The Issue

The Home Office considers it safe to send non-Arab Darfuri asylum seekers back to Khartoum – on the grounds that while they would be at risk in Darfur, they are safe in the Sudanese capital. This is untrue.

The Aegis Trust found that Darfuri asylum seekers face torture when they are returned. With Channel 4 News and the Guardian they highlighted the case of Sadiq Adam Osman, from the Zaghawa people, who was photographed at a demonstration about Darfur by the Sudanese embassy in the UK. After he was returned by the Home Office to Khartoum he was arrested by Sudanese security and tortured. He escaped and his account has been corroborated by experienced doctors who assessed his injuries and psychological trauma to be fully consistent with his account of torture.

On 4 October, the House of Lords heard an appeal by the Home Office against a ruling by the Court of Appeal from 4^th April that the removal of three Darfuri asylum seekers to Khartoum would be unduly harsh, due to the appalling living conditions they would face in the IDP camps around Khartoum. The Court of Appeal doubted how well equipped rural subsistence farmers are for dealing with urban slum living conditions.

Conditions in the IDP camps around Khartoum are terrible. But the real question is whether it is safe to send Darfuris back into the hands of Sudanese security services – the same organizations responsible for the war crimes in Darfur. The House of Lords did not consider this new evidence and only considered the evidence heard by the Court of Appeal and original tribunal from six months previously. As there is now evidence that Darfuris are at risk of torture in Khartoum there is a strong case that their removal is against international human rights law.

Finally, the British policy sends the wrong message: while we condemn Khartoum with our words for their treatment of their civilians, with our actions we signal that we don’t care.

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Our Demands

Liberal Youth is urging the Home Secretary – and asking MPs to write to the Home Secretary to do likewise – to change the policy of removing Darfuris back to Sudan until there is a ceasefire, peace agreement and a secure environment allowing people to return to their homes in Darfur.

As individual cases of arrests of Darfuri “illegal immigrants” arise, Liberal Youth will run emergency campaigns for their removal to be stopped.