We call upon everyone who understands the grim reality of living in uncertainty, far from friends and relatives, and constantly waiting, to amplify our concerns and pay attention to our calls.
We, residents of the Holiday Inn Express, who have recently received transfer letters to the Bibby Stockholm barge, have been trying to build a life in Oxford within the hostile environment we are placed in. Even though we are seeking sanctuary due to the persecution we have faced, we have been blamed, treated as a problem, and segregated from the community in an area far from the town. Through the help of local charities and good people, we started to build a life and develop a sense of home.
The decision from the Home Office to take away the life we have started to build has put us in a desperate position, where even challenging the decision is deemed risky. We have waited for one year in a very uncertain situation. We are not allowed to work. We are not allowed to go out of the hotel for more than two days at a time. We do not have a private space because we are obliged to share a room with another person. We do not have an income and we do not have a choice, even about what we eat. We are a mixture of people who come from different backgrounds and have passed through lots of difficult situations. Some of us have witnessed the ruin of our communities and countries. We left because it was unbearable. One of the people who received a transfer letter was tortured and imprisoned while fleeing persecution. He is traumatized and struggles with insomnia due to the gruesome memories. He built a connection with the local community in Oxford to cope with all the struggles. He was able to keep going due to that support. Now because of the plan to transfer him to the boat he is on the verge of losing his support. We are afraid for him.
Most of us have lived here for one year in Oxford. We do not know why the government decided to uproot us. We just want to lead a normal life. We have friends and we have local support. While our experiences may differ, our feelings about this matter are the same: we do not want to be displaced from the place we started to call home and from the people we started to call friends and families. Please treat us more humanely than this.
The transfer hugely impacts every one of us. We know we are in a position where our voice is constantly silenced. We know it is very unlikely that the authorities will respond to our pleas, but we want to shed light on our situation. The barge transfer is a disruption to the life we are trying to gather together; it is a disruption to our mental health. The idea of living on a boat is extremely uncomfortable to many of us who had a traumatic experience fleeing for our life via boat.
Trying to figure out the genuine reason why the Home Office plans to strip us of the relationships we built within the last year, we can only ask what long-term outcome is anticipated by harming us in this way? What is the rationale for making us start from scratch once again?
We call upon everyone who understands the grim reality of living in uncertainty, far from friends and relatives, and constantly waiting, to amplify our concerns and pay attention to our calls. We are tired of living our lives on a ‘no choice basis’.
