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Suresh and Inthu
Both came because they were involved with the Tamil liberation movement in Sri Lanka. Suresh was badly tortured during three months’ imprisonment. Inthu was also imprisoned, although just for two days – but enough to want to seek safety abroad.
Suresh’s claim was turned down last year.
In 1999, shortly after arriving, Suresh began work in a supermarket where he has been working ever since. He was given and ID and a work permit with NI number, which he still has, and so works in Britain legally. He has been paying tax and national insurance for the past 7 years.
But the Home Office thinks he should go, and is making life intolerable for them to encourage them to do so.
For the last two months, Suresh and Inthu have to report EVERY DAY to a reporting station at London Bridge. The journey from east London takes them two hours each way. They have to find someone to look after the baby all morning while they journey by bus and by train and then queue to report.
Suresh then rushes to get to the supermarket for one pm in order to work a shift which lasts until 10pm. He is often late. And these days he is regularly ill because of the sheer stress of it all.
Back in Sri Lanka, he says, “they tortured my body”. Here in the UK, he says, “they torture your minds.”
His father died last November, and he couldn’t go to the funeral. He won’t go back. “I’ve been tortured once,” he says, “I can’t go through it all again.”
Suresh can’t understand what has happened to his life. He thought when he got married that he had made a new life in the UK and could put the past behind him. But after marrying he had his claim turned down and is now subject to what is by any standard a form of psychological torture.
“We are not criminals,” he says. “We pay our taxes, council tax, everything. We work hard. We don’t live off anybody else, not the Government or anybody.”
He dreams of peace. Of security. Of the right to stay.
It doesn’t seem too much to ask.
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