrities, MP and local community support 19-year-old asylum seeker’s
appeal for right to stay from Home Office Minister
Flores Sukula, a 19 year old student from Bolton 6th form college today
appealed to Immigration Minister Tony McNulty this Tuesday morning in a plea
for compassionate leave to remain. Over 2500 signatures calling on the Home
Office to allow her family to stay were presented to the Home Office. Signatories
include Amir Khan and Coronation Street actress Julie Hesmandhalgh, Bolton
MP Brian Iddon as well as students, teachers, local unions, churches, youth
groups and many others.
Flores together with her young siblings witnessed her mother viciously beaten by soldiers, who threatened to kill the whole family, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo over four years ago. An undercover report from the BBC World Service reports that returned asylum seekers are imprisoned, tortured, raped and killed. Over 4 million people have died in the civil war since the mid 1990s.
The family are now being subjected to Section 9, a controversial new asylum law which means families at the end of the application process have no maintenance, leaving them open to destitution unless they accept voluntary return.
Flores Sukula said “I want to be a midwife, to help the women of Britain to bring new life into the world, but if we are sent back our lives will be over. My younger brothers and sisters are suffering with the uncertainty of it all. All we want to do is to be allowed to study and work. To be allowed to save our lives and be able to contribute. We just want to be given a chance. We thought we’d be safe once we escaped. My mother brought us here to save our lives. But the court here said one attack isn’t enough, despite the fact that we have been threatened with being killed because of my father’s political activity. They didn’t even ask for evidence from my brothers and me. We know if we are forced back to the Congo our lives will be over.”
Local teacher and campaign co-ordinator Jason Travis said “We have been overwhelmed by the public response from such as . It seems almost everyone wants the Sukulas to remain in Bolton. It is impressive evidence that asylum seekers can be very popular in modern day Britain and that whole communities can come together in their defence.”
Denis Fernando, National Assembly Against Racism said “Amnesty International
has already criticised the Home Office’s initial decisions on asylum,
where one fifth are overturned by appeal. The Sukula Family’s case
shows that there can be heavy human costs to our asylum policy, which seems
to be driven more by increasing removals, rather than the human rights of
vulnerable people. We urge the Home office to intervene in this case and
allow the Sukula family to stay.”
Click here to listen to the speech Flores Sukula made at a Parliamentary Meeting on the forthcoming asylum Bill in October 2005 (.ram file).
Click here for the Sukula Campaign website.