UK Immigration actions at Prague Airport: Judge backs Home Secretary - judgment 10th October 2002

Liberty is to seek leave to appeal today's judicial review ruling backing the Home Office's treatment of six anonymous Czech Roma people at Prague airport. The Roma people were, Liberty and the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) argue, subjected to discriminatory, humiliating and unlawful treatment by UK Immigration Service Officers at Prague Airport in July 2001. Mr Justice Burton today ruled that their treatment was lawful.

The officers were there as part of a special arrangement with the Czech Government allowing British immigration officials to turn back passengers before they even reached the plane to travel to Britain. An authorisation under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act, signed by Home Office Minister Barbara Roche in April 2001, specified seven ethnic or national groups whom immigration officers were empowered to refuse entry to the UK outright on the basis of their race or nationality.

THE ERRC has since conducted a study involving white and Roma Czech citizens of similar circumstances and found a marked difference in their treatment.

Shami Chakrabarti, the Liberty lawyer who took the case, says:

"The Secretary of State admitted in court that this was a policy designed to prevent asylum-seekers from reaching the UK where their claims would have to be properly considered. We believe this clearly contravenes the Geneva Convention on Refugees and risks driving people towards less open and legitimate means of entry. Alarmingly, it amounts virtually to a people-trafficker's charter".

"The Government has already highlighted the Prague approach as one it wishes to use more. If other countries were to follow this lead, we would be destroying the principles of the refugee convention so no-one could ever escape from persecution to safety".

Background
The groups for whom automatic refusal was allowed, far from being unlikely to have a legitimate claim for asylum, actually include many highly likely to be fleeing persecution and have a legitimate reason to request asylum.

These included:
Afghans - even while Britain was at war with the Taliban regime and denouncing its abuses against Afghan people; Kurds (despite Iraq), Tamils (despite the long-running civil war in Sri Lanka), Somalis (despite lawlessness and state breakdown - one of just eight countries in the world for which the Foreign Office advises against all travel);

In summer 2001, the highly-respected Medical Foundation for Care of the Victims of Torture stated that it had treated 59 Czech Roma in the last five years alone at its centre for survivors of torture and violence. The Foundation noted "numerous testimonies of official complicity, that at best describe indifference by the authorities to these attacks and at worst highlight their participation in anti-Roma violence, including the rape of Roma women. This evidence seems to count for little with the Home Office".

In June 2002, the Home Office announced that it had rescinded the ministerial authorisation allowing this discrimination against people from specific named countries. However, the Immigration Service can still rely on an authorisation (from March 2001) which allows them to continue discriminating on grounds of nationality. This includes, if there is "statistical evidence showing a pattern or trend of breach of the immigration laws by persons of that nationality" (or intelligence to similar effect), the power to "refuse the person leave to enter before he arrives in the United Kingdom".

Our Clients
Our six clients in this case all went to Prague Airport to catch flights to London in the course of July 2001. All had valid airline tickets. All are Czech nationals - and so don't need a visa for travel to the UK Yet all were singled out for extended questioning apparently by reference to the colour of their skin.

- They were prevented from travelling to the UK.
- The procedure was conducted in full view of attendant media and other passengers.
- Some but not all were seeking asylum; one elderly woman was planning a short visit to her grand-daughter in the UK.

THE ERRC has since conducted a study involving white and Roma Czech citizens of similar circumstances and found a marked difference in their treatment. Refusing people entry into the country on the basis of nationality - and thus specifically denying them the opportunity to claim asylum without any consideration of the merits of their case - flies in the face of the UK's obligations under the UN Refugee Convention. The discrimination element, and the humiliating way in which this practice has been operated, is contrary to general principles of English law and to the Human Rights Act. We shall continue to seek an end to this degrading practice, by seeking leave to go to the Court of Appeal.