Insecurity grips asylum seekers in Britain

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, AUG 7. Insecurity has gripped asylum seekers across Britain after the murder of a young Kurdish refugee in Glasgow two days ago and a racist attack on another Kurd in Hull today, prompting demands for police protection and a more humane Government policy.

Refugees have blamed the tension on the policy of settling so many of them in areas of high deprivation where unemployment is already high, and housing is bad. Stones were thrown at asylum seekers as they held a protest march in Glasgow on Monday over the growing race-related attacks on them since they arrived on the Sighthill housing estate - a bleak and rundown neighbourhood on the outskirts of the city - about 18 months ago. The unprovoked murder of 22-year-old Firsat Yildiz, in what police suspect was a racist incident, has created panic among Sighthill's 2,000 refugees, mostly Turks, Kurds, Bosnians and Iraqis. The original white residents, most of whom are themselves poor and uneducated, resent the presence of such a large number of foreigners in the area and feelings run so high that they held a counter-demonstration on Monday alleging that refugees were being pampered.

Police had a difficult time separating the two groups - one demanding protection against racists, and the other protesting that their city had been turned into a ``dumping'' ground for foreigners. ``We are sick of these refugees getting more than we do. I am sitting in a rundown flat... and these refugees get everything given to them on a plate'', a young white woman told journalists.

Asylum seekers said they had had been telling the authorities that someone might get killed in the prevailing climate of hate but nothing was done. ``We must make sure that no one else is allowed to die like Yaldiz... People are scared to go out. This cannot continue. Only yesterday someone was hit by a bottle and had to go to hospital'', a spokesman for refugees said.

Yildiz, a Turkish Kurd who arrived in Britain a year ago, was killed on Sunday night after he was returning home after a meal. His murder shocked fellow refugees as they marched through Glasgow on Monday they were taunted by white youths and abused. An official of the Scottish Refugee Council admitted that xenophobia ran high and blamed it on the fact that a large number of vulnerable people had been settled in an area of extreme deprivation.

This morning, a Kurdish youth had his throat slit in a racist attack in Hull, Yorkshire, where there is a large concentration of refugees. He was stopped by a group of white youths and one of them cut his throat with a blade. Passerby rushed him to hospital where he was reported to be progressing. Police said they were treating it as a ``serious'' incident. Mr. Guy Cheverton of the Hull Asylum Seekers' Support Group said: ``It seemed that the situation had calmed down after a number of problems last year but this attack has obviously scared many asylum seekers. They have fled persecution in their homelands only confronted with more abuse and attacks in Britain. The fear is that this attack could start a new wave of problems.''

The Government today warned racists that it would not let them dictate its asylum policy. The Home Office Minister, Mr. Jeff Rooker, claimed that the controversial ``dispersal'' policy, under which refugees are dispersed across the U.K. rather than be housed in one area, had been ``successful`` and would not be stopped. ``The dispersal policy will continue'', he told the BBC adding, ``We will not pull out of areas simply because people say it's an area where there could be racists. Only on police advice would we not use a particular area. Otherwise, our policies would be run by the racists in this country and we're not going to have that.''

However, there has yet been no credible official explanation why hundreds of asylum seekers have been locked up in high security prisons with hardened criminals, as revealed by a British newspaper two days ago.

The locations used were primarily dictated by the availability of housing, he explained.

``There are some 700,000 empty homes in this country. The vast majority of them, unfortunately, tend to be in the Midlands or the north. There's not too many in the sunny commuter belt otherwise we would be dispersing there.''

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Section  : International
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