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Zimbabwe’s brutal crackdown on protests and effect on UK based Zimbabwean protesters and activists
People were beaten. Some hunted and abducted. Others arrested and detained. Citizens were killed. Children taken and detained. Deliberate internet shutdown covered up a massive operation of repression.
These are the events which unfolded in Zimbabwe from 14th January 2019 running to several days as people in various parts of the world simply watched whilst others steadfastly turned a blind eye to the atrocities.
Zimbabwe’s authorities, via the police, army and other ZANU(PF) agents, treating its own citizens as enemies of the state, launched a brutal crackdown on those involved or perceived to have organised or taken part in the recent fuel protests. Killing and other forms of ill-treatment were the authorities response to a long suffering nation that dared to express its discontentment with those supposed to lead and serve them.
Deliberate and calculated: How the Home Office prevented access to the Immigration Health Surcharge Portal on 7 January 2019
In a deliberate and calculated move, the Home Office jumped the gun, in practice enabling the doubling of the Immigration Health Surcharge to become effective on 7 January 2019.
The effect of the increase to the charge is set out in a recent blog post: Doubling of the Immigration Health Surcharge: Paying through the nose to obtain a UK visa
The Immigration (Health Charge) (Amendment) Order 2018 No. 1389 was made on 18 December 2018 and is to the following terms, amongst other provisions:
Effect of the “repatriation agreement” between the Zimbabwean and UK authorities: Breach of claimant’s confidentiality or careless exposure to risk?
If brought to full life without regard to due process and safeguards, the repatriation agreement between the UK Government and the Zimbabwean authorities might have the effect, on the one hand of creating refugees out of the very people sought to be removed and on the other, breach of their confidentiality.
Zimbabwean Government deals hard blow to UK resident Zimbabweans: Returnees consent no longer required to enforce removals to Zimbabwe
There appears to be no hiding from the glaringly obvious: following on from a previous blog post, Is Mnangagwa’s New Government paving the way for UK mass removals of failed Zimbabwean Asylum Claimants ?, the Zimbabwean authorities have indeed now fully sold out on the many undocumented Zimbabweans living in the UK. I say sold out as the Zimbabwean government is apparently ready to welcome with open arms thousands of Zimbabweans who have accrued lengthy residence in the UK, yet offer them absolutely nothing of any enduring substance on return. One only has to look at the current country conditions as they relate to Zimbabwe. Return is to a place of desolation and despair for the majority of those being targeted for return.
Undocumented Zimbabwean nationals therefore now face forcible return to Zimbabwe – whether or not they have given their consent to the Emergency Travel Document(ETD) process. This much is evident from the new UK Country Returns Guide updated on 3 December 2018.
Court of Appeal takes Tribunal Judges to school: Pay heed to importance of country guidance caselaw
It is most strange that it should staunchly be maintained before the Court of Appeal that Home Office Presenting Officers are aware of country guidance caselaw, yet a supposedly sufficiently experienced Home office Presenting Officer voluntarily made a concession that was inconsistent with relevant country guidance caselaw with the result that, also placing reliance upon that concession, an Upper Tribunal Judge allowed an appellant’s appeal.
Even stranger still is that it subsequently emerged that neither the Presenting Officer nor those that represented the Appellant had referred to nor relied upon applicable country guidance ceselaw in the Upper Tribunal.