The living hell of asylum seekers

"Most people here are depressed because of the boredom, loneliness and because they are waiting to hear about their cases,” says an asylum seeker based in the State owned Kinsale Accommodation Centre in Cork city. We’ll call him Raymond. He is one of many who have been left in a horrible state of limbo, while the State decides whether or not to deport him. Unwilling to be identified for fear that he might be victimised by the authorities, Raymond tells a chilling story of deprivation and official indifference since coming to Ireland.
Raymond talks about being insulted and abused. About being given baby food that was past its Best Before date for his children. About people who are sick and in need of treatment. About a regime that is impersonal and dehumanised. It is impossible to verify if what he has to say is true in every respect, and when contacted by Hot Press, management declined to answer questions or discuss the matter.
But while nobody staying at the centre will give their name, for fear of being discriminated against, and possibly relocated or deported for speaking out about conditions, they support the view that the circumstances in which they are being kept are horribly degrading.
Make no mistake, things are bad here. People are often at the end of their tether when they arrive and inadequate conditions can only exacerbate that. Hot Press has learned of at least two suicide attempts, in the recent past, on the part of asylum seekers staying in the KInsale Accommodation Centre. If things don’t change, there may well be more.
Owned by the State, Kinsale accommodates over 250 asylum seekers. The institution is contracted out to a company called Eurest to run (see panel). Last month residents, along with those of a nearby hostel that also accommodates asylum seekers, protested on the streets of Cork over the conditions in which they were being kept. I visited the place to see for myself if their complaints were justified. In many respects, what I saw was worse than I would have imagined.
For a start, the centre is shocking in its prison-like atmosphere and conditions. The entrance is guarded with security barriers, while a permanent guard sits on watch inside the adjacent security hut.
The centre comprises 10 or so miserable looking, grey, pre-fab portacabins – these are the asylum seekers’ living quarters. Men and women are separated into different blocks. All visitors must go through two sets of security barriers and residents are not permitted to bring guests into the accommodation area.
Security cameras monitor the reception area and are visible on the outside of every building. It is more like a high security prison than an accommodation centre for vulnerable people in need of assistance after escaping war and misery in their own countries. Welcome to the new Ireland.
The ‘inmates’ have to sign in every day at reception. The only area for social activities for all 250 is a room that seats about 20 people, which has one TV and a few pool tables. Every night at 10pm, security guards switch off the TV and turn out the lights. It is fuck off and go to bed time. Unsurprisingly, the residents say they are treated like animals, although criminals might be as accurate a comparison. In some instances, three or four people are forced to share the small rooms. The bathrooms and showers are all shared, and numbered, just like a prison.
The Reception and Integration Agency (RIA) is the government agency responsible for asylum seekers and refugees. Operating under the aegis of the Department of Justice, its website has a section entitled ‘Coming To Ireland As An Asylum Seeker’, which is kindly written in seven different languages, including Arabic.
The opening message is not, as you would imagine, an expression of sympathy for those who might be considering what for anyone is a hugely drastic step of fleeing one’s own country and seeking political asylum elsewhere. On the contrary, it offers words of warning: “Some of the information in circulation regarding the entitlements and obligations of people applying for asylum in Ireland is inaccurate and can give a false impression of the support system which is in place here for those entering the asylum process.”
Whatever ‘impression’ asylum seekers might have had before they arrived, the reality once they are here is often shameful. The conditions in some of the accommodation centres are terrible: Kinsale is not alone in this regard. The fact that asylum seekers are allowed neither to work nor to attend full time education, and receive a mere €19.10 a week per adult and €9.60 per child adds poverty, frustration and depression to their lot.
This is a direct result of Government policy. The FF/PD coalition decided in 1999 that asylum seekers would no longer receive rent allowance in private rented accommodation and instead would be housed through ‘direct provision’ in designated accommodation units such as the Kinsale Centre.
In total, 4,862 asylum seekers are currently in 46 centres across the country. Nine of these, including the Kinsale Centre, are State-owned and 37 are contracted out to private companies.
In 2003, the Free Legal Aid Centre produced a report entitled ‘Direct Discrimination’ that criticised the imposition of ‘direct provision’ on asylum seekers.
It found that many of the health, legal, social and cultural needs of asylum seekers are not being met under the scheme. “The basic needs payment of €19.10 is so low that it can only provide for a fraction of the day-to-day requisites of asylum seekers,” said FLAC. “It is no surprise that asylum seekers regularly seek the support of groups such as the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.”
Just how badly wrong things can go is reflected in the list of grievances that have surfaced about the lives the residents of Kinsale have been forced to lead.
- In a sad indictment of the direct provision system, some female residents in the Kinsale centre have turned to prostitution in order to ensure they have enough money to look after their children.
- Muslim residents of the Kinsale centre protested last October over a denial of their religious beliefs and civil liberties. As part of the Islamic festival of Ramadan, they must fast and are only allowed to eat after 7pm but food in the centre was only provided during daytime hours so they were left without food. The Department of Justice have informed Hot Press that arrangements have now been made to accommodate residents during Ramadan. However many of those who protested have been relocated.
- Two residents were arrested at the latest protest. One of those, Ezuma Smith from Liberia, was forced to leave the centre and as a result is effectively homeless. The other arrestee, an Iraqi Muslim woman, claims to have been strip-searched. She is known to have attempted suicide after the protest.
- This woman is now mentally ill and regularly attends the psychiatric ward of Cork University Hospital. Other residents say that they were threatened with transferral and deportation by the RIA and are now too scared to speak out publicly.
One resident explains: “Many people in here say they would rather die in silence than risk being sent home prematurely just because they aired their views.”
He continues: “This is not a place to live with children. I’m almost going crazy. I’m not allowed to work. Maybe at the end of all this suffering, I will be sent home. Where will I start from then? My two children are Irish citizens. We are scared. There are people in here who are suffering from trauma yet they are not being helped.”
One woman at the centre lost one of her Irish born children and the other two suffer from bronchitis and liver trouble, he says. How does she survive on 19 euro a week? She also faces deportation. There is no playground for the children.
The funding of a local immigrant support centre was cut by the RIA. According to activists, this was because they supported residents’ protests. The funding has since been reinstated but this is not the first time the State has cut funding from organizations critical of government policy. Funding for the Community Workers Cooperative was recently cut, as they are outspoken critics of government inaction on poverty.
(The Department of Justice has replied to Hot Press at the time of going to press, and refuted that any residents of the Kinsale centre have been mistreated. They claim that there is a complaints procedure in place which the asylum seekers did not follow.)