U.K to review refugee dispersal policy

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, AUG. 12. A week after a Kurd refugee was murdered on a racially surcharged housing estate in Glasgow, the British Government has ordered a review of its ``dispersal'' policy under which asylum seekers get tossed around and often find themselves amid hostile local communities.

The Home Office has called for a report on how the controversial policy is working, but it has been made clear that there are no plans to abandon the scheme which has been attacked for ignoring local factors that make refugees vulnerable to racial attacks.

Most of the racist incidents involving refugees have taken place in deprived neighbourhoods - the ``sink'' estates - where ``pampered'' foreigners with their ``free'' furniture and TV sets become easy target of resentment.

A Home Office spokesperson admitted that there were ``real concerns'' about the way the policy was working.

The review, expected to be completed by the autumn, follows reports of growing insecurity among refugees after a Kurd youth was killed, and two others were victims of racist attacks.

A number of refugees have left Glasgow's Sighthill estate complaining of racial harassment and claiming that they feared for their lives. It was on this estate that 22-year-old Firsat Yildiz was murdered last Sunday, and an Iranian refugee stabbed two days later.

The Government has decided not to send any more refugees to Sighthill, but a Home Office Minister last week insisted that refugees and local communities would not be allowed to dictate policy which he claimed - contrary to the evidence - had worked well.

Meanwhile, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has lent its voice to the increasing concern over how Britain treats its asylum-seekers.

It has demanded an end to the policy of hurling them in jail with hardened convicts. The Independent on Sunday, which broke the ``scandal'' last week, today quoted a UNHCR spokesman as saying that such treatment was in breach of international guidelines.

``It's shameful and the Government should end the practice immediately. We find it unacceptable. We have already made representations to the Home Office and will continue to press the issue'', a high-ranking UNHCR official told the paper.

The practice, it said, had also been condemned by Amnesty International and other human rights organisations including the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture.

In another embarrassing blow to Britain's reputation for tolerance, the UNHCR blamed sections of the British media and politicians for contributing to the climate of hatred against refugees.

It said it was ``alarmed'' by attacks on asylum seekers last week but said it was ``predictable'' in a climate of vilification by media and political figures.

The UNHCR spokesman, Mr. Kris Janowski, was extremely critical of what he called a ``deliberate attempt to tarnish the name of an entire group''.

He said this had got to a point where the words ``asylum seeker'' and ``refugee'' had become ``terms of abuse in school playgrounds''.

``In some mass circulation newspapers, asylum seekers are continually branded a problem, statistics are being twisted and negative stories are being endlessly highlighted'', he pointed out.

Another UNHCR official was quoted as saying that persistent vilifification of foreign groups tended to encourage ``hatred of them and...physical attacks on them.''

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Section  : International
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