In my own words
In my own words
“In my own words” is an initiative from The Testimony Project providing a platform for women refugees and those who support them to speak out about issues close to their heart. See below for a compilation of the most recent issues.
In my own words: Christine Bacon (Spring 2012)
Christine Bacon is originally from Australia, where she was an actor for many years until the Australian government’s actions towards asylum seekers and refugees urged her to take action. Christine coordinated an initiative called Actors for Refugees Australia, a network of actors who performed rehearsed readings of first-hand testimonies of individuals who had experienced the asylum system in Australia. On moving to the UK, Christine approached iceandfire, a theatre company that explores human rights stories through performance, and with them, she founded a UK version of the network. Actors for Human Rights has been iceandfire’s main outreach project for over five years now and has reached over 50,000 people across the UK.
Christine lends her voice to The Testimony Project.
Why do you do the work that you do?
It struck me that hearing the stories of people who have been through these things would help to change people’s perspectives; they certainly changed mine when I heard them. Once you know what really goes on you can’t really turn back.
What is the most pressing issue facing asylum seekers today?
There are many pressing problems, it is difficult to know which one to tackle first.
In recent months I would say legal aid and the closing of IAS and Refugee Migrant Justice. This has had massive implications for asylum seekers’ hopes of getting any kind of justice. Also the cuts to the Refugee Council and Refugee Action, two of the biggest frontline agencies, will have huge repercussions.
What change in government policy would you most like to see?
Ending detention. I think detaining someone who is not charged with any crime, detaining a child who is not charged with any crime for any length of time is a blot on any democratic society. It is unbelievable to me that there is no public outcry.
What’s the one piece of advice you’d give an asylum seeker?
To make connections with people in the UK. There are people who care and who want to help and who can help. Try to speak out as much as you can if you feel you are able to, make people aware of what you are going through because more often than not people will help you if you ask them to help. Don’t be scared to ask for help.
How can the ordinary person in the street help make a difference to improve the situation of asylum seekers?
In one of our scripts, Asylum Dialogues, that is what we explore. For example, there is a section of the script in which an asylum seeker with baby twins was released from detention and was just kicked out and expected make her way home on her own – from Bedford to Glasgow.
As well as the babies, she had all this luggage and she had no idea how she was going to manage. The ticket inspector asked her where she had been. When she told her, the Inspector couldn’t believe it. She didn’t know there were detention centres in the UK and she didn’t know that people like this woman were detained and that babies were detained. She made arrangements that at every station where this woman had to change that someone was there to help her with her bags, give her food. Basic human decency.
Just being aware that asylum seekers need help with basic things like that sometimes can help. Also arming yourself with information and making sure that if you do hear someone saying things that you know are not true, to correct them. That is how you start to change people’s perspectives.
What is the greatest challenge you have faced?
Reaching people who don’t know anything or who need to be challenged to think differently.
Last year we were invited to perform at the UK Border Agency and we did the Asylum Monologues to about 50 case owners there and one of the individuals whose testimony was included in the script came along and spoke to them afterwards, saying this is me 8 years later after giving me a negative decision, and this is what has happened to me and you have to realise what impact a wrong decision has on lives. Seeing her as a human being rather than a case was very successful.
What do you regard as your greatest achievement?
Starting Actors for Human Rights. I am proud of it and I am encouraged by the constant support that we have. Every day I have an email from another actor wanting to join us.
Who or what has been the greatest influence in your life?
In recent years it has been Noam Chomsky. I have started reading a lot of his work and I have been overwhelmed by his contribution to that way of thinking – challenging the official version as a matter of course and not taking anything which comes from official sources at face value. I have always been a bit like that but not really understood why or how to do it properly and he is an inspiration in that way.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
I’m not sure if I have been given it but I use it as a mantra is Gandhi’s– ‘be the change you want to see in the world. Rather than simply complain and get upset, if you want to see a change you should try to make it happen in your own sphere of influence
What is the one thing that you want to be remembered for?
That I was a decent human being!
Why does storytelling matter?
Story telling is one of those universal ways of conveying a message to people, engaging them and making them see that other human beings are just like them and I think that is what we try to achieve in most of what we do.
In my own words: Konstandonis Karapanagiotidis (Winter 2011)
Konstandinos Karapanagiotidis is the CEO and Founder of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 2001 with only a small group of people and limited resources ASRC is Australia’s leading asylum seeker organisation supporting over 2000 asylum seekers with medical care, welfare and direct aid. ASRC campaigns for social change at all levels, from grassroots to government policy. Working with committed staff and over 600 volunteers, the ASRC is a multi-award winning and independent human rights organisation.
Why do you do the work that you do?
I do what I do because it is not a choice. I don’t think there is anything more important than fighting for freedom of life or death. I do what I do because I want to honour the liberty of my parents, all their struggles and sacrifices. I do what I do because I identify with the people I fight for. I love what I do and I am inspired by what I do and that’s why I do what I do.
What is the most pressing issue facing asylum seekers today?
The most pressing issue right now is the refusal of the developed, industrialised world to have a compassionate, humane, lawful, ethical refugee process and policy. The biggest challenge is how we get the western world to actually change its conversation and its policies in the way in which it responds to people seeking asylum, from one that is punitive and deterrent-focused that criminalises and conflates asylum with terrorism and find a way that is equitable, humane and honours the treaties and conventions that it actually signs on to.
What change in government policy would you most like to see?
Most of all, the end of mandatory detention. Mandatory detention is inhumane, immoral, prohibitively expensive, unnecessary, and doesn’t work. The most wonderful thing I would love to see right now is the end of it and what already exists, which is the community processing of all people seeking asylum. Detention traumatises, institutionalises and damages people and I would love to see the end of that.
What’s the one piece of advice you’d give an asylum seeker?
You are resilient, you are strong. Do not lose hope. Do not give up. Keep fighting. Your story is important. You struggle is real. Your sacrifice is profound. You are not helpless; you are not weak; you are not powerless. You are a survivor. Whatever has got you to this point, will get you through this as well.
How can the ordinary person in the street help make a difference to improve the situation of asylum seekers?
The ordinary person can do one very simple thing, which is do something. Donate to an asylum seeking charity. Advocate. But most importantly, go and volunteer. Go and actually meet an asylum seeker. Tell someone seeking asylum [that] I am someone in my country that wants you here, that believes in you and that actually believes in the idea of the rule of law. I am someone who wants to hear your story, bear witness to it, break bread with you, and welcome you. Just do something.
What is the greatest challenge you have faced?
Number one has been trying to change Australia to develop a compassionate and humane approach on an issue that is politicised and driven by racism and intolerance. Number two, how do I keep my amazing, wonderful group of people who give their time and energy to my organisation from losing hope and not be broken by a country and culture that demonises and vilifies asylum seekers refugees? Number three, not losing hope and faith that how I am leading and what I am saying is resonating and can change things. And that what feels like a daily life battle, is a fight that can be won.
The greatest challenge is not betraying hope. Not losing faith in the goodness of people. The greatest challenge is believing that you can change the world no matter how much reality tells you otherwise.
What do you regard as your greatest achievement?
The organisation on its own has achieved three things, which we are really proud of in the state of Victoria. Access to the public health system for free medical care; free access to education for asylum seekers; and half price public transport. Another achievement is how the organisation is still here ten years later and has helped several thousand people through the process of seeking asylum and has been part of mobilising a movement that wasn’t there a decade ago.
Who or what has been the greatest influence in your life?
My greatest inspiration is my mum and dad. My dad had no materialism to him, no sense of judgement. He accepted everyone as they were and he had a profound work ethic and ability to sacrifice. What I learnt from my father was to take pride in my community. My mother, as she is a powerful and inspirational woman who taught me respect for women and the power for fighting for what you believe in.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
It was actually anti-advice. I was a social work student at the time on placement and my supervisor came to visit me. She turned to my supervisor and said, “Kon will make a great social worker as long as he learns how to tame the fire in his belly. If he can just extinguish that it will be okay”. But I never, ever lost that. That was the greatest piece of advice ever.
The greatest advice I can give to someone is follow your heart, believe in yourself, there is no such thing as failure. How can you fail for dreaming?
What is the one thing that you want to be remembered for?
I’d like to be remembered for being a person that was willing to walk the talk.
Why does storytelling matter?
Storytelling matters because storytelling exposes. Storytelling matters because it speaks to the profound truth in all of us that no one can hide from, deceive or silence. Storytelling matters because it shares the truth of what people actually experience and go through in a way which is devoid of artifice, spin, agenda. It matters because it appeals to the best in us.
Storytelling is the only space we can come as equals. It is about risking a moment to be intimate, vulnerable, transparent, visceral, raw.
Here is my story - in this moment you have a choice to be something in that moment with me. I am telling you the story because that is my truth. I am telling you my story because I refuse to be silent. I am telling you the story because I am giving you a space to join me in my journey. To carry that story. To honour that journey. To fight for my story. To do something with my story. And to help change the world through my story. What I am giving you is the most pure, unadulterated, raw reality of what my life is in this moment and I am giving you a gift. A gift of my truth as I experience and see it. I am giving you a space to hear, understand and learn from my experience.
There is nowhere to hide. That is the power of story.
What is your motto?
Be as idealistic as possible, take as many risks as possible, do the opposite of everything people tell you that you can’t do. Your starting point should be everything that is irrational, impossible and improbable!
In my own words: Erin Power (Autumn 2011)
As an organisation, we started out as a group that was assisting British people who had foreign partners who weren’t able to live with their lesbian or gay partner in this country. When we knew that we were going to win that battle and reach a level of equality, which came in with the civil partnership legislation, we realised that we could use the resources that we have to help with asylum. We had a reputation, we had lots of contacts and we had all these lawyers willing to volunteer their expertise so we totally shifted our focus.
For me personally, every time I meet a new asylum seeker and talk to them about their lives, they feed me with their courage and their hope. A lot of what we do is giving people hope - but they have already fought enormous battles and still they are smiling, still they will be incredibly polite, still they will ask you how your day is. They are much stronger, braver, more generous people than you meet every day in any other context. They give us a lot more than we give them.
Because the people we work with are LGBT, they don’t get support from their home communities here and they don’t get support from the LGBT community. In the LGBT community as elsewhere, there is a lot of misunderstanding about asylum seekers, a lot of antagonism towards asylum seekers. There is a lot of wealth in the LGBT community so there is a huge gap - asylum seekers can’t go to places that cost a lot of money. So they will frequently say, you (UKLGIG) are my family and they will genuinely mean that because they no longer have any other family.
What is the most pressing issue facing asylum seekers today?
There is a general one for all asylum seekers and that is legal aid and we definitely see that as our future huge challenge. There are legal aid solicitors who do a lot of work but they do not have LGBT experience and it is quite a specific field in which particular arguments have to be dealt with.
Detention is another. To make an LGBT claim you have to have certain things in place and if you are detained you can’t get them. A big part of it is telling your story and that is the work on which we spend a lot of time with people, hours and hours, getting their story. A lot of that work is about what did you feel, what did you think? You can’t do that in detention. Our stand is that LGBT claims are always too complex for fast track detention.
What change in government policy would you most like to see?
We have to acknowledge that we have been extremely fortunate and extremely successful in the last 18 months with UKBA. The government has chosen to focus on equalities through showing how great they are on LGBT issues. This is political and is something that has been hugely to our advantage.
For the government, legal aid again is the policy that needs to be dealt with but how they provide funding to enable sufficient expert lawyers to be out there, is an issue not only for us but for other organisations to work on as well.
For us [UKLGIG] - please don’t detain LGBT asylum seekers. There has to be a way of establishing this as policy without threatening the fast-track system.
What’s the one piece of advice you’d give an asylum seeker?
The Home Office says you must claim asylum at the earliest opportunity and that you damage your credibility if you don’t. However, we also know that if you are going to win your claim as an LGBT asylum seeker you need time to prepare well, so there are things that have to be weighed up. If you have nowhere to live and no support and you are going to be destitute on the street, of course claim asylum. But if you are in a position where you can manage long enough to get your evidence together yourself (no longer with the guaranteed assistance of a solicitor), with our help, with us telling you what you need to do, then do that before claiming asylum. Do not go unarmed, unprepared because you will almost certainly lose. Even if you go armed and prepared you still might lose but you will have a better chance.
How can the ordinary person in the street help make a difference to improve the situation of asylum seekers?
I think something that isn’t a difficult thing for people to do, is not to remain purposefully ignorant. To actually take the initiative to be informed about what the difference is between an immigrant and an asylum seeker. Every single ‘person in the street’ has agreed to protect people who are going to be persecuted. We did it when we signed the Refugee Convention and we as a nation continue to believe that we have a responsibility to help people who are being murdered, tortured, beaten in the rest of the world for reasons that we believe are things you should be entitled to be. If I am British and I live here, or if I am not British and I live here, I am a part of that. I agree to that.
To be ignorant, unless you have inability to understand, is a choice that you make because you don’t want to know. Because with knowledge comes responsibility. Once people are genuinely aware, they take responsibility seriously.
What is the greatest challenge you have faced?
As an organisation, whatever the challenge is we have never had to deal with something we have thought we can’t overcome. We constantly see huge progress because people win. How can any stumbling block be a challenge when someone’s life has been saved? We have a huge amount of optimism and that is definitely what our asylum seekers get from being with us. Our approach is that there is nothing that you cannot overcome.
What do you regard as your greatest achievement?
Every time someone wins is our greatest achievement. There can’t be anything bigger than saving someone’s life. For most people that we deal with if they go back, they might last a while but the risk they face is that they are going to die. We are talking about countries including Iran, Jamaica, Uganda, Nigeria. No matter how much money you have, you are not going to live a full, long life if you are going to live as who you are.
Who or what has been the greatest influence in your life?
There are lots and lots of things that have influenced my life but I am going to have to say my Mum. The things that I am that I am proud of about myself I definitely got from her. That is believing that women are amazing and believing that I am responsible in some way for making the world a just place, however small my contribution. Her approach was always having a sense that other people and you are all part of something whole. Therefore if you hurt someone else, you hurt yourself; you help someone else, you help yourself.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
The advice that is most difficult for me to take is sometimes the best advice. Hard advice I struggle with but I am trying!
What is the one thing that you want to be remembered for?
I am not sure I want to be remembered. I don’t think it matters. I don’t live as though the future beyond me is relevant to my life.
Why does storytelling matter?
Within our work, for our asylum seekers, the only way you are going to be believed to be lesbian or gay, bisexual or trans is by telling your story. That is your primary and most important evidence for claiming asylum so that story is everything. In a broader sense our stories are how we connect with other people in the world.
What is your motto?
If this is about a fundamental way I want to be in the world, and a fundamental way I want people to operate with me in the world, then I would have to say, be honest.
In my own words: Marjorie Nshemere-Ojule (Summer 2011)
Marjorie is from Uganda. She and her husband were actively involved with opposition politics, especially the Forum for Democratic Change who wanted to end President Museveni’s term in office. Due to her political activity, she spent two separate periods in detention in safe houses. She was gang raped, as a result of which she conceived a child and lost another baby at 17 weeks, still born because of the torture she was experiencing.
Seven months pregnant, Marjorie managed to escape through bribery and came to the UK leaving behind her eldest child, Sweetny who was only four years old at the time. What followed was a long battle for asylum after crucial information regarding her political persecution had not been obtained at the first interview. After almost six years Marjorie finally received indefinite leave to remain. However her battle was not over. While seeking asylum her mother was looking after Sweetny but died in 2008. Sweetny was alone at a boarding school. Marjorie went on to fight for Sweetny’s return and in April 2010 Sweetny and Marjorie were finally reunited.
Since coming to the UK Marjorie has been an active speaker on women and asylum rights. She is a trustee of Women for Refugee Women and an active member of Women Asylum Seekers Together (WAST). She starred in Natasha Walter’s Motherland performance event, which tells the true stories of women and children who have been detained in Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre.
She lives in London with her two children, Sasha and Sweetny and studies a combined honours degree in Third World Development and Education and Community Development at University of East London.
Marjorie talks again to The Testimony Project and shares her thoughts on asylum in the UK.
Why do you do the work that you do?
When I came into this country I was by myself, I was alone. Going to Women for Refugee Women (WRW) gave me a bigger voice because I was able to have a bigger platform. I was able to meet people who have a say in what goes on in the system, which for me was a blessing.
As an asylum seeker whatever happens to us, it takes away that confidence. You feel like you are useless, you cannot do anything for yourself. The system here makes us feel like that. You are nothing to the community. Every time I would go to speak I would have all these people turn up and that meant that I was something to the community. So when I got my leave to remain I decided to do a course that would help me get more involved in the lives of people who have experienced persecution.
What is the most pressing issue facing asylum seekers today?
The most challenging thing with asylum seekers today is having a good solicitor. Legal aid has been cut and that makes it hard for men and women asylum seekers to find a very good lawyer and puts them in the worst position.
When we come here we don’t know about the laws, we don’t know what to say when, how, where. You don’t have any guidance. Especially for women who have been raped, they think they cannot open up and talk about this. But that is a crucial element of your case. This is why women are ending up in detention and being deported because something was not looked into by the solicitor at the beginning in the initial interview.
What change in government policy would you most like to see?
I want them to close the detention centres. If they could give people the assurance that if they have been through torture, they have been through this and that, that they won’t be detained that would be a start. Even if a child is detained even for two days, that’s not good.
There are so many women in detention. If they could change their policy it would be a good start to show that this government is actually different from other governments.
What the system does here is it tortures people diplomatically. They are not using force on them, they are not beating them up but they do it in a systematic way. They torture you mentally and mental torture is really bad, worse than physical torture.
What’s the one piece of advice you’d give an asylum seeker?
Speak. Speak about everything. Don’t be ashamed. As painful as things are and as painful as things have been, you need to let people know everything. You don’t have a choice in the matter. It is your life you are fighting for. You need to speak about everything and then after you have told them everything you can deal with the traumas you have.
Speak. Speak about things. The more you speak, the more relieved you feel.
How can the ordinary person in the street help make a difference to improve the situation of asylum seekers?
Go to demonstrations. Show the government that what they are doing is not what you, the community, want. Believe in the asylum seekers. Give them that shoulder. If you welcome them to your community, you will not agree with what is happening.
I have never met any of the people who helped me raise money for Sweetny’s ticket but they looked at me like one of them. They took me and Sweetny as one, as one of their community and they were helping someone as part of their community. In one week the money was there and the number of messages I got and the people who came to court for Sweetny’s hearing was overwhelming. They looked at me as if I was a sister, a friend, a granddaughter, a daughter. They asked ‘if my sister was in trouble, what would I do? I would go to court and give them support.’ Give them a shoulder. Give them a hug.
If people could look at asylum seekers like one of them… it would make a very big difference. If the community looks at asylum seekers like one of them, they will stand up and say no, she is one of us.
What is the greatest challenge you have faced?
The separation from Sweetny is something I will never stop crying about. There are so many people out there who cannot be reunited with their kids. That was the biggest challenge with the asylum system. I went through rape. I went through torture. But not knowing how your child is, how she slept or whether you will see her again is so hard. It was a very difficult journey. You leave a baby and you then see a big woman.
It has been a challenge as I still need to have that big bond with her. That is the worst thing for a child – to not be with their mother.
It was challenging. It was painful. It was emotional. The Testimony Project did so much, all the people that helped me out, all the people who came to Court. All the people who were there physically, the people who donated, they all helped.
What do you regard as your greatest achievement?
When I breathe and when I feel proud of myself is when I go and speak to an audience and everyone is touched by what is going on. When you look into people’s eyes and you can tell that something has changed. You have changed their way of thinking about something.
When people turn up and listen to you, even if you don’t change 20 people, one person will change their view on asylum seekers. For people to believe that the things asylum seekers have gone through is actually real and something has to be done. That has been my greatest achievement.
Who or what has been the greatest influence in your life?
Activists who are into human rights who are asking why the Government are detaining people. Why are they doing this to asylum seekers? It is not their fight. It is our fight. So if someone is fighting for me, why can’t I also fight? That has inspired me.
The people who fight like Medical Justice, the Medical Foundation, Testimony Project, Women for Refugee Women, the befrienders. They have inspired me to keep fighting. When I felt down and couldn’t take it any more, I would read about someone talking about asylum issues and then I realised that I have to go and stand up because someone is laying the carpet for me to walk on. Most of the people we meet have never experienced the things we have experienced and they are trying to understand, so asylum seekers need to walk on the carpet they have laid out for us.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
To value myself and not look at myself like a number. I am somebody. I am Marjorie. I am not a number.
What is the one thing that you want to be remembered for?
I am a very friendly person. I am down to earth. With me what you see is what you get.
One time Natasha (author and Director of Motherland) asked me how I did it. Everything I have been through, how can I do it? Every time she saw me I was smiling. I said that is me. I am not a sad person. I am a happy woman. If I don’t do it, then who will do it for me?
Why does storytelling matter?
People get to know who you are and understand that actually ‘wow, she was right to leave her country. If I went through this, I would also want to leave that place’. The community changes their view of us when they hear our stories because our stories are all different and all touching in a different way. It’s important that people hear and understand where we come from. We are not here for benefits or houses. We are not scavengers. It is important that we keep telling our stories.
What is your motto?
I have two. Never give up, however bad the situation is.
And there is no situation which is permanent. Every situation changes. Life is like that.
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