‘Nothing can give us back the last seven years’
originally published:
8th August 2009
Parents and children who have already suffered unbearable trauma endure even more from the British asylum system, says Natasha Walter. Here, one mother and one child tell us what happened to their families.
Four years ago I met a woman called Angelique. She came to this country from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where she had been imprisoned and tortured because of the political activities of her father. She had been turned down for asylum and was destitute in London. So she walked the streets. She walked and walked, crisscrossing the capital, begging for food, even though she was heavily pregnant.
The fact that Angelique had to live like that in our country when she had come here as a genuine refugee shocked me so profoundly that I set up a small charity called Women for Refugee Women. This organisation works in partnership with other charities, including the Helen Bamber Foundation, Bail for Immigration Detainees, Refugee Action and Yarl’s Wood Befrienders, to try to enable people to see what is going on among women seeking refuge here.
As I have learned more about what women and children go through in the asylum system, my sense of shock has not lessened – it has increased.
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