|
Qazi Mansoor Hassan 
 |
We were dragged out of bed, detained and then starved for 36 hours
By: Mansoor Hassan
Updated on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 6:02:02 PM
Printer this news | Email this news to a friend.
We were dragged out of bed, detained and then starved for 36 hours'
Masood Khan’s children are still terrified by the ordeal that they suffered at the hands of the Home Office’s immigration removal unit. Ten-year-old Zarrar says: “We were treated as if we are thieves”. The children’s only crime was that their parents were victims of prejudice in Pakistan.
Dad Masood and mum Shazia were persecuted and ostracised from their communities in Pakistan after they defied cultural conventions that forbid women from marrying someone considered to be from an inferior ethnic group. Masood says: “My wife brought dishonour to her family, and the only mistake she made was that she married me”.
His 27 year old wife, Shazia is the daughter of a powerful ethnic leader of the Pushtoon in Pakistan’s Mohmand Agency area. Masood, 33, is a Pathan from Peshawar, and considered by the Pushtoon to be socially inferior. Their marriage resulted in death threats which forced the couple into hiding in Islamabad.
“My office was set on fire and I narrowly escaped death”, says Masood, showing the scars on his body from the arson attack. They were constantly on the run, moving from one city to another to escape their pursuers, who were working for Shazia’s powerful family.
The children were victims of the persecution too. They were saved by school staff when their relatives tried to kidnap them from school.
The family finally fled to the UK in December 2006 after Masood paid an ‘agent’ to organise their safe escape. They settled in Manchester, but were refused asylum in January this year.
Masood says their asylum claim failed because they had no legal aid or representation. After they were prevented from appealing, he sought help from his MP, Tony Lloyd. But it was too late, and the family home was raided by one of the immigration service’s notorious ‘removal squads’ early in the morning of 4 June.
Shazia, who was pregnant at that time, says: “It was terrible for us. The door was knocked in a terrible way. I saw police cars and other vans in the street, and many people, some in uniform and some in plain clothes”. It is a day she says she does not want to remember.
Masood says the squad members were very aggressive. “As I opened the door without my shirt on, they grabbed me, put me on sofa, and ordered me not to move,” he says. Two male and two female officers went upstairs and dragged Shazia out of the bedroom.
Shazia says: “The room door was knocked very loudly and as I opened, two women pulled me out. They held me tightly and said ‘do not move’”. They ordered her to hurry up and pack some clothes. At this point, Shazia felt sick and asked to speak with her doctor. She says her mobile phone was grabbed and she was told she could contact her doctor while in detention. br>“As I came downstairs, I saw Masood was in bad condition, and I screamed”, she says, adding that one of the female officers referred to her as ‘disgusting’. She says: “They did not let me go to the bathroom even though I begged them to”. She wanted to take her children for a routine morning wash. Zarrar says: “They didn’t let us go into the bathroom and they took us in sleeping clothes”. br>Masood says they were bundled into a van and driven to Dallas Court, Manchester, where their photographs and fingerprints were taken. They were later taken to the Pakistan Consulate in Manchester where they were met by the Community Welfare Counsel Saif Ur Rehman. Masood says: “I recognised him as Pushtoon, which is the same ethnic group as my wife”. br>This set alarm bells ringing for both Masood and Shazia. Masood alleges that Saif failed to provide them with consular assistance and even accused them of paying the price for marrying against their family’s wishes. Saif denies these allegations.
They were put in the van again and were told they were being taken to Yarl’s Wood detention centre in Bedford. “I did not know that Bedford is very far from Manchester, The van was not well ventilated and Shazia was feeling suffocated”, Masood says. His desperate knocks on the van mirror and shouts for the guards to allow Shazia fresh air went unheeded. He feared that his pregnant wife might collapse. He says the guards just turned up the radio .
Fizzar, aged 9, says they were frightened, terrified and were crying throughout their ordeal. He adds: “It was very difficult to breathe. The van was like a cage”.
Masood complained about their horrendous journey when they finally arrived at Yarl’s Wood at about 6pm. He says: “I told them that they treated us as if we are animals and that my wife is pregnant, and my children are terrified”. He says he was shouted at and told to shut up by one of the officers.
By the time they went through the official checks at the detention centre it was 7:30pm. “The children started crying because they were hungry and they had not eaten for 24 hours”, he says. But they were told by the detention centre staff that the café was closed. “We had to wait till morning, and all night my boys were hungry. By the time they got food at 9am it had been 36 hours since their last meal” he says.
Their ordeal was not over. Masood says: “My wife could not get any medical treatment or checks because the detention centre’s doctor refused to talk with my wife’s doctor”. They promised that a midwife would come and check her in two days’ time, but this never happened.
They were released after three days in detention and are now awaiting a judicial review. However, for the whole family, the trauma of removal and fear of what the future might bring lingers on.