Cats on the Run is a participatory project working with undocumented people during quarantine.
This project was conceived and managed by RAPAR.
Produced by Sheba Arts.
Funded by Lankelly Chase Foundation.
This project was conceived and managed by RAPAR.
Produced by Sheba Arts.
Funded by Lankelly Chase Foundation.
A chat with B and H from Kurdistan.
|
Alimamy. This is an interview with Momo from Sierra Leone, conducted by Alimamy Bangura.
|
Cats on the run with Michael and Jeffery from Philipines. Interview by Jumil Kelly.
|
Cats on the Run - Alimamy: We met Mo in September; a man in his 40s, from West Africa.
Mo fled his country due to political reasons. He spent three and a half months in jail because of his political views. When he was released his first choice was to leave the country. Human traffickers brought him to the UK and locked him up in a big house and forced him to work for someone he didn’t know. They threatened to kill him if he escaped. He did not have a phone or even knew his location. He can’t read or write in English, or even speak the language. During the months in the hostage house, he never had access to a phone or any means of communication. At last, one day, he managed to escape and became destitute.
He never saw the face of his kidnapper. He only remembers his eyes and a tattoo all over his body. They called him George.
One of our creative helpers was from the same country and could speak his language. With the advice and support from RAPAR, he took Mo to Liverpool to claim asylum. The immigration officer told Mo that certain countries are not allowed to seek Asylum in Liverpool and that he needed to travel to London to seek asylum. We explained that he can’t travel because he does not have any money and does not know the language. They said there is nothing they can do and they shut the door. They stand outside not knowing what to do. The support worker took Mo to the police station and explained his situation after explaining everything to the police. They put handcuffs on his hands and threatened him to deport him back to his country. Later that day, the police called the immigration office and they came and took Mo to a B&B hotel where he currently lives with hundreds of asylum seekers.
Mo has not had any contact with his family back home and didn’t know what happened to his wife and his four children. A friend offered a cheap mobile phone but a phone call will cost a fortune and he is not receiving any cash support. He is suffering from anxiety and depression after all that happened to him.
In the hotel, they provide two meals a day and it’s mainly plain pasta served in plastic dishes. He does not have access to a GP so RAPAR bought him a ticket to Manchester so he could travel in the company of Alimamy and could get medication for his eyes and get some clothes.
Mo fled his country due to political reasons. He spent three and a half months in jail because of his political views. When he was released his first choice was to leave the country. Human traffickers brought him to the UK and locked him up in a big house and forced him to work for someone he didn’t know. They threatened to kill him if he escaped. He did not have a phone or even knew his location. He can’t read or write in English, or even speak the language. During the months in the hostage house, he never had access to a phone or any means of communication. At last, one day, he managed to escape and became destitute.
He never saw the face of his kidnapper. He only remembers his eyes and a tattoo all over his body. They called him George.
One of our creative helpers was from the same country and could speak his language. With the advice and support from RAPAR, he took Mo to Liverpool to claim asylum. The immigration officer told Mo that certain countries are not allowed to seek Asylum in Liverpool and that he needed to travel to London to seek asylum. We explained that he can’t travel because he does not have any money and does not know the language. They said there is nothing they can do and they shut the door. They stand outside not knowing what to do. The support worker took Mo to the police station and explained his situation after explaining everything to the police. They put handcuffs on his hands and threatened him to deport him back to his country. Later that day, the police called the immigration office and they came and took Mo to a B&B hotel where he currently lives with hundreds of asylum seekers.
Mo has not had any contact with his family back home and didn’t know what happened to his wife and his four children. A friend offered a cheap mobile phone but a phone call will cost a fortune and he is not receiving any cash support. He is suffering from anxiety and depression after all that happened to him.
In the hotel, they provide two meals a day and it’s mainly plain pasta served in plastic dishes. He does not have access to a GP so RAPAR bought him a ticket to Manchester so he could travel in the company of Alimamy and could get medication for his eyes and get some clothes.
|
Whisper, inspired by Sahar a participant from Iran, Filmmaker, Amang Mardokhy.
|
Through the Cracks - Interview with H, from Pakistan, interpreted by Mansoor Hassan.
|
Artist's reflection on 'Cats on the Run': here, our artists discuss the process of the project.
"FGM" Illustration by Amang Mardokhy, inspired by the story of B.
"Being Destitute Through COVID" by Jerome
This lock-down is stressful, not knowing what's going to happen. Will I live or die??? I feel so sad and depressed. All I can do is wish all this will come to an end soon so we can all meet-up in groups as we used to. I missed this. This affects my mental health a lot. I feel like there is no hope and many times I feel like I am going mad! I used to feel less stressful when I used to attend groups I used to get money for bus-fare, and whatever extra money I had I used it to buy toiletries and food. But not anymore. I don't get any support or money or anything from anybody. I don't have money to travel on the bus or train and now I can't go anywhere or do anything as before. No one cares. I always feel lonely, sad and very depressed. I have no hope. I don't feel like a human being anymore.
I wish the government and people with money could help destitiute people like me who are in my situation so we would not be in this situation we are in.
The people like me who are destitute lack things like food, money, clothes and a home or just having the basic necessities to live. Just think of how much worse this Covid-19 Pandemic has made it for people that are destitute! Without status it's very difficult to get help. I don't have any status and don't have money to support myself and I am suffering and fighting to survive with no money to buy food and Top-up credit for my phone.
It's a real struggle financially with no money to support myself and buy my essentials. Nobody knows what I am going through, it is tough day to day. I know I am not alone in this situation but that does not give me any comfort. It's too rough, don't know how long I can keep carrying on like this. They keep telling us to wash our hands and wear masks and stay away from each other like we are all infectious but some of us aren't and it's hurting people that are destitute more because it seems like nobody cares and we are always overlooked. With no groups or support of any kind or anyone else to help me it's like being in a dark tunnel with no way out.
"Lockdown Blues" by Steph
|
|
|
"A Person of Wealth" by E
"A Person of Wealth" by E
"My Name is Gift of God" by Bukky
"Lift Me High"
This song was inspired by one of the participants in our project, Stella, through conversations on zoom during the pandemic. The poems and lyrics were written by Peter Kalu and composed by Naomi Kalu. Vocals by Yemi Bolatiwa. Audio engineering by James Veezr.
"Lockdown stories" by Mathilda, a single mother
"Friendship During Corona" by Aisha
"From Stability to Chaos" by Nouhou
Dr Rhetta Moran's reflections on the process of 'Cats on the Run'
The socioeconomic, cultural, political and legal backdrop to Cats on the RuN
“I don’t really know what to say. There are so many things…”
(Project participant near the start of our work)
Naturally, no project activity takes place in a vacuum. On the contrary, outside of this project but coincident with its timeframe (August 2020 – March 2021), socioeconomic, cultural, political and legal developments, framed as reactions to the emergence of Covid-19 related directly to this projects’ participants: migrant communities most marginalised by Covid-19.
Intrinsically, these developments impacted upon their abilities to be creative as undocumented people: previously failed by the asylum system or never having engaged with it because they were trafficked, or they fell foul of historic work, family or student visa regulation changes for example.
These developments also impacted directly on the well-being of the creative helpers who supported the creatives within the project and who, with a single exception, were either from migrant backgrounds themselves or had previously endured being without status in the UK.
This context is offered to create a more complete understanding of the nature of the environments out of which our creative artefacts have emerged, and a deeper appreciation of the achievements themselves: people have moved from starting positions that are illustrated in the following comment from a participant who said near the beginning of the project “I don’t really know what to say. There are so many things…” to becoming creatives themselves.
There follows an illustrative sample of socioeconomic, cultural, political and legal challenges that, as they unfolded, punctuated our project’s timeframe.
The first lockdown began on 23rd March 2020, six months before the start of our project. At this time, Minister Kevin Foster responded to a question about what measures had been taken to ensure those in the country would be able to seek medical help by asserting: “No one should fear accessing medical advice from our superb NHS due to an immigration reason.”
Within the first month of work beginning far-right groups were being reported targeting hotels housing asylum seekers during coronavirus pandemic, and, within a few more weeks, the Home Affairs Committee published its report on Home Office preparedness for COVID-19. This report highlighted many issues of concern relating to displaced people: the quality or levels of accommodation, personal allowances, safeguarding and risk assessments, impact on mental health, lack of provision of internet to enable people to access information, consult GPs etc, and lack of provision of sanitising and other products or increase in allowance to enable people to buy these themselves.
It was during this period that Boris Johnson was compelled to intervene in the case of Mercy Baguma, who had lost her Leave to Remain status (visa) and job, who was found dead in a flat in Glasgow next to her distressed one-year-old son. In that case, very widely reported, the asylum application had been pending for the child’s father who, following the mother’s death, was now the boy’s sole carer. A week later, the Home Office ‘work’ that directly interfered in the lives of hundreds of thousands of displaced people, including children in families, was condemned by the Public Accounts Committee. They revealed a myriad of humanity-denying actions authorised through Home Office powers and leaving massive questions marks over a multitude of migration related Home Office decisions.
During the course of our third month, while RAPAR and Sheba Arts, alongside other long established migrant and human organisations became involved in vigils commemorating lives destroyed by the hostile environment[i], the government mooted the idea of putting floating barriers in the English Channel to stop asylum seekers crossing to the UK, and using nets to stop dinghies. Widely reported, these announcements induced panic and fear throughout our migrant populations and, within RAPAR, stimulated extensive discussions about the impact of such announcements on the mental health and well-being of our members in general and in particular our most vulnerable: undocumented people. Reports of the Home Office attempts to hire a private risk management company to provide a rapid review of initial accommodation for single adult asylum seekers, effectively outsourcing the monitoring of compliance with public health guidelines to prevent the transmission of Covid 19 for people housed in the asylum system, contributed further to the overall impression that, as far as the government is concerned, migrant people without status in the UK can be exempted from the public health standards that should apply to all.
By November 2020, organisations who had been working with us to secure the involvement of some of their undocumented contacts were speaking out directly against the government intention to allow their private contractor SERCO to resume evictions into destitution during lockdown. At this time, exposure of the fact of Home Office failure to comply with equality law created further distress and concern that when illegal actions at the government level that are directed against BAME people are revealed, there does not appear to be any redress or mechanism of accountability. The contrast between this treatment of the powers that be, and how those same powers target what they define as ‘illegal immigrants’ could not be greater, and none of the contradictions were lost on our undocumented people. At the same time evidence was emerging of the alarming rise in backlog of asylum cases, even though the numbers of applications had been falling. For those who are undocumented, the knowledge that people were now waiting for over six months for an initial response to their applications to become regularised through the asylum system told them that, even when able to submit an application they may still be waiting for a further and extensive period before experiencing any real shift in their material circumstances or sense of safety.
From December onwards, moving into the second half of the project’s timeframe, the national media began to become dominated by the question of the immanent availability, via the NHS, of vaccines against COVID. However, for undocumented people, the multiplicity of barriers to their access remained, and continue to remain at the time of writing, untouched. Almost immediately undocumented people were picking up intelligence about countless people being turned away from their GP surgeries when they tried to register, being told they needed proof of ID, of status, of address, or that people from their country of origin aren’t allowed to register with a GP, or “we don’t deal with illegal immigrants”.
In December’s second week the announcement of rule changes targeting rough sleeping migrants was met with immediate opposition from the Greater London Authority GLA who prohibited any organisations trusted with CHAIN data - a multi-agency database added to by outreach teams, accommodation providers and other homelessness organisations in London - from communicating it to the Home Office. That defiance was soon joined by others in the Midlands and across Greater Manchester, going some way towards ameliorating the immediate and acute anxiety induced by hearing that the state intended to use rough sleeping by people without citizenship as a basis for removal.
During the heart of the Christmas period, through RAPAR’s networks, we were able to amplify eyewitness accounts of the appalling conditions within which single men newly arrived in the UK were being held. There is always tension at the heart of communicating such information. On the one hand, the people who reach out need to be heard and, on the other, people on the outside who are tuned in, such as our project participants, often find that such information feeds already deep distress. Ultimately, we operate on the basis that it is better to know what is happening than not: it is impossible to construct meaningful actions to stop human rights abuses if you don’t know, and you can’t prove, that the abuse is happening. In this instance the validity of our actions were borne out when, by mid-January, through their collective organising and actions, such was the level of support and rediscovery of their own agency that camp residents were self-defining, “We are victims, not criminals” and, ultimately, commanded the attention of the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration.
In early February Privacy International’s new report revealed the extent to which Britain is turning into a migration surveillance regime and, specifically, that the current British Government is in the process of developing a ‘Status Checking’ Project which could result in any person on British soil being able to be assessed, presumably at the touch of a screen, for their status. This begs a profound question: Why is knowing our ‘status’ so important for the Government? To what end? This information dovetailed with other organisational activities alongside those happening within this project at that time, to revealed how deep seated the fear is that if people approach health systems for vaccination they will become detected for removal or deportation. Out of this realisation an historic Early Day Motion #1442 was created through which, for the first time in British history and in direct response to the challenges posed by Covid, British Members of Parliament formalised a call for Indefinite Leave to Remain for all those undocumented and in legal process.
Later in this penultimate project month, news reaches our participants of the Government’s intention to remove a profoundly autistic 22 year old man who is also living with learning disabilities and a PTSD diagnosis to Jamaica, and this is followed closely by the revelation that a new network of immigration detention centres for women is being quietly planned by the Home Office, and contrary to previous pledges to reform the system and reduce the number of vulnerable people held.
Finally, as the last month of our project closed, the Government announcement of its intention to conduct “the biggest overhaul of the UK’s asylum system in decades” is met with widespread derision, summed up as: “based on false premises - particularly the actual availability of legal routes – and tears apart the principle of the right to claim asylum.”
[i] McMahon, G., & Moran, R. (2021). Young people seeking asylum: voice and activism in a ‘hostile environment’. In M. Bruselius-Jensen, I. Pitti, & K. Tisdall (Eds.), Young people’s participation: Revisiting youth and inequalities in Europe Policy Press.
(Project participant near the start of our work)
Naturally, no project activity takes place in a vacuum. On the contrary, outside of this project but coincident with its timeframe (August 2020 – March 2021), socioeconomic, cultural, political and legal developments, framed as reactions to the emergence of Covid-19 related directly to this projects’ participants: migrant communities most marginalised by Covid-19.
Intrinsically, these developments impacted upon their abilities to be creative as undocumented people: previously failed by the asylum system or never having engaged with it because they were trafficked, or they fell foul of historic work, family or student visa regulation changes for example.
These developments also impacted directly on the well-being of the creative helpers who supported the creatives within the project and who, with a single exception, were either from migrant backgrounds themselves or had previously endured being without status in the UK.
This context is offered to create a more complete understanding of the nature of the environments out of which our creative artefacts have emerged, and a deeper appreciation of the achievements themselves: people have moved from starting positions that are illustrated in the following comment from a participant who said near the beginning of the project “I don’t really know what to say. There are so many things…” to becoming creatives themselves.
There follows an illustrative sample of socioeconomic, cultural, political and legal challenges that, as they unfolded, punctuated our project’s timeframe.
The first lockdown began on 23rd March 2020, six months before the start of our project. At this time, Minister Kevin Foster responded to a question about what measures had been taken to ensure those in the country would be able to seek medical help by asserting: “No one should fear accessing medical advice from our superb NHS due to an immigration reason.”
Within the first month of work beginning far-right groups were being reported targeting hotels housing asylum seekers during coronavirus pandemic, and, within a few more weeks, the Home Affairs Committee published its report on Home Office preparedness for COVID-19. This report highlighted many issues of concern relating to displaced people: the quality or levels of accommodation, personal allowances, safeguarding and risk assessments, impact on mental health, lack of provision of internet to enable people to access information, consult GPs etc, and lack of provision of sanitising and other products or increase in allowance to enable people to buy these themselves.
It was during this period that Boris Johnson was compelled to intervene in the case of Mercy Baguma, who had lost her Leave to Remain status (visa) and job, who was found dead in a flat in Glasgow next to her distressed one-year-old son. In that case, very widely reported, the asylum application had been pending for the child’s father who, following the mother’s death, was now the boy’s sole carer. A week later, the Home Office ‘work’ that directly interfered in the lives of hundreds of thousands of displaced people, including children in families, was condemned by the Public Accounts Committee. They revealed a myriad of humanity-denying actions authorised through Home Office powers and leaving massive questions marks over a multitude of migration related Home Office decisions.
During the course of our third month, while RAPAR and Sheba Arts, alongside other long established migrant and human organisations became involved in vigils commemorating lives destroyed by the hostile environment[i], the government mooted the idea of putting floating barriers in the English Channel to stop asylum seekers crossing to the UK, and using nets to stop dinghies. Widely reported, these announcements induced panic and fear throughout our migrant populations and, within RAPAR, stimulated extensive discussions about the impact of such announcements on the mental health and well-being of our members in general and in particular our most vulnerable: undocumented people. Reports of the Home Office attempts to hire a private risk management company to provide a rapid review of initial accommodation for single adult asylum seekers, effectively outsourcing the monitoring of compliance with public health guidelines to prevent the transmission of Covid 19 for people housed in the asylum system, contributed further to the overall impression that, as far as the government is concerned, migrant people without status in the UK can be exempted from the public health standards that should apply to all.
By November 2020, organisations who had been working with us to secure the involvement of some of their undocumented contacts were speaking out directly against the government intention to allow their private contractor SERCO to resume evictions into destitution during lockdown. At this time, exposure of the fact of Home Office failure to comply with equality law created further distress and concern that when illegal actions at the government level that are directed against BAME people are revealed, there does not appear to be any redress or mechanism of accountability. The contrast between this treatment of the powers that be, and how those same powers target what they define as ‘illegal immigrants’ could not be greater, and none of the contradictions were lost on our undocumented people. At the same time evidence was emerging of the alarming rise in backlog of asylum cases, even though the numbers of applications had been falling. For those who are undocumented, the knowledge that people were now waiting for over six months for an initial response to their applications to become regularised through the asylum system told them that, even when able to submit an application they may still be waiting for a further and extensive period before experiencing any real shift in their material circumstances or sense of safety.
From December onwards, moving into the second half of the project’s timeframe, the national media began to become dominated by the question of the immanent availability, via the NHS, of vaccines against COVID. However, for undocumented people, the multiplicity of barriers to their access remained, and continue to remain at the time of writing, untouched. Almost immediately undocumented people were picking up intelligence about countless people being turned away from their GP surgeries when they tried to register, being told they needed proof of ID, of status, of address, or that people from their country of origin aren’t allowed to register with a GP, or “we don’t deal with illegal immigrants”.
In December’s second week the announcement of rule changes targeting rough sleeping migrants was met with immediate opposition from the Greater London Authority GLA who prohibited any organisations trusted with CHAIN data - a multi-agency database added to by outreach teams, accommodation providers and other homelessness organisations in London - from communicating it to the Home Office. That defiance was soon joined by others in the Midlands and across Greater Manchester, going some way towards ameliorating the immediate and acute anxiety induced by hearing that the state intended to use rough sleeping by people without citizenship as a basis for removal.
During the heart of the Christmas period, through RAPAR’s networks, we were able to amplify eyewitness accounts of the appalling conditions within which single men newly arrived in the UK were being held. There is always tension at the heart of communicating such information. On the one hand, the people who reach out need to be heard and, on the other, people on the outside who are tuned in, such as our project participants, often find that such information feeds already deep distress. Ultimately, we operate on the basis that it is better to know what is happening than not: it is impossible to construct meaningful actions to stop human rights abuses if you don’t know, and you can’t prove, that the abuse is happening. In this instance the validity of our actions were borne out when, by mid-January, through their collective organising and actions, such was the level of support and rediscovery of their own agency that camp residents were self-defining, “We are victims, not criminals” and, ultimately, commanded the attention of the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration.
In early February Privacy International’s new report revealed the extent to which Britain is turning into a migration surveillance regime and, specifically, that the current British Government is in the process of developing a ‘Status Checking’ Project which could result in any person on British soil being able to be assessed, presumably at the touch of a screen, for their status. This begs a profound question: Why is knowing our ‘status’ so important for the Government? To what end? This information dovetailed with other organisational activities alongside those happening within this project at that time, to revealed how deep seated the fear is that if people approach health systems for vaccination they will become detected for removal or deportation. Out of this realisation an historic Early Day Motion #1442 was created through which, for the first time in British history and in direct response to the challenges posed by Covid, British Members of Parliament formalised a call for Indefinite Leave to Remain for all those undocumented and in legal process.
Later in this penultimate project month, news reaches our participants of the Government’s intention to remove a profoundly autistic 22 year old man who is also living with learning disabilities and a PTSD diagnosis to Jamaica, and this is followed closely by the revelation that a new network of immigration detention centres for women is being quietly planned by the Home Office, and contrary to previous pledges to reform the system and reduce the number of vulnerable people held.
Finally, as the last month of our project closed, the Government announcement of its intention to conduct “the biggest overhaul of the UK’s asylum system in decades” is met with widespread derision, summed up as: “based on false premises - particularly the actual availability of legal routes – and tears apart the principle of the right to claim asylum.”
[i] McMahon, G., & Moran, R. (2021). Young people seeking asylum: voice and activism in a ‘hostile environment’. In M. Bruselius-Jensen, I. Pitti, & K. Tisdall (Eds.), Young people’s participation: Revisiting youth and inequalities in Europe Policy Press.
Creative Team
Dr Rhetta Moran - Production Manager
Fereshteh Mozaffari - Creative Leader, Editor & Designer
Alimamy Bangura - Creative Helper
Amang Mardokhy - Film maker
Chinar Najib - Interpreter
Jumil Kelly - Creative Helper & Film maker
Maddie Wakeling - Co-ordinator & Film maker
Eniola Toba - Admin Support
Humayan Raja - Adviser
Sophia Gardiner - Publicity & Event Organiser
Many thanks to Paul from Lankelly Chase, Susan from Kanlungan, Shade from Butterflies and Rose from SAWN.
|
|
