5,000 UK Students take action in support of asylum seekers

News Stories, 17 February 2012

STAR students in Edinburgh sleepout in 2011 to raise awareness of the destitution of asylum seekers

Students around the country will spend the night sleeping rough as part of a whole week living on £5 a day to highlight the poverty faced by asylum seekers in the UK. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work and are forced to live on state handouts of just £36.62 per week, - just over half the amount given to people on Income Support. The students are calling on HM Treasury to increase this amount when they decide on inflationary increases to asylum support rates in April.

The  students  are  members  of  national  charity  Student  Action  for  Refugees  (STAR),  with sleepouts part of STAR’s national Action Week, involving 5,000 students in 15 towns across the UK which starts on 20th  February. STAR is working to improve the lives of refugees in the UK by promoting positive images of refugees, volunteering for local refugee projects and campaigning for refugee rights. STAR also campaigns to end the detention of asylum seekers for the purpose of immigration control and for asylum seekers to be granted equal access to higher education. 

The Action Week is part of STAR’s commitment to the Still Human Still Here campaign, a coalition of more than 50 organisations, including Oxfam, Amnesty, the Red Cross and UNHCR, calling for a fairer asylum system. 

Lead members of the agencies involved who will support STAR’s action by living on £5 a day include Keith Best, CEO of Freedom from Torture and Dannie Grufferty, NUS’s Vice-President for Society and Citizenship.

"I'm delighted that the NUS is supporting the week of action to raise awareness about the number of  asylum seekers either threatened with destitution, or destitute already because of present asylum rules,’ said Ms Grufferty.

’A number of people from the National Executive including myself and the national president, are determined to meet the challenge of living on £5 a day for a week."

London-based STAR groups are joining forces to stage an unforgettable sleepout in the grounds of St Paul’s Church in London’s iconic Covent Garden on Thursday 23rd February. The event will be attended by speakers such as Mike Kaye from the Still Human Still Here campaign and will include music to lift the spirits and stave off the cold!



Manchester STAR students stage a flashmob in November 2011

STAR groups will also be doing STAR’s first ever national survey on public attitudes to the destitution of asylum seekers through conducting a quiz with members of the public. The results from the quiz will form the first national dossier on destitution for the Still Human Still Here campaign.

Such events are important in raising awareness around the issues that asylum seekers in the UK face. As STAR’s Chief Executive Emma Williams said: “People fleeing for their lives from conflict and torture are being treated like criminals in our country.  They are called scroungers and accused of lying about what has happened in their homelands.

‘In reality these people are just like you or I except they have been forced to flee for their lives and ask the UK for protection. While their claims are assessed, a process that can take years, they face extreme hardship. And if their claims are refused, they are either forced to return to the countries they have fled, or, if that is not possible, face destitution.

There is considerable support for increasing asylum rights in the UK. Last year’s Action Week saw five MPs attending events including Kate Green (Labour MP for Stretford and Urmston) and John Leech (Liberal Democrat MP for Manchester Withington) sleeping out with the Manchester STAR students in support of the campaign, and Paul Blomfield (Labour MP for Sheffield Central) bracing the cold for a good few hours to express his solidarity with Sheffield students. 

This year STAR students are hoping to attract a similar level of support from MPs. In Cambridge, students have invited their local MP, the Liberal Democrat, Julian Huppert, along to a day of action they are organising with speakers to raise awareness of the campaign. Further North, in Nottingham, STAR students are asking their local Labour MP, Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) to attend their Action Week and sign the declaration supporting the permission for asylum seekers to work, which to date, has 128 signatures of support from MPs.

STAR Action Week seeks to draw attention, through creative student action, to the often hidden realities of the conditions that asylum seekers in the UK are forced to endure. STAR’s student activists do what they can on a daily basis to help those in the greatest need, providing English tuition and helping kids with their homework - providing them with at least a semblance of welcome. As Emma Williams highlights, “We want asylum applicants to be allowed to work to support themselves or at the very least be given enough money to eat and stay warm.”

More information on STAR and Still Human Still Here:

www.star-network.org.uk

http://stillhumanstillhere.wordpress.com

Follow @STARnational to keep up to date with all the latest on Action Week!



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