People of Shetland unite to save failed asylum-seekers from deportation

Furious islanders tell Home Office: ‘We won’t let you take these families from our community’

By Alan Crawford

11 April 2004, Sunday Herald, Scotland
 
Hazel Minn sits in her aunt and uncle’s house overlooking the clear green waters of the Ura Firth and waits for a knock at the door that would end her dream of a future in Shetland for her children and herself.

Minn studied history at university in Rangoon, in her native Burma, and wants to enter the caring professions or perhaps the hospitality sector in Shetland. Instead, she and her adopted sons Simon, 11, and Vincent, 10, face imminent deportation into the hands of Burma’s military junta after the Home Office rejected her plea for asylum a fortnight ago.

Thirty miles south in the island capital, Lerwick, Tanya Koolmatrie, 30, and her Shetlander partner Davie Thomason, 55, play with their baby boy Magnus-Ché – that’s Ché, as in Ché Guevara – in the house where Thomason’s parents and grandparents lived and died.

Thomason and Koolmatrie, an Aboriginal Australian, met in southeast Australia five years ago, but decided to return to his native land in June 2002 to build a future together. That future looks to be shortlived since Koolmatrie is also facing deportation. Thomason says if Tanya is forced to leave with young Magnie, he will not hesitate to join them, and another young family will have turned their backs on the Northern Isles.

But something is stirring in these islands against the perceived injustice of both cases. Elsewhere in the UK, asylum seekers are demonised and shunned. Here in Shetland a campaign is gathering pace to keep the families in the islands, by means of direct action if necessary. Petitions have appeared in the small community shops dotted throughout Shetland, the Shetland Times has backed their case and there is support from the church and the council. A local MP is seeking a meeting with the new immigration minister to challenge the Home Secretary’s ruling.

Willie Ross, a campaign organiser, said they were not having to work very hard to generate support for both families.

Ross, a civil engineer who came to Shetland from Moray-shire 24 years ago, added: “There’s a lot of us involved who certainly won’t let them forcibly remove Tanya and Magnie or Hazel and the two boys without making a noise about it.”

Shetland’s population is witnessing the same decline as that of the Scottish mainland 200 miles distant, and the bitter irony that neither Koolmatrie nor Minn would seem to constitute the fresh talent sought by the Scottish Executive is lost on nobody here. But there is more to the vociferous reaction. Shetland isn’t immune to racism, yet the enforced expulsion of visitors to these islands, especially ones keen to live and work in the community, breaks a centuries-old tradition of welcoming strangers.

And the fact that Shetland is still a small, if spread-out community of around 21,000 souls – down from 24,000 in the oil heyday – means these families are not faceless individuals but real people with names, homes, cares and hopes, known to those around them. That an authority 800 miles away is dictating who stays in these communities rankles further.

Sitting quietly in the small council development of Stucca, in the village of Hillswick, Minn seems paralysed by the prospect of leaving the house that has been her home for the last 23 months. As she watches patches of sun glinting off the waters of the voe and sheets of rain drifting in off the Atlantic, Minn says she loves the peace and quiet of Shetland.

“I like the people. They’re simple people. They’re honest and willing to help.”

Her adopted sons are popular and doing well at school. They all live with Minn’s Burmese aunt Lillian and her husband Bert Armstrong, residents of Shetland for 14 years.

The Minn family story is a complex one of ill-health, misfortune and poverty in Rangoon. Hazel says all she wants is “a decent life for the boys”.

She applied for political asylum since, as a student, she was involved in the pro-democracy protests of 1998. Her application was refused. An appeal on compassionate grounds was not granted. “She cried for two days solid,” Armstrong says.

“As far as we understand they can come at any time of the night or day. All we want to do is stay together as a family.”

Koolmatrie’s case is undoubtedly different, but has generated just as much feeling. The Home Office has refused her leave to stay as it isn’t satisfied that she and her family “intend to live permanently together”, a charge Koolmatrie and her partner angrily deny.

Koolmatrie says she has been given strength by the support they have received. “There’s this close-knit community which has stood by me and Magnie-Ché, which is part of the reason we want to stay in Shetland. Why would you want to leave when there’s community support like that around you?”

Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland, Alistair Carmichael, who was in Shetland last week to pursue the cases, said he was proud that, while the rest of the country “risks poisoning itself” over immigration and asylum, “a community like Shetland is still prepared to look at people living in its midst as individuals, and to say these people are not being fairly treated and we support them.

“That’s everything I could have hoped of Shetland and more,” he said.

For Hazel, Simon and Vincent, Tanya, Davie and Magnie, hope is all they have left.

Source: http://www.sundayherald.com/41169