ࡱ> +-*M bjbj== &"WWlzzzz  B* , , , , , , $  nP P e  * * V   S%z  { 0  {{ Rt Hon David Blunkett MP Secretary of State Home Office 50 Queen Anne's Gate London SW1H 9AT Dear Home Secretary, Re: Mrs Ay and Beriwan, Medya, Newroz and Dilovan Ay Ref: APX/99/953 I am writing to ask you to allow Yurdurgal Ay, a Kurdish woman from Turkey, and her four children, to stay in Britain. The Home Office deported her husband, Salih Ay, back to Germany in early 2002. On 11th May German officials deported him to Istanbul, and there has been no news of him since. Mr and Mrs Ay had to leave Turkey in 1988 because of persecution and threats by the soldiers and jandarma (military police) in Sirnak where they were living. Sirnak is still a dangerous area and even though the State of Emergency has just been lifted human rights activists from the area have confirmed that they do not expect condtions to return to anything we would consider normal any time soon. The Ays went to Germany but unfortunately did not find the protection they needed. Eventually in desperation they came to Britain. The parallels with the Ahmadi case are striking, as their MP Chris Pond, has pointed out to you. The children fitted in well here, learning English quickly, and doing extremely well at school. Their teachers wrote to say how popular the children are, with both teachers and other children, and what a good contribution to school life they were making, and how shocking it was that the family faced deportation. When the children came to England they felt safer and they hoped the British authorities would offer them the protection they needed. But now the children are in constant distress, terrified that if they are deported to Germany they will then be sent to Turkey. On 17 December Mrs Ays lawyer in the Court of Appeal won the right to go for judicial review again against the Home Offices refusal of her asylum claim here. The Court of Appeal agreed that her claim was not manifestly unfounded. As you will be aware she and the children have now been in detention in Dungavel, with periods in Gatwick and Harmondsworth, for nearly 5 months. This detention for so long of a mother and children who just wanted to come here in order to be safe and to be able to lead a normal life is wrong in my view, and is certainly very damaging to all the family. I ask you to release them and allow them to return home to Gravesend and school, where they will also be near the Kurdish community in London. It is still the case that the children are having very inadequate lessons, quite different from the excellent environment they were in at school in Gravesend. The recent psychologists report on the children states that the two middle children, Newroz and Dilowan, show clear signs of anxiety and depression, and warns that the stress of return to Germany would have severely and possibly permanently damaging effects upon them. In the event of any final refusal of Mrs Ays asylum claim, I ask you to exercise your discretion and allow the Ay family to stay here in the UK on humanitarian and compassionate grounds outside the Immigration Rules. It cannot be right for the Home Office to wash their hands of Kurdish people here on a technicality by saying that Germany is safe when they know full well that Germany does return Kurds to Turkey in spite of the evidence contained in numerous reports on human rights that it is not safe to do so. When all the news suggests that the level of ill treatment of Kurdish people in Turkey has risen in the last year, and when Commissioner Verheugen is still pointing out that Turkey has yet to abolish routine torture, it must be wrong to threaten this family with return to Germany and Turkey. I look forward to hearing from you. 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