Home Office tells foolhardy asylum seekers: It's your own fault you

BRITISH immigration officials told an asylum seeker from Zimbabwe that he had only himself to blame for threats against his life because he had been foolish enough to protest against Robert Mugabe's regime.

The Home Office last night admitted the officials had acted ''inappropriately'' and promised an investigation.

The asylum seeker - who wishes to remain anonymous - received a letter written by a Home Office civil servant in September, explaining why he could not stay in the UK.

The letter acknowledged that Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party "indiscriminately rape, torture and murder people perceived to oppose their beliefs . . .'' It added:

''Zanu-PF routinely commits atrocities with ease and without the threat of repercussions, " but went on to blame the refugee for having to flee the country because he had been "foolhardy enough" to oppose the regime, which has been condemned by governments around the world.

The letter also said: "Serious reservations are expressed in relation to the truthfulness of your account. Although their violent actions are not condoned, their motives are understandable in as much as you would have been seen to ridicule them [Zanu-PF], which as the ruling party would not be acceptable."

The Home Office has now promised to review the case, saying the letter was "certainly not representative of either the Home Office position or the quality standards expected."

An official from the Foreign Office, which has been involved in intricate and delicate negotiations with Zimbabwe through the EU, told the Sunday Herald he found the letter "appalling."

The refugee is understood to have fled Zimbabwe after supporting the MDC opposition party, and is seeking asylum in the UK as he fears for his life if he is repatriated. The Home Office rejects 90per cent of initial applications, although almost one-fifth of those succeed on appeal.

The letter came to light as part of a dossier of "bizarre" refusal letters, sent by the Home Office to asylum seekers, which was compiled by the Immigration Advisory Service (IAS), the UK's largest advocacy group for refugees.

The IAS also highlighted the case of a Somalian woman who was refused asylum on the basis that she failed to disclose a traumatic gang rape and her resulting injuries when initially questioned.

The Home Office refusal letter says it was "incredible" of the woman not to mention the rape, an assertion which goes against the Home Office's own internal guidance on how to deal with victims of sexual assault, which acknowledges that "feelings of guilt, shame, and family dishonour" make discussing rape difficult.

Another letter, written to an Egyptian refugee on September 9, asserts that, since killing is against the Christian faith, he could not have been subjected to threats from his wife's Christian family, from whom he was fleeing after they threatened to kill him and his wife.

Chris Yeo of the IAS told the Sunday Herald: "We are appalled by the reasoning used to refuse asylum in these cases.

"In recent months we have noticed a definite falling-off in the standards of refusal letters, with Home Office caseworkers using very odd reasoning to stop asylum claims, clearly in some cases working from outof-date information, " he said.

Yeo claimed the Home Office has several serious problems in the way it handles complex cases.

"The case workers are among the lowest-paid civil servants in Europe, " he said, "and there is a desperate need for the Home Office to employ staff with specialised knowledge to handle these claims better."

Sally Daghlian, director of the Scottish Refugee Council, said: "All agencies are very concerned about Home Office decision-making, and letters like this are sadly fairly typical.

"Where there is a risk of someone being returned to a country like Zimbabwe to face persecution, there must be a far higher duty of care."

Tony Hughes, a solicitor with the Scottish IAS, told the Sunday Herald he was concerned with the quality of the Home Office responses.

"As far as I am aware, " he said, "these civil servants work from a template, cutting and pasting information, and [the letters] do not always seem to be written by someone familiar with the law. Workers without proper training are refusing applications while unaware of the issues in the country of origin."

Home Office officials use information from an internal body, the Country Information and Policy Unit (CIPU), to make decisions about asylum cases. In February Amnesty International severely criticised the CIPU for using outof-date information in their reports, and the Home Office for "unreasonable, failing decision making."

An Amnesty spokesman told the Sunday Herald: "Getting an asylum decision wrong is not like a clerical error on a tax bill or parking fine . . . These are lifeor-death decisions and the Home Office is getting one in five of them wrong."

In addition, the Home Office has taken on independent advisers from the London office of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNCHR) because of concerns the UNCHR raised about the training given to civil servants dealing with asylum cases.