3 ways you can try to save #isamuaza's life

I am reeling from the fact that a government with Liberal Democrats in it is on the brink of crossing a major humanitarian line. Not content with standing by while Isa Muaza starves himself to death in protest at his treatment within an immigration detention centre, tomorrow morning they are planning to deport him. He can barely stand, and as this report from the Guardian states, he has numerous health problems. If he survives the flight, what are they going to do to someone in such a weakened state? Dump him in the arrivals lounge and head back home? What reputable airline would do that? This one, Air Charter Scotland, apparently.

Lord Roger Roberts wrote a heartbreaking post on Liberal Democrat Voice yesterday describing his visit to Isa, who has now not eaten for 90 days, and making the case for clemency.

Even before this protest began – and before he ever came to the UK – Isa Muaza was a deeply vulnerable person. He fled Nigeria fearing for his life at the hands of the terror group Boko Haram, a group he says have already killed several members of his family and as he told me yesterday, if returned this week he will have no one to meet him off the plane. He is penniless, blind and incapable of standing on his own. In his current state this on its own is a death sentence.

In deporting Mr Muaza on Friday the Home Office seems to be seeking to avoid another death in immigration detention. But the Home Secretary cannot – and should not – escape responsibility for her actions. In this case, for forcibly detaining a man the system so evidently could not care for. Those held in the thousands of beds in immigration detention centres across the UK are some of the most vulnerable people in the country. Striking out at them is not the sign of a strong immigration system, but a desperately weak one.

So what does a fair society do when faced with someone on hunger strike? There are some people, like Theresa May, who think it's just a way of playing the system. For three months? To the point of a long drawn out horrible death? For me, it's the sign of a very sick system that nobody going through it has any confidence in it to treat them fairly.

We need to be working on prevention. Isa originally started his hunger strike because his clinical and dietary needs were not being met. Taking someone's liberty is drastic enough. We don't need to have their dignity too. If someone is being detained, which should not be a common thing at all, they should have all the support and health care that they need and the respect as a fellow human being that they deserve.

We generally are pretty helpless in these situations, but that doesn't mean we should sit and do nothing. There are times when we should make our voices heard and this is one of them. Here are 3 things you can do:

1. Sign Julian Huppert's and Roger Roberts' e-petition.

2. Tweet or email Air Charter Scotland and ask them not to transport Isa Muaza.

3. If you are a Liberal Democrat party member tweet or email Tim Farron, Party President, to ask him to continue to press Nick Clegg to intervene. He has met with Nick's team today and urged them to do so and he has also signed Julian and Roger's petition. The more people he can say are annoyed about this, the stronger his case will be. Although, bluntly, it shouldn't take us being annoyed to move Nick to action on this.

We already knew that the asylum system was inhumane and put people through horrid indignities while not giving vulnerable people enough time to get representation and present their evidence properly. It was bad enough under Labour, and the Conservatives have, seemingly unchecked, made it worse. What are we there for if not to stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves? We need to start making a tangible difference, and soon, to the way people are treated. It's already bad enough that a Liberal Democrat minister has been restricting access to Legal Aid so that women can't get legal representation, for example, if they are trying to get a place in a mother and baby unit. That's heartbreaking enough, but we're talking about a matter of life and possibly imminent death here.

Liberal Democrats are there to protect people from the excesses of the state. I accept that there are limits to what we can do when we make up just a fifth of the Government and I know that Labour and Tories have no such concern, but we need to do it firstly because nobody else will and secondly because it's right.

Go home poster vans still up in Glasgow despite the best efforts of Liberal Democrats

We know that Liberal Democrats within the Government have said that there will be no repetition of the Go Home poster vans which were sent to drive round certain boroughs in London.

We also know that there will be no repetition of the Go home posters displayed in the Glasgow UKBA office, again thanks to Liberal Democrats within the coalition. Sadly, though, these posters have not been taken down as some asylum seekers I met earlier this week at the Liberal Democrat Seekers of Sanctuary fringe meeting on Monday were able to verify on Tuesday afternoon.

Speaking at Monday's meeting, Nico, from Zimbabwe, told us that when he saw the posters he felt like he wasn't welcome in this country.

How good would it be if these posters could be taken down early? They only have two weeks to go, but that's two weeks too long in my opinion.

We know that Michael Moore, Secretary of State for Scotland, wrote a strongly worded letter to Home Secretary Theresa May asking for the posters to be taken down. I believe the word "distasteful" was used. A measure of the strength of feeling is that Scottish leader Willie Rennie has, unusually, signed an SNP MSP's motion on the subject. Lord Greaves has also made known his feelings on the subject to the Home Office.

The Liberal Democrats for seekers of sanctuary fringe was very well attended. We enjoyed a delicious Indian buffet in the India Quay restaurant. We heard from several people who have fled persecution to come to this country.  Nico, mentioned above, came here from Zimbabwe at the age of 25 in 2000. His case has been going on for so long that the Zimbabweans can't trace him on their identity database which was set up after he left. This has led the Home Office to refuse his application for asylum. Currently, he's waiting to be evicted from his flat as he isn't entitled to live there even though he's appealing the decision. Imagine not knowing from one day to the next if you are going to have a roof over your head. Nico has no income, is not allowed to work and has to rely on charity for food.

I also spoke to Khalil who was granted leave to remain. He's been in the UK for two years and was destitute and homeless to begin with. He was a human rights journalist in Kurdistan and told me how, after 10 people were killed and over 400 injured at a pro Tunisia/Egypt rally during the Arab Spring, he fled. Initially his application for asylum was refused because he was told that he could go and live in Basra or Baghdad.

The meeting also heard from Roger Roberts who compelled us to speak up for those people. He had also produced a leaflet which he asked us to distribute. Called Setting the Record Straight,it takes down some of the most popular misconceptions and myths surrounding migration. There is an accompanying Facebook page and Twitter account.

Robert Brown and Anne McLaughlin stand up for Glasgow's asylum seekers

One of the things that has made me absolutely furious this past week is the disgraceful disregard and lack of understanding that Glasgow City Council and the UK Border Agency seem to have for the vulnerable asylum seekers who are housed in Glasgow. These two organisations are arguing about money and over 1300 vulnerable people in almost 600 households are caught in the crossfire. The Council has had a contract until now to provide temporary accommodation to  asylum seekers. This expires in February. It hasn't been renewed because the Council wants more money.

Last week, the affected families received letters from the UK Border Agency saying that they could be asked to move, at 3-5 days notice, with one or two bags each to anywhere in the Scotland region. Scotland is a big place, stretching all the way from Dumfries and Galloway to Caithness and Sutherland on the mainland 400 miles away.  That's not counting the northern or western isles, which are also part of this fabulous country.

Neither the Council nor the UK Border Agency seem to be looking at what an enforced move will mean for those families. Children who are settled at school and have been so for some years could be uprooted at a critical stage in the school year. That is just completely unacceptable. The UK Border Agency and Glasgow City Council should hang their heads in shame at the distress and upset they have jointly caused.

This issue brought a touch of seriousness to an otherwise pathetic First Minister's Questions the other day. Anne McLaughlin, who of course had done so much work on behalf of asylum seekers, including Florence and Precious Mhango, first asked about it and Robert Brown, Liberal Democrat MSP for Glasgow followed with this?

 Does the First Minister share my view that the priority now must be to retain asylum seekers in their current homes and to keep their children in their current schools? Regardless of the management arrangements that are contracted for by the UKBA, stability and security are vital for such people, many of whom, as the First Minister touched on, have gone through horrendous experiences at the hands of oppressive regimes abroad.

Do the protocols regarding the treatment of asylum seekers that were arrived at with such great difficulty between successive Scottish Governments and the most recent UK Government give the Scottish Government the opportunity to discuss practical solutions to the issues at hand with the Border Agency and, indeed, the UK Government?

The FM's helpful reply was

I  must confess that I have never found the UK Border Agency to be among the foremost advocates of the respect agenda between Westminster and Scotland. Nonetheless, given that the important matter here is the treatment of people who are in a vulnerable situation, we will take up Robert Brown's suggestion and will seek to use the protocols to defend their position.

In my experience the UK Border Agency takes no notice of anyone, so it's not just the Scottish Government it disrespects. I have no time for them at all and it's high time some Government ministers shook the place up completely and made it take a more compassionate, civilised tone with people.

I feel, though that there's a bit of a wider issue here, though, generally, about how we treat homeless households. If a family is made homeless, their local  Council has to give them accommodation, but it could be anywhere within that Council area and they can be moved on at very short notice to other accommodation which similarly can be anywhere in their area. Now that's fine if it's fairly compact Council area, but look at Fife. I've seen people in desperate housing need from Dunfermline be put in Cupar, Glenrothes and Kirkcaldy. In some circumstances it's meant that the adults in the household can't continue to work because they're away from their support network, or they work shifts and there's no public transport available outside peak times. Although generally the kids get to stay at their school, they often face a long journey to get there.

This is a function of there simply not being enough affordable social housing and so far nobody seems to be coming up with suggestions to alleviate that. When Governments and Councils draw up procedures and work out how to deliver services they really need to think about what it actually means for people to go through them and try to draw up the service round the needs of the people and not themselves. The way homeless people are treated is just one example of how services fail to do that. And what the UK Border Agency seeks to do to those asylum seekers in Glasgow  is even worse.

Sehar Shabaz: an injustice too far.

How can it be the action of a civilised society to take a woman who has fled domestic violence and send her back to Pakistan with her 8 month old baby where she is at risk from reprisals from both her and her husband's family?

Home Secretary Theresa May is imminently deporting Sehar Shabaz and her 8 month old daughter Wania. Sehar was at the centre of controversy earlier in the week after she and her baby were detained at Dungavel after both Tavish Scott and Alistair Carmichael had said that child detention would stop. It has now been confirmed that the Liberal Democrats have been successful in ending this practice and no children will be detained at Dungavel in the future.

That's all well and good, but I'm not convinced that sending them to Yarls Wood is actually a better solution. I'd have liked to have seen all detention of children suspended while the system was reviewed.

The reason Sehar was being removed is that she came in to the country on a spouse's visa but she left her husband becaus of his violence towards her. She had no right, therefore, to stay in this country. The difficulty is that if she is returned to Pakistan, where women, particularly young women, have no power, her actions in leaving her violent husband are likely to be viewed dimly by both her own and his family. This means that both her and her baby are at risk. What I don't know and I can't find out is that she appears to have been living apart from her husband for 3 years and her baby is 8 months old and so I assume that she's formed another relationship which will be even more frowned upon back in Pakistan. UPDATE: Thanks to @NoetiCat on Twitter for alerting me to this site which gives more information about Sehar's case.

It turns out that she arrived in this country in 2007 on a student visa to marry a Pakistani national living in the UK. She fled her abusive husband in November 2009 and her application for asylum has been turned down by the UK Border Agency's fast track system. The fact that there is new information which was not considered prior to removal is extremely worrying.

I'd like to know more about her circumstances. This is pure conjecture on my part, but I wonder if she actually took up her studies after entering the country on a student visa. Could it be that she had a place on a course and her new husband prevented her from taking it up? Did she study? If not, then the UK Border Agency, whatever the circumstances, would have taken a very dim view of that which may have stood against her in the asylum system. If they ruled that she'd not fulfilled the requirements of her student visa, then her application for asylum would in their eyes have had less credibility. I am not saying that's right, but I suspect that might have been what's happeened.

I think, though, particularly where young children are involved, there needs to be some sort of full welfare assessment and the UK Border Agency needs to take into account evidence based knowledge of the dangers people face in their home countries. We know that honour killings are common in certain countries. That knowledge should be sufficient to prevent deportation in my view at least.

My task for the next few days is to read this report which I suspect will confirm my long held suspicions that there is institutional bias against women in the immigration and asylum system.

I've tried to find out whether Sehar was in fact deported last night. I have learned from experience to assume the worst of the UK Border Agency so with a heavy heart, I'm assuming that she was. This is not the way for a compassionate, civilised society to behave.

I think it is absolutely wrong to return a vulnerable young woman to face attacks with acid or even murder in an environment where she will have no power or little chance of recourse to the law to protect her. The UK Border Agency accepted, way too late in my opinion, that it was wrong to return gay men and lesbians to countries where they will be persecuted and the Coalition Agreement specifically guarantees this. I don't understand why sending women into harm's way should be any different. If you are in any doubt about what could happen, read this Amnesty report on honour killings.

On occasions like this I'm ashamed to be British. It's time the UK Border Agency was forced to learn some compassion. Things aren't going to change overnight, but I wonder why this particular young woman was singled out for deportation at this particular time. It's unnecessary and utterly, utterly wrong.

And also a word about Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats in Government. He alone can't stop every single mistake that the Government is going to make and it's not realistic to expect him to be able to do so. I have faith, though, that if he is made aware of a problem, then he will do what he can to change things. I know that he's not going to win every single battle within the coalition - by its nature that's impossible - but I trust him to argue the case for change as hard as he can. There is much more chance that injustices like what's happened to Sehar will stop under this coalition than by either Labour or the Conservatives governing on their own.

Janipher Maseko - Good News at Last

Thankfully common sense has prevailed and Janipher and the babies are to be released.

I know that many of you have written to the authorities to complain about the appalling way in which she has been treated and I have been asked to pass on her heartfelt gratitude.

She is obviously very relieved. The road ahead is not going to be easy for her but at least she is now out of danger.

The thing that really made me cry was hearing that she'd said that she'd been delighted to be able to tell the doctor that the babies didn't need Malaria jabs after all.

How could we have put such a vulnerable family under such a threat?

There clearly needs to be an independent enquiry into Janipher's specific case, but the chilling thing is that she is not alone. Although the Government promised last year not to separate breastfeeding mothers and their babies, that disgusting practice still goes on. We have enough evidence about the complex interactions between mother and baby on every level, physiological and emotional, to know that to do so is extremely traumatic for both. The only time it should ever be allowed is if there is a clear risk to the baby's safety.

John Hemming has been raising the issue of the high number of inappropriate adoptions from care, particularly in England for some time. I have to confess that I hadn't taken him that seriously until now. Have a look at some of the information on his blog.

Update on Janipher Maseko

As you will see from the comments to my earlier post - thanks, Morgan and Helen - separate removal orders have now been issued for the children. This obviously doesn't make everything all right. Imagine if you had given birth just over a month ago and you were suddenly to be taken away from your whole life and put back to a country that had brought you nothing but fear and tragedy, where you had no family, nowhere to call home, no means of providing for yourself and your two small children. That would be bad enough if you were in good health, but if you were ill, traumatised and depressed, how much worse would it be?

Is this an appropriate way for a civilised country to act?

Helen is right that there needs to be a proper enquiry into the way in which she has been treated by Hillingdon Social Services, the Borders and Immigration Agency and SERCO. I have been assured that questions relating to her case will be raised in Parliament and I know that Lord Avebury has done some already. Obviously Janipher's evidence to that enquiry is critical.

Thank you to everyone who has let me know they have written to Liam Byrne about this. Janipher's plight has affected many people who don't normally get involved in politics and has opened many eyes to the disgraceful injustices of which Janipher is, sadly, just one example.

This battle is not over yet, so please continue to spread her story so that more can be aware of her situation.