Plans for the UK Home Office’s first mass deportation flight back home have been criticised as “a grubby operation” that risks “delivering democracy activists to political persecution”.
For decades, the Zimabwe government has not accepted people being forcibly returned from the UK, meaning Zimbabweans who sought asylum in Britain were left for decades, starting families and having children.
Its position has shifted in recent years and British and Zimbabwean officials met on 23 June to agree a deal on returns.
Many of the Zimbabweans in UK immigration detention with tickets for the charter flight, planned for Wednesday, say they fled their Zimbabwe as a result of having campaigned for human rights against former President, Robert Mugabe.
The UK Home Office has already rounded up and detained 150 Zimbabwe citizens for removal next week — the first charter flight to the country since 2019.
Human rights campaigner and Zimbabwean national Violet, who lives in Britain, warned that the risk for deportees is massive.
“Whatever deal the Home Office made with the Zimbabwean government — those people are not going to be safe at all,” she told The Morning Star.
“One way or the other, they will be persecuted if it’s not directly through the government or they [will] organise for these people to disappear or meet up with an accident. It’s happened before.”
The UK Home Office is hoping to deport 50 Zimbabweans on Wednesday but far fewer are likely to be onboard as a result of a number of high court challenges against the removals. The supply of escorts to remove people has also been disrupted after dozens of workers from the contractor Mitie were understood to have been told to isolate amid soaring Covid cases.
The Zimbabwe flight is the first in a series of long-haul mass deportations the Home Office hopes to run in the coming weeks, with flights to Jamaica, Vietnam, Nigeria and Ghana also planned.
The Guardian
