The Home Office Might Send a Cameroonian Refugee Home to Torture

SCNC members, including Eveline, protesting outside Downing Street in October of 2013.

I first met Eveline Mungvu Tabah in October last year, when I was writing a piece about the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC). The organisation's final goal is an independent, English-speaking Cameroon, set apart from the predominantly francophone Republic of Cameroon – but they’d likely settle for better treatment at the hands of Paul Biya’s Cameroonian government, which has been in power since 1982.

Thanks to their campaign, the SCNC – of which Eveline is a member – has been declared an illegal organisation by Biya's government, and its members are regularly tortured, imprisoned and killed. Eveline, a 31-year-old mother of two, is seeking asylum in the UK because her life will be in danger if she returns to Cameroon.

At the end of last week, I spoke to Eveline again – this time from the Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre. She first claimed asylum in July, 2012 after fleeing from her home in February of that year, but the claim was refused that October. She then filed a new claim that took almost a year to be properly reviewed.

On the 17th of March, she went to check in at a Home Office centre in Leeds, as she has every Monday since she arrived in the UK. When she arrived, she was told she was going to be detained. She had been given no warning and has received no reasoning since for the decision. She was handcuffed, put in a van and taken to the removal centre at Yarl’s Wood, where she remains. She doesn’t know when the government intend to try and remove her, but – as with every asylum seeker in the UK – she faces an indefinite wait while her case is looked at once again. The Home Office have already asked her to sign a voluntary release form, but Eveline has refused, saying she doesn't want to absolve the Home Office of the responsibility of sending her back to a country where she faces prison, torture or worse.

Eveline's parents were both members of the SCNC, and she's been attending meetings and demonstrations since she was a little girl. For her troubles, she has been detained by the Cameroonian government on more than one occasion. And at various points between the ages of eight and 12, when she was still very much a child, she found herself arrested and put in police or jail cells – a good indicator of how much the Cameroonian government hate the SCNC.

Eveline finally left Cameroon to seek safety. And after arriving in the UK she discovered that her husband, resentful of her involvement with the SCNC, had told the authorities she was a member of the group. She had been forced to marry a tribal chief in a traditional ceremony when she was 12 years old, and after his death she was then made to marry the father's successor, his son. Following her marriage, Eveline "unwillingly joined a harem of six other women", according to local SCNC solicitor Blaise Sevidzem Berinyuy, who asserts that her life would be in danger if she were returned.

As village chiefs loyal to the government, her husbands were supported and propped up by Biya's government and, as such, treated the SCNC as an enemy. Eveline was practically kept a prisoner by her husband, and she told me that when her father, Stephen Tabah – who had objected to the marriage from the start – tried to free her from his clutches, Eveline's husband had him "beaten up and molested" by his guards. In 1997, Stephen died as a result of the damage done to him by Eveline's husband and his guards.

Eveline (centre) presenting a petition at 10 Downing Street in October of 2013. 

Eveline imagined that Britain, the former colonial power, would prove to be a safe place because decision makers in this country – including the Home Office – usually recognise that members of the SCNC will be at risk if they return to Cameroon. There’s a catch, though – you have to prove that you're a bona fide member of the SCNC. Unfortunately, Eveline’s family history, persistent involvement with the group and presence at a series of official meetings apparently is not enough.

The Home Office refuses to believe she is a member of the SCNC, and says she faces no danger if she goes back to Cameroon. But I was with her and a small band of SCNC members at Downing Street last October, when they were presenting a petition to the government. When I asked Alain Mbock, the chairman of the SCNC in the UK, to confirm her membership, he did, telling me he was in the process of writing an official testimony to this end. A number of human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, are also supporting Eveline’s case.

“The British authorities arrested me like a criminal,” Eveline told me on the phone from Yarl’s Wood. “This is not how I expected to be treated in the UK. I have obeyed every instruction that’s been given to me. I have reported every single week to a Home Office centre. I have no criminal record. I have been volunteering, trying to make a positive impact on life in this country. I have respected the British authorities, but they haven’t respected me. I thought I’d finally found peace, but I’ve been harassed here. I’ve been kept in a detention centre. I’ve been handcuffed until I cried out. I’m here because I wasn’t free in my own country, but the UK is treating me in the same way.”

South Cameroonians remain the victims of what Amnesty International calls “grave human rights violations”. And while the British government recognises this in theory, its immigration policy means that if they can stop the people who are the victims of these violations from trying to live a peaceful live in the UK, they will.

In 2012, when he was Immigration Minister, Damian Green said that the government needed to know “not just that the right numbers of people are coming here, but that the right people are coming here – people who will benefit Britain, not just those who benefit by Britain”.

He was establishing an immigration system based on wealth, which is exactly how it has played out. Married couples must earn a certain amount of money if they wish to stay in the UK, bespoke visa systems offer high net worth individuals the chance to fast-track their applications and asylum seekers are kept languishing in detention centres indefinitely.

One of the legacies of David Cameron’s time in government will be an immigration system that values only the wealth of the immigrants it deals with. Eveline Mungvu Tabah, a woman seeking a new life away from constant fear, is perfect evidence of that.

@oscarrickettnow