Leonard

My name is Leonard. I am 29 years old and come from Kosovo. I came to Britain not to be dependent on this society, but to offer my services as a skilled worker.

In Kosovo I was in medical training. My community and my country were being devastated by conflict with the Serbs. Following the principles of my chosen profession, I did not differentiate between those needing medical care, and treated people from both sides. For this I was labelled a traitor and mistrusted. Finally I even received death threats.

I already had friends in Britain, and I knew the National Health Service in the UK needed staff. So I hoped there would be a community for me here, and eventually a chance of citizenship. Pushed by fear and pulled by hope, I decided to come to this country.

I don't want to talk about leaving my family, or about my journey. Some things are better forgotten.

As soon as I arrived I applied for asylum. I was very keen to practise my profession and to contribute to this society and make my home here. I wanted to put the horrors I had seen in Kosovo behind me.

I thought very highly of the British people and of British society, and believed in the British sense of justice and 'fair play'. At first this seemed to be true, and most people treated me well and with hospitality. But I soon learned that it was a myth. The Home Office seemed to be stalling on issuing my work permit, and began asking more and more questions. Then the political climate began to change very rapidly. People like me, who had been welcomed with open arms of compassion, and encouraged to come as skilled workers or asylum seekers, were suddenly enemies. The open hand became a shaken fist. Language changed, abusive terms appeared. All of a sudden we were illegal immigrants and a strain on the system, ignoring the fact that most of us financed ourselves and never claimed any support. Tabloid headlines whipped up fear. They now read Country Overrun With Illegal Immigrants, and called us leeches, parasites and criminals. Instead of migrant workers and genuine asylum seekers, we were seen as aliens and even terrorists, vilified, dehumanized and demonized. Everyone was tarred with the same brush, regardless of circumstances.

We had become a political football, perhaps in order to divert public attention from failing social policies or bureaucratic blunders. By removing the individual, personal element, and dividing all of 'them' from all of 'us', political points could be gained by all parties. In the words of George Orwell, 'It is much easier to murder people in a dark cellar if you call it elimination of socially undesirable elements.' History has shown that it is enough to demonize and pathologize people to justify any action against them, no matter how heinous. You can excuse any violation of human rights if you just persuade people that you are acting 'in the public interest'.

Soon every applicant was doubted, and new rules were rushed in making it impossible for anyone to prove their case without top lawyers and extensive evidence. Even genuine skilled migrants invited here to fill the skills shortage were becoming caught up in these problems, if they had no large organisations to back them up. Individuals acting alone stood almost no chance at all.

That is my case - my nightmare. It has destroyed me mentally and physically. I am now in a no-man's-land, a state of non-existence.

I could not understand why it was taking so long to issue me with a work permit (in those days you could work after six months.) One day I called in to the Home Office, as I had to do regularly. Suddenly, to my utter horror they claimed they knew nothing about me, they demanded that I prove my identity, and how and why I was here. I couldn't do that - because they had all my papers themselves! They denied it. My identity was lost, erased. But there was worse to come.

They now claimed I must be someone else, an illegal immigrant whose real name was something completely different. Their treatment of me became very threatening and hostile. Even the horrors I had gone through in Kosovo they now refused to believe. Like some character in Kafka, I felt my experiences being denied, my history rewritten.

I was arrested in the street several times and told I was to be deported. I tried to go through the Appeal procedure, but they would not accept that I was who I was, or allow me any right to remain. I was now running out of money and borrowing heavily just to survive. Finally I found a lawyer who was horrified at my case and my treatment, and was willing to put forward a human rights claim. Still I could get no legal aid and had to pay for everything.

Then, two or three days before my human rights hearing, I was arrested in the middle of the night and forcibly taken to the airport to be deported to Kosovo. I was not allowed to fetch my belongings or contact anyone. I protested and pleaded, but offered very little physical resistance, because I was in total shock. Nonetheless so much force was used that I was cut and badly bruised. Hand-cuffed and bleeding from my facial injury, I was forced onto the plane. For the whole plane journey I had to sit like that, my face bleeding, hand-cuffed like a criminal.

When we arrived in Kosovo I sought legal advice. My injuries were photographed and I was told to return to London straight away. I did so, once again trusting in British justice.

Upon arrival I was immediately rearrested and sent to a Detention Centre. It wasn't a prison, but it was just like a prison. All types of people were detained there, some genuine asylum seekers like me, some very shady characters. I was afraid and out of my depth, so I kept to myself. Soon I became withdrawn, and began to spiral down into deep depression.

Then I became physically ill as well, for which I was given treatment. After this treatment I grew much worse, until I was very ill indeed. The Centre doctor refused to listen to me, claiming that I was pretending. But then, fortunately for me, a new doctor arrived. He rushed me to hospital. There, despite my desperate state, I was hand-cuffed to the bed. But the hospital behaved as I had done in Kosovo, treating me as well as any other patient. I was diagnosed with a very serious condition, which I had contracted from a dirty needle at the Detention Centre. The proof of medical negligence was clear. Several support groups campaigned for my release; and finally, after eight months in detention, I was freed.

I had been deported, then held for eight months, and finally infected with a serious disease, all because of official errors. This was so extreme that a specialist lawyer agreed to bring a case for me against the Home Office. We waited for a long time for the case to be heard. Then, just a few days before the trial, the Home Office offered to settle out of court. My lawyer advised me to accept, which I did. But I learned later that they did not admit liability; and my fundamental case - the one for asylum - was no further forward.

The compensation money was very welcome. But it came in instalments, my lawyer took most of it, and it ran out long ago. To this day I have not been awarded the right to remain, but at the same time I have not been removed, though I live at the same address I've always done. Every day I struggle to survive. I am now fully trained - I finished my training here, in my early years - but I cannot practise my profession. I can only take casual, physical work; and only when I can find it. Still over the years I have paid thousands of pounds in taxes and National Insurance, which funds the National Health Service, to which I have no access. My health is precarious, because of my experiences, but I have to pay privately for medical care.

I live in constant fear that they may come and arrest me. I always put on my best suit when I go out, so that the police will think I am a respectable businessman, and not stop me. I live every day with the threat that the disease with which I was infected will cause permanent damage to my vital organs. I feel violated. I have an overwhelming feeling of having been made inferior, and of less value than other people. I know that all human beings are equal, but when you are treated as inferior for a long time it gets inside you.

All I want is to work in my chosen profession and contribute to society. And despite everything that has happened, I would prefer that society to be Britain. I have - I can't say lived - existed here for eight years. I have friends here. And I still love the British people, because more than a few have shown me kindness. It is politicians I blame, and the media, and faceless individuals in positions of power, whose errors are rarely accountable, easily hidden, and simply not admitted. The trouble is that they destroy people's lives.

For a long time I didn't want to give up. I thought night and day about making the Home Office admit liability for everything they did to me, and give me leave to remain as of right, because my asylum case was genuine, and because they owed me justice more than money. But I know now that that will never happen, and that I must accept the past, or drive myself mad. Instead I ask for an Amnesty to be given to everyone like me caught up in this terrible situation, living in constant uncertainty, trapped in nothingness. I plead for compassion, for the right to live like a normal person. To see my mother and sister again, after eight long years. To leave my home without fear. To no longer live in poverty. To contribute to this society as a free man. To have a future.
But to have such ordinary human rights, you first have to be recognised as a human being and treated as one. That does not happen to people like me in Britain today.

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