Calls for Home Office to protect asylum seekers after accommodation violence
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Exclusive: NGOs say safeguarding policies need improving, as victims tell of multiple assaults and incidents of race hate. NGOs are calling for improvements in UK government safeguarding policies after multiple acts of violence and race hate incidents in Home Office accommodation.
The incidents include 20 assaults of asylum seekers in one small area of Essex and a separate incident where another was attacked and threatened with a knife by a man recently released into shared asylum accommodation from prison on licence. Slices of bacon were also laid over food belonging to Muslim residents stored in a communal kitchen fridge.
NGOs say the Home Office is failing to conduct adequate risk assessments to ensure its asylum accommodation is safe. In the recent incident where an asylum seeker was assaulted and threatened with a knife, the victim told the Guardian: “I thought this man was going to kill me. [The] Home Office has finally agreed to move me but I’m having problems sleeping because every time I close my eyes I see that knife.”.
A second man in the same house who has also been threatened has launched an emergency legal action calling on the Home Office to move him to a safer place. “I am very scared,” he said. “We never had a problem before. This man told us he is involved with drugs and had just come out of prison following a drugs conviction. He wanted me and the other asylum seekers in the house to deliver drugs for him but we have refused. I was so shocked when I woke up a few days ago and found our food covered with slices of bacon. This is a hate crime against Muslims.”.
