Home Office Plans to Deport Zimbabwean Failed Asylum Seekers to See Resistance

According to reports, plans for the Home Office to deport failed Zimbabwean asylum seekers will be met with some resistance. Right now groups are reacting to news that the UK government has sent an emigration team to Zimbabwe to see if it is safe to send back the failed asylum applicants.

Just this past Tuesday, a spokesman for the Home Office said that he can confirm that a joint Foreign and Commonwealth Office and UK Border Agency fact finding team is in Zimbabwe to obtain up-to-date information about the situation on the ground of use in determining the risk of returning to Zimbabwe.

Paradzai Mapfumo, from the UK-based Restoration of Human Rights Zimbabwe, said that any plans to remove asylum seekers is wrong. There is ongoing politically motivated violence in the country. They will definitely protest, because it is not in the interest of their members. He went on to say that he personally knows of asylum seekers who were sent back home and got harassed.

He went on to add that he did not see it as a good move because of the violence in Zimbabwe. When they send the fact finding team, they will be led to safer parts of Harare and Bulawayo. They will not be taken to the rural areas, where it is really serious.

There has been a lot of widespread violence in the country. Most of this violence was with the ZANU PF militia and war vets terrorizing locals during the constitutional outreach exercise. Over the years, thousands of Zimbabweans have sought asylum in the UK. Home Office figures show that 24,085 asylum applications have been received from Zimbabwe between 1999 and 2008.