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Showing posts with label asylum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label asylum. Show all posts

Monday, 2 July 2018

Artlyst - Sam Ivin: Physically Scratched Portraits Of Asylum Seekers Exhibited

My latest piece for Artlyst reviews Sam Ivin’s Lingering Ghosts exhibition at St Martin-in-the-Fields until 31 August which offers a space in which to contemplate the often underreported plight of those who wait for the possibility of asylum in a place of limbo; without work, with little money and in temporary accommodation:

"Such a simple idea, yet one which combines prophecy and emotive impact as it speaks truth to power – Sam Ivin physically scratches portraits of asylum seekers erasing their eyes in order to convey the frustration engendered by the ‘hostile environment’ for migrants, introduced by Theresa May as Home Secretary, which blights lives and erases the identities of those detained in its clutches."

My other Artlyst articles and interviews are:
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Michael Kiwanuka - Always Waiting.

Sunday, 5 June 2016

Asylum claims being made by Christian converts are being dealt with unfairly by officials

Refugees converting to Christianity from other faiths including Islam are having their applications turned down if the Home Office suspects their conversion was motivated by a desire to claim asylum.

Asylum seekers coming to Britain must attend an asylum interview with assessors on arrival, where they are asked "basic knowledge questions" about their new faith.

A report published by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Religious Freedom has said that asylum claims being made by Christian converts are being dealt with unfairly by officials. Too often officials are asking about Bible trivia, rather than probing what someone really believes.

Baroness Berridge, a member of All-Party Parliamentary Group, told the BBC that the current form of processing converts was unfair.

"Caseworkers who are making decisions that can be life and death for people were not supported necessarily and trained properly to understand the lived reality of faith."

Reverend Mark Miller, who advises the Home Office about converts - like those in his congregation at Stockton Parish Church - said officials were failing to "understand" why people had converted to Christianity.

"Asylum assessors should be trying to understand why it is someone has left behind the faith of their family their faith of their upbringing, and chosen to follow another faith."

"The guidelines say that this is a major decision that has been made and assessors should be understanding why this decision has come about."

Asylum assessors "should be trying to understand the difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge."

Having seen the current system in operation myself, I fully endorse this report, its findings, and the urgent need for caseworkers to be trained properly to understand the lived reality of faith.

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Ooberfuse - We Believe.

Monday, 28 March 2016

Disaster response: Lahore bombing

A powerful bomb blast rocked Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore on Easter Sunday evening. The blast is believed to have killed over 60 people and to have injured over 200 local police have said.

In Pakistan Christians have a long running tradition of celebrating as a family at local park fun fairs after their morning devotions. This practice has never been a secret and after the Lahore Twin Church bomb attack took a low death toll due to the tight voluntary security workforces at both churches, a pernicious Taliban splinter group targeted Christian women and children at a popular Easter venue at Gulshan-i-Iqbal Park. The bomb that was packed full of ball bearings was set of near the children's area with intent to pick off the most vulnerable of visitors to the park. A large number of families, especially women and children, were present when the blast took place Many of these are believed to be Christians as it is a common tradition for families to go to a local funfair to celebrate the birth of Christ after their Easter devotions.

The British Pakistani Christian Association has initiated an immediate disaster recovery and calls for as much help as can as be given as number of fatalities and casualties are increasing by the hour. Donations will be used to support victims with funeral costs, medical fees, rehabilitation of those injured, trauma counselling and restoration of families who will have lost a main bread-winner or will be laid of work for some time. Details of how to donate can be found by clicking (here). The BCPA's petition can be signed here (click here).

Casualties have been taken to local hospitals including Lahore General Hospital which does not have a special burns unit. It is believed the attack took place during the celebrations of Easter in an attempt to target Christians. Distraught family members have gathered outside local hospitals and the government has announced a three day mourning period. Read full story (click here).

Also see the BCPA's story on the BBC documentary 'Thailand's Asylum Crackdown,'. Chris Rogers has been undercover in Thailand to expose how the country treats its asylum seekers. Pakistani Christians fleeing extremist violence are among the second largest group of asylum seekers in Thailand. Many are routinely rounded up and sent indefinitely to immigration detention centres or locked up in jails. Their crime: to be seeking asylum, in a country which does not recognise refugees. Wilson Chowdhry Chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association helped Chris Rogers, and organised direct contact with victims being helped by the BPCA. Read full story and watch video (click here).

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Ooberfuse ft Archbishop Warda of Iraq - We Are One.

Tuesday, 8 September 2015

A Statement on the Migrant Crisis

The following statement was issued by St Martin-in-the-Fields earlier today:

A Statement on the Migrant Crisis
Revd Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields


The plight of those entering Europe in large numbers seeking safety, hope and a future is distressing and stirring. As a community we are made up of people who are themselves refugees, many who have known oppression, several who have themselves migrated to make a living in a new country, and a number, including myself, whose parents or grandparents came to this land fleeing persecution.

We recognise and affirm the actions many congregations and communities are taking to befriend and support migrants. Our own ministry with asylum-seekers has been a source of growth and discovery and a blessing to our whole community. We celebrate the warmth and welcome that migrants have received in several parts of Europe.

We wish to challenge some of the widely-stated assumptions surrounding the migrant crisis.
  • We challenge the notion that efforts must be entirely focused on addressing conflict in the countries of origin. Intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya didn’t work; non-intervention in Syria didn’t work either. There is no simple off-shore solution.
  • We challenge the conviction that Britain is ‘full’ and there is neither space nor employment for newcomers. Our own community of staff and volunteers is immeasurably enriched by people from all over the world who have made our city their home – some junior, others who have risen to senior roles; their skills and enthusiasm are a blessing to us all.
  • We challenge the way immigration is discussed as a question of duty – of whether Britain is obliged to take in people who are fleeing persecution elsewhere, how one can verify that the claim is genuine, whether one has to limit the number even of the persecuted, and whether anyone migrating largely for economic benefit has any right to be here. We maintain that migrants have always, and will always, be a source of initiative and energy, inspiration and renewal. The British population is almost entirely made up of people whose ancestors were migrants for a host of reasons: the nation’s dynamism lies in the confluence of diverse cultures.
  • We appreciate the drawbacks of making migration easier and the risks of thereby exacerbating the circumstances that bring it about. But we are a nation that loves to back the underdog; we are a people whose finest hour has been in standing up in the face of oppression; and we long for our country to show its true colours today.
A prayer in the midst of the migrant crisis

Wilderness God, your Son was a displaced person in Bethlehem, a refugee in Egypt, and had nowhere to lay his head in Galilee. Bless all who have nowhere to lay their head today, who find themselves strangers on earth, pilgrims to they know not where, facing rejection, closed doors, suspicion and fear. Give them companions in their distress, hope in their wandering, and safe lodging at their journey’s end. And make us a people of grace, wisdom and hospitality, who know that our true identity is to be lost, until we find our eternal home in you. Through Christ our rejected yet risen Lord. Amen.

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Thursday, 6 August 2015

Breaking boundaries with love

This was my reflection at yesterday's lunchtime Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Jesus seems to have been deliberately rude to the Canaanite Woman – a woman from another race and culture – that he encountered in today's Gospel reading (Matthew 15. 21 - 28). He began by making it clear that she was not one of the chosen people for whom he had come and continued by insulting her and her people in calling them 'dogs'.

Why was he so uncharacteristically rude? His disciples had wanted him to send the woman away; ostensibly because of the fuss she was making but, more probably, because she was not one of 'them'. Therefore, Jesus threw all their prejudices at the woman both as a way of confronting his disciples with the ugliness of their prejudice and as a provocation that revealed the faith within this woman.

In the face of seeming denial and insult, she persisted in her request and in her faith in Jesus' ability and willingness to heal. On the back of this tangible example of faith, Jesus was then able to challenge the prejudices of his disciples (as I think was his intent from the outset) by pointing out the depth of faith which he had uncovered in a woman of another race, culture and faith.

We can see these same issues recurring in our own day and time in the way in which the debate about immigration has changed enabling the whole apparatus of the state to now be bent towards reducing immigration. The effect can be vividly seen in the issues faced by and the endurance of those who come to the Sunday International Group at St Martins-in-the-Fields. These people gather once a week for food, a shower, to wash their clothes, meet others in the same cruel dilemma as themselves and to garner what legal advice is applicable to their situation.

We know from their experiences that the Bishop of Dover was absolutely correct when he accused senior political figures, including the prime minister, of forgetting their humanity and attacked elements of the media for propagating a “toxicity” designed to spread antipathy towards migrants. He said, “We’ve become an increasingly harsh world, and when we become harsh with each other and forget our humanity then we end up in these standoff positions. We need to rediscover what it is to be a human, and that every human being matters.”

Seeing this story of the Canaanite woman as a deliberate challenge to the prejudices of his disciples is consistent with the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10. 25 - 37) where Jesus tells a group of God's chosen people a story in which one of their own receives help, not from his own people, but from a man of another race, culture and faith. In that story, Jesus went further than his already radical teaching of love for our enemies by telling a story in which a member of God's chosen people received God's love and help from a person that he considered to be outside the people of God and an enemy of his own people.

However we choose to draw the boundaries of who is and who is not one of God's people, Jesus breaks through those boundaries with his love for all people, his sacrificial giving for all, and his recognition of all that those who are excluded actually have to offer to those who exclude. The strapline of St Michael’s Camden Town - 'Making a family out of strangers’ - is a good summary of this aspect of Jesus’ teaching and ministry.

It is a helpful practice, which comes from Ignatian spirituality, to try to place ourselves fully within a story from the Gospels by becoming onlooker-participants and giving full rein to our imagination. If we were part of this story, would we be with the disciples, who wanted Jesus to send the Canaanite woman away because she was not one of 'them', or would we be with Jesus, who challenged the prejudices of his disciples by pointing out the depth of faith which he had uncovered in a woman of another race, culture and faith? Our answer to that question will determine the extent to which we seek to make a family out of strangers ourselves.

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Mumford & Sons - Hopeless Wanderer.

Monday, 16 April 2012

Resurrection: chain reactions

Jesus’ resurrection is like a chain reaction causing a resurrection or transformation to occur in the disciples too (John 20. 19-31 and Acts 4. 32-35). They change from being people who desert and deny Jesus, who hide away because they are afraid of the authorities. They change into people who meet publicly as Jesus’ followers, through whom miracles and wonders are done, and who share their belongings or sell what they have in order to give to others. It is an incredible transformation and it happens because Jesus comes into their midst and they receive his Spirit.

Each of us, like the disciples, faces on a daily basis uncertainties and fears about our lives and faith. The disciples were afraid of what they authorities might do to them and this is a reality for many of us today. For instance, we have been reading recently in our local press from Christians today who are convinced that our government wants to prevent Christians from speaking openly about our faith. I don’t subscribe to that view myself but for some people that is how they perceive reality. For others of our congregation, their fear of the authorities has been to do with the way in which their asylum case will be dealt with. These are just some of the reasons why we might feel fear.

Thomas was not afraid instead he was uncertain. He knew that Jesus had died so, despite all that the other disciples told him about Jesus’ resurrection, how could Jesus now be alive? Again, we will have many reasons for uncertainty ourselves. Unlike the disciples, we cannot see Jesus physically and therefore we wonder is he real and am I just making all this up? We can also feel the same uncertainty about decisions we have made about our future – are we in the right job, living in the right area, are our children going to the right school, and so on and so on?

What the disciples felt in these stories is what we all feel ourselves much of the time – different situations, different reasons but the same feeling, concerns and worries!

Now the change that occurs - the transformation that happens to them, this personal resurrection that comes for each one - is not a change in their circumstances but a change in themselves. What happens is that they become aware of Jesus with them and receive his Spirit. They are still in danger from the authorities and they will spend the remainder of their lives not seeing Jesus physically but because they know Jesus with them and receive his Spirit they are able to come out of hiding, face the dangers and begin to do and say the things that Jesus did and said in their own lives.

The point about the disciples being behind locked doors and Jesus appearing to them may not be so much to do with the sense that Jesus was no longer restricted by space and time (although that is significant) and more to do with the disciples becoming aware that he was now always with them wherever they were, if they acknowledge and receive him. Isn’t that what Jesus is saying to Thomas, “happy are those who believe without seeing me.”

Michael Frost has written:

“We have locked God into the so-called sacred realms of church and healings and miracles and marvels … We seem to be trying so hard to “bring down fire from heaven” in our worship services while all along God’s favour is to be found in sunshine on our faces, the sea lapping at our toes, picking our children up at school, or a note from a caring friend.”

As we go about our daily lives are we aware that Jesus is with us in the ordinary things we see and do or do we only expect to meet with Jesus when we are in church or at some other super-charged spiritual occasion. The point about the resurrection experiences of the disciples is that Jesus is with them where they are if they recognise him. Often, the stories tell us, that they don’t recognise him initially. Mary mistakes him for the gardener and the disciples on the Emmaus Road don’t recognise him until he breaks the bread. Jesus is with us where we are, wherever we are, but often we do not recognise him.

How can we recognise him? We recognise him through his Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit, Paul tells us in his letter to the Galatians, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self-control. Where we see these things in ourselves, in others and in the world, we can be certain that Jesus is there.

If you watch the TV News and read the newspapers regularly you can easily be convinced that love, joy, peace etc. do not exist within our world. There is a story of bad news that is frequently being told but underneath, hidden and obscured by that bad news story is a different story of good news that doesn’t make the headlines but is the reality of our lives, our church and our faith. This is what we read about in Acts 4: 32-35 – people who are one in heart and mind, who share with one another everything they have, who witness to the resurrection of Jesus and who distribute money according to need. As a church we seek to demonstrate the Spirit of Jesus to our community through our community involvements and through all that goes on in the St John’s Centre.

As we meet with Jesus today in this building, in this service, in each other and in our lives as we go away from this place, may we take his Spirit with us and share the fruits of his Spirit in our homes, communities and workplaces throughout the week.

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World Wide Message Tribe (WWMT) - Revolution.

Tuesday, 28 September 2010

Epidemic of mistreatment in the asylum system

Yesterday, the Guardian reported allegations from lawyers that there is an "epidemic of mistreatment" in the asylum system.

Shamik Dutta, of the law firm Fisher Meredith, was one of the lawyers reported and said he had dealt with 15 or 20 cases in the past three years. "The callous and unlawful mistreatment of detainees is continuing, and is not just harming extremely vulnerable and damaged individuals but also costing the economy millions of pounds … it is clear there is an epidemic of mistreatment leading to civil claims going through the courts."

David Wood, strategic director for the criminality and detention group at the UK Border Agency, said the agency sought to exercise its power to detain people "reasonably and lawfully, [while] maintaining effective immigration control and protecting the public from harm". Yet officials accepted that the figure for special payments made in compensation over the past three years runs to millions of pounds.

From the limited contact I have had with UK Border Agency to date I fully support the case being made by these lawyers against the way in which the Agency and its staff carry out their responsibilities.
 
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Solomon Burke - None Of Us Are Free.

Monday, 16 August 2010

Division & crisis

“The great composer Ludwig Van Beethoven use sometimes to play a trick on polite salon audiences, especially when he guessed that they weren’t really interested in serious music. He would perform a piece on the piano, one of his own slow movements perhaps, which would be so gentle and beautiful that everyone would be lulled into thinking the world was a soft, cosy place, where they could think beautiful thoughts and relax into semi-slumber. Then, just as the final notes were dying away, Beethoven would bring his whole forearm down with a crash across the keyboard, and laugh at the shock he gave to the assembled company.” (LUKE for everyone, Tom Wright)

In reflecting on this story, Tom Wright suggests that:

“there may come a time when Christian teachers and preachers find, like Beethoven with his salon audiences, that people have become too cosy and comfortable. Sometimes, for instance, the selections of Bible readings for church services omit all the passages that speak of judgement, of warnings, of the stern demands of God’s holiness. Maybe there are times when, like Jesus himself on this occasion, we need to wake people up with a crash. There are, after all, plenty of warnings in the Bible about the dangers of going to sleep on the job.”

What Jesus says Luke 12. 49-59 about coming to bring division instead of peace seems a lot like Beethoven’s crash across the keyboard which is designed to wake everyone up. It certainly seems like that for us. After all, Jesus is the Prince of Peace isn’t he? The one who brought peace between humanity and God, and also between Jew and Gentile, through his death on the cross? That’s what the Bible tells us about him isn’t it? That’s how we think about Jesus! Yet here he is saying, “Prince of Peace, eh? No. Prince of Division, more likely!”

Sometimes, we need the piano crash to wake us up to reality and Jesus is never less than real! Here he confronts us with the reality that once the good news about him gets into households there’ll be no peace and families will split up over it.

We have our own example of this reality at St John's Seven Kings at the moment. A parishioner was baptised here in March as a sign of his earlier conversion from Islam. He has experienced persecution from friends and acquaintances as a result and received threats of harm from his family if he were to return to Pakistan. Despite this, he has spent the months between his baptism and last week when he was able to return to St Johns, in Immigration Detention Centres because the UK Border Agency has refused his asylum claim and want him sent back to Pakistan. He is only here because the High Court have agreed to a Judicial Review of the decision made by the UK Border Agency.

So, as we reflect on the reality and pressures of division that can result from hearing and responding to the good news of Jesus Christ, let us pray for success for this person in that High Court Judicial Review which is still to come and for a greater acknowledgement by our Government of the reality of persecution for those who choose to convert from Islam to Christianity and of those who live as Christians in countries where persecution from those of other faiths or none because of their beliefs is commonplace.

Jesus was real about the reality of division and wants us to be too; to anticipate it, to acknowledge it, to face it, to deal with it. It is after all, what the prophets foretold as:

“The warnings he gives about fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and so on includes a quotation from Micah 7.6, a passage in which the prophet warns of imminent crisis and urges that the only way forward is complete trust in God.”

Jesus sees a crisis coming for those to whom he speaks; a crisis of which his own fate will be the central feature. He will be rejected and killed but will rise from death before ascending to his Father and sending his Holy Spirit on all who follow him. His validity as the Son of God will then be clearly confirmed when his prophecy about the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem comes true in AD 70.

Jesus knows that all this is about to come and “is astonished and dismayed that so few of his contemporaries can see it at all”:

“why can’t they look at what’s going on all around them, from the Roman occupation to the oppressive regime of Herod, from the wealthy and arrogant high priests in Jerusalem to the false agendas of the Pharisees – and, in the middle of it all, a young prophet announcing God’s kingdom and healing the sick? Why can’t they put two and two together, and realize that this is the moment all Israel’s history has been waiting for? Why can’t they see that the crisis is coming?

If they could, they would be well advised to take action while there was still time.”

“Israel, rebelling against God’s plan that she should be the light of the world, and thus eager for violent uprising against Rome,” was liable at any moment to face the complete ruin that finally arrived in AD 70 with the destruction of Jerusalem.

“The church has from early on read this chapter as a warning that each generation must read the signs of the times, the great movements of people, governments, nations and policies, and react accordingly.” And, if we find ourselves caught up in crisis, so be it. What else should we expect?

Except that we don’t currently expect it because the church in the West, like the rest of our consumerist culture has become cosy and comfortable and in need of waking up to harsh reality. What are the signs of our times? Here are a few from the national press over the past two weeks:

• former Bank of England rate-setter, William Butler, now chief economist at the investment banking giant Citigroup, saying that, “We lived beyond our means year after year, and the nation collectively has to consume less.”

• the number of people suffering from the massive floods in Pakistan exceeds 13 million — more than the combined total of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the United Nations said Monday. The suffering of people in Pakistan comes alongside the landslides in China also caused by heavy rains which seem part of a worldwide pattern of climate change affecting the poorest nations hardest of all.

• Reflecting on the rise of superbugs which are resistant to antibiotics, Thursday’s Guardian found parallels between our need to conserve the antibiotics we have and our need to conserve the oil we have, because supplies have peaked, and to reduce its pollutant effects.

Overconsumption in the West, the long-term effect of pollutants on our climate, the peaking of energy supplies, the rise of viruses resistant to medication are combining to create a point of crisis which is directed particularly at those, such as the 13 million in Pakistan, who are the poorest and most vulnerable in our world.

If we are to read the signs of our times accurately, then we need firstly to respond with generosity to funding appeals for relief in Pakistan, China, the Niger and wherever natural disasters occur in future. But we also need to review the underlying causes and the need for a radical simplifying of our Western way of life and seeing that “the inevitable and profound changes ahead can have a positive outcome … [leading] to the rebirth of local communities, which will grow their own food, generate their own power, and build their own houses using local materials.” (The Transition Handbook)

Last year at St John's Seven Kings thought about division and crisis through our Dealing with disagreement Bible Studies which introduced us to the idea of peak oil. In September, we have the opportunity to consider these issues further through a trip to Mersea Island where we will hear from Sam Norton, the Rector of Mersea Island, who has regularly blogged about the coming impact of peak oil. I urge us all to think seriously about the underlying causes of our contemporary crisis, praying for those in Pakistan, China and the Niger currently caught up in the effects of that crisis and for those dealing with the reality of division as a consequence of their faith.

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The Clash - London Calling.

Saturday, 7 August 2010

Asylum rights & wrongs

In 2007 the Evangelical Alliance produced ‘alltogether for Asylum Justice’ a report seeking to address injustices in the asylum system.

The specific situation which the report seeks to address is that of asylum seekers who have genuinely chosen to follow the Christian faith once in the UK and then apply for asylum on the grounds of religious persecution. Having had their asylum application refused, they face being sent back to countries where it is not safe for them to practice their faith. Christian human rights organisations such as Christian Solidarity Worldwide and Release International know it is often unsafe to return a practising Christian to an Islamic country let alone return an apostate (a convert to Christianity) to an Islamic country where conversion is illegal. Therefore, there are grave implications for returning asylum seekers who have converted to Christianity to countries like Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The report concludes that, while recognising that the issue of faith testing is complex, there is room for improvement in the current system used to determine the genuineness of an appellant’s conversion. While recognising that objective questioning is used to determine the faith of an appellant, there are a number of problems with this system.

Firstly, many of the questions used cannot give a true representation of the appellant’s faith because they are: a) based on western Christian culture (e.g. ‘How do you cook a turkey for Christmas?’); b) insensitive to the particular type of Christianity that the appellant has been exposed to (e.g. asking a Pentecostal convert about Anglican liturgy); c) asking things which aren’t even in the Bible (e.g. such as knowing the names of the thieves crucified on the crosses alongside Jesus or the name of the forbidden fruit ).

Secondly, questions of this nature are insufficient to grasp the genuineness of an appellant’s faith. This can only be fully understood if the leader of the church which the appellant has been attending gives an account of their conversion and Christian faith. The church leader ought to be able to give evidence of a changed lifestyle and/or behaviour, an interest in the Bible and in sharing their faith with others.
 
Thirdly, country information used to determine whether it is safe for a practising Christian to be returned to countries where apostates are persecuted is often inaccurate.
 
Having had recent experience of supporting a parishioner who is in the situation addressed by this report, it seems to me that the issues identified in this report remain in the system as currently operated. I am therefore seeking ways and means by which there could be further lobbying of the Government on this issue.

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The Clash - I Fought the Law.