Mercy Baguma: Fight to end this horrific system
Lynda McEwan reports
“My name is Mercy Baguma. I am an asylum seeker with a baby and I am not getting any financial support … I’m just asking if you have any grants that I can apply for”.
An email written by Mercy Baguma, a 34-year-old Ugandan asylum seeker and single mother, just a week before her body was discovered in a flat in Govan, Glasgow, her malnourished baby son crying by her side, shows the desperation of the situation facing refugees in Scotland.
Mercy’s limited right to remain in the UK had expired, leaving her unable to work and reliant on charities and the generosity of friends.
Limited right to remain is part of the Home Office’s deliberate hostile environment policy, which was introduced by Theresa May in 2012 to create inhospitable as possible living conditions in the hope most refugees would independently opt to leave the UK.
Deport first, hear appeals later, ID checks for access to NHS treatment, tenant agreements, banks and charities, Go Home vans, adverts in newspapers, shops and buildings of faith and complex and confusing application processes were all part of the policy.
The idea behind such abhorrent measures was a desperate attempt to fulfil the Tory party’s 2010 election promise of reducing immigration.
In contrast in Scotland, the SNP appeared to have rolled out the red carpet in welcoming refugees to the country. However further examination exposes a threadbare offering, much like their actions when it comes to the reality of life for refugees once they are living here.
In a statement issued Wednesday, Nicola Sturgeon expressed how she is “consumed with sadness and anger”. She has called for urgent reform of the UK’s asylum system and was quick to point out that asylum is reserved to the UK government.
However, her government must shoulder some responsibility for the social conditions that add to the desperate situation facing asylum seekers in Scotland.
Since coming to power the SNP have carried out a programme of brutal austerity across Scotland, cutting vital services in all council areas, including support for women and asylum seekers.
According to NHS Health Scotland, 24% of Scottish children live in relative poverty after housing costs. 65% of those come from working families. Food banks hand out over 1,000 emergency food parcels every day and a drug death scandal in 2018 saw Scotland named the drug death capital of Europe.
This level of deprivation creates its own hostile environment for communities, and by adding in vulnerable refugees who often can’t obtain the right to work or access benefits, the social conditions for welcoming refugees with open arms is massively reduced, showing just how anaemic it was in the first place.
Mears group
Earlier in the year, again in Glasgow, a mass stabbing took place in a hotel which was being used to house asylum seekers during the lockdown phase of the coronavirus pandemic .
The attacker, an African asylum seeker, was shot dead by police at the scene. Charities had raised concerns about these arrangements after Mears, a private housing company given the contract to house asylum seekers in the city, had moved people from furnished accommodation to hotels, where they were packed together with little opportunity to practice government recommended social distancing.
In the grip of a global health epidemic an already vulnerable group being left for two months with no access to water, no nutritional food, subject to broken and contaminated air conditioning circulating possible virus particles, and with increasing diminishing mental health, was a recipe for disaster which ended in the worst possible way.
When questioned, Home Office Minister, Chris Phillip said it had been their intention all along to move people quickly to more suitable housing but in reality it was clear that these at risk people had been herded up in a racist move, because they were deemed incapable of following the rules of lockdown.
Across the UK the refugee question has been making headlines with despicable far right populist Nigel Farage tweeting a video of a handful of refugees, some, very young children, exiting a dinghy off the Kent coast, describing them as an invasion.
Using such provocative and dehumanising language is typical of the capitalist class who use this narrative to whip up racism and nationalism amongst a layer of people in order to divide workers and protect their profit-ridden system.
With the deadline for Brexit negotiations looming and no deal still a possible outcome, the pandemic induced recession causing a jobs massacre with furlough set to end, this will only increase, especially with such weak opposition from Kier Starmer’s Labour Party and the SNP in Scotland.
Fight for a socialist alternative
A mass worker’s party is now desperately required to cut across this division, led by the trade unions who must be pushed to fight in the interests of the working class, including young people and asylum seekers.
Lessons should be learned from the success of working class Glaswegians uniting to fight the evictions of refugees in 2018. And the recent victory of youth protests overturning the disgraceful downgraded exam results, which was driven by class inequality.
A campaign to overhaul the asylum system must be linked to a fight for better housing, increased benefits with no more arbitrary and unfair assessments, £15 an hour living wage and an end to the precarious gig economy and zero hours contracts.
Racist immigration laws must be ended and the right to work for all asylum seekers must be fought for.
Socialist Party Scotland, alongside others, will be mounting an electoral challenge to cuts making MSPs and councillors in the upcoming elections at Holyrood next year and the council elections in 2022.
We will stand on a combative programme to end austerity. As the increasing international capitalist crisis and its inability to offer solutions to poverty will exacerbate the refugee crisis, only socialist policies can hope to halt this barbaric system which will horrifically continue to produce more Mercy Bagumas.
