How Labour deals with asylum seekers from tyrannical regimes!!

I've been seething about two 'somethings' all day, but couldn't work out how to write something even moderately rational without succumbing to the urge to smash something!! Both these 'somethings' involve our wonderful [not] Labour Government and its way of dealing with asylum seekers from countries which by any rational analysis are highly-dangerous places, particularly for certain categories of people, this from a Government which says it prides itself on having an 'ethical foreign policy'!!

After an otherwise agreeable Sunday, however, topped off by a gripping Winbledon men's singles tennis final this evening, maybe I am in a more suitable frame of mind to write something coherent. However the exclamation marks above will not be the last in this post.

First Something
A gay Syrian has been told his appeals against a decision to deny him asylum in this country have been rejected and that he must leave the UK at the earliest possible opportunity. Here is what the Asylum Immigration Tribunal, sitting in Glasgow, states:

"Syria criminalises and represses homosexuality. Homosexuals have to modify their behaviour and lifestyle accordingly. We find no evidence that in Syria (Yakob] would conduct himself other than discreetly to avoid repercussions."

...conduct himself discreetly ! ! ! ! !

Jojo Jako Yakob, the asylum-seeker in question, had already been arrested and tortured for distributing anti-government leaflets in Syria before he managed to get out and eventually find his way to the UK!! Furthermore, when the Syrian police discovered he was gay they beat him up so badly he fell into a coma!!

How is he supposed to behave himself so 'discreetly' that the probably pretty-efficent Syrian police authorities don't pick him up the moment he re-enters the country? No, I have no idea either.

It seems to me that the Labour government want him to go away and die (i.e. get killed) because it's really a nuisance to have him here. And I thought we were a country that prided itself on offering a safe haven to people seeking asylum from opppressive regimes such as exists in Syria; obviously I was mistaken.

Second Something
Well, it's about Zimbabwe. This is the country, just to recall, whose refugees in South Africa our Foreign Secretary, David Milliband, is currently visiting and about whom Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week said this:

"The world is uniting in rejecting the illegitimate regime of Robert Mugabe."

This is the same country that Gordon Brown's government wants to send 11,000 refugees from Zimbabwe back to!! This is the country where intimidation, beatings and torture by the Government or its accomplices is becoming increasingly commmonplace.

Summary
I have no wish to see this country thrown open to all-comers from wherever, although EU citizens obviously have the right to come here if they wish, just as we British have the same right to live anywhere we want within the European Union. We are however also obligated to give sanctuary to people who come here to seek asylum; I am well aware that in theory asylum-seekers are required to make their asylum claim in the first safe country they reach, but this is (in my view) in reality a mechanism to nullify our obligations as it ignores the reality for people desperate to find a safe place to go to. After all most asylum-seekers are not in a positon to saunter into a British consulate in their home countries; often they must leave their own countries clandestinely. In any case, once people in genuine fear for their lives reach here I think it is iniquitous to send them back without any real consideration for the fate that very probably awaits them once they get back to their own countries. Probably once a new regime is installed in Zimbabwe it will be safe for these 11,000 people to go back there, but surely not now! Similarly, if the young man is sent back to Syria now, I expect there is a strong likelihood that soon afterwards it would be reported that he had died during/after being detained again, or we would hear that he had simply 'disappeared'.

This is the kind of callous, small-minded, politically-driven and grotesque policy that our Government, shamefully, wishes to follow. The government is, presumably, attempting to look 'tough' on immigration, because its lax enforcement of existing immigration has allowed too many to come in too quickly, probably mainly as a result of its decision not to regulate the speed with which immigrants from the new-accession countries to the EU in 2005 could come here to work, unlike most other EU countries who agreed a delay of a few years so their economies could adjust to cope. To try and recover from its mistake, our Government is trying to lump asylum-seekers into the same group as all other [economic] immigrants when they are quite different. Their cynicism sickens me!