In 2005, Manuel Bravo, 35, walked to a stairwell of the Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Center carrying a bedsheet. He hung himself.
The note he left indicated that he had done it so that his son, Antonio Bravo, 13, could remain in the United Kingdom to be educated. The pair were to be deported back to war-torn Angola the next day, where they alleged that they had been victims of abuse by the ruling party.
Now, Antonio is 19, training to be an electrician, speaking in Yorkshire dialect, no longer speaks his native Porteguese, and will be deported back to Angola if his humanitarian visa is not extended. "My family, they're English," he said, referring to the Beaumonts (his adoptive family). "Britain, that's my culture." [more inside]
posted by guster4lovers
on Aug 27, 2011 -
32 comments
"
Voice of San Diego reporter Adrian Florido set out to find a family,
he writes, "whose experience could illustrate
the day-to-day challenge for Burmese refugees" in San Diego, since "more than 200 Burmese families have arrived [in that city] since 2006." In the process, Florido met a 24-year-old man named Har Sin" who was unable to hear, speak, read, write or use sign language, and wound up writing a two-part story about him:
In a New Land, Hoping to Hear and
Breaking Free of a Life Without Language.
The story is available as a downloadable pdf: A Silent Journey Series. / Via The Kicker, the daily blog of the Columbia Journalism Review [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Oct 13, 2010 -
5 comments
This past Thursday the Canadian government
granted refugee status to Brandon Huntley, a South African who has been living illegally in Canada since 2005. Huntley claimed that if he were to be repatriated back to South Africa he would be persecuted due to the fact that he is white. The South African government
is not amused.
[more inside]
posted by PenDevil
on Aug 31, 2009 -
56 comments
The Cult of Zaoui. Algerian
Ahmed Zaoui arrived in New Zealand in December 2002, having been convicted in Belgium and France (in absentia) for terrorism-related offences, on a false passport requesting
refugee status. He was imprisoned for two years (spending
ten months in solitary confinement) as a result of the Security Intelligence Service issuing a
security risk certificate, before the
NZ Supreme Court granted him bail. He now lives in a
Dominican Priory in Auckland under curfew, but manages (accompanied by his
crusading young lawyer) to give
public lectures, offer
eulogies, publish a
book of
poetry, appear in a
music video (wmv), sing onstage at the
NZ Music Awards, inspire a fund-raising cookbook "Conversations over Couscous", and has become (depending on your viewpoint) a reluctant or carefully cultivated celebrity.
posted by szechuan
on Nov 21, 2005 -
13 comments
Michael Homan rode out Katrina in New Orleans and later "escaped" one of the freeway-based collection points. His is the first of what will surely be many firsthand accounts appearing on blogs. Why not collect your link finds here?
posted by mwhybark
on Sep 5, 2005 -
29 comments
25 years in a non-existant war In 1979, a Khmer Rouge guerrilla fled to the hills of Cambodia when his village was attacked by Vietnamese troops. He and a small group of friends and family lived in the dense forests for 25 years, emerging in 2004 to discover that the war was over and that Pol Pot was dead. They had been fearful of any human contact, believing everyone to be the enemy.
posted by BradNelson
on Dec 8, 2004 -
17 comments
Anatomy of a Refugee Camp. A Flash presentation of how refugee camps are set up, and very educational for those of us in the world lucky enough to have never seen one.
[via
airgid.com, the designer's website]
posted by jb
on May 23, 2004 -
4 comments
The Lost Boys of the Sudan are a group of nearly 17,000 orphans whose parents were murdered and whose homes were destroyed by a government miltary turned against them. They marched on foot, without food or water, under attack from hungry predators & occasional strafing miltary fire for several years until settling in a squalid refugee camp in Kenya; nearly a decade later, the U.S. began a humanitarian policy of importing them, a few at a time, and resettling the lucky few in cities such as Chicago, Atlanta, and even Fargo, N.D.
(NYTimes, reg req'd)
posted by jonson
on Jan 3, 2003 -
14 comments
Refugees denied human face. 'Taking photographs that could "humanise or personalise" asylum seekers was banned by former defence minister Peter Reith's office, the Senate inquiry into children-overboard claims was told yesterday.'
posted by kv
on Apr 17, 2002 -
27 comments
Special Report: Refugees in Britain. The Guardian features excellent video clips of first-person stories of refugees who have made the long struggle from misery toward what they hope is a safer, more prosperous life. Includes
stories on political asylum as an election issue, how to claim asylum, why refugees and asylum seekers are choosing Britain (the country with the second-largest immigrant population in Europe, after Germany) and a Flash-based guide on who's seeking asylum and from where.
posted by Mo Nickels
on May 21, 2001 -
5 comments
