Thanks to the 100s of people who wrote in support of Ms Mwesigwa, a victim of multiple rape by soldiers in Uganda, targeted because her husband, a prominent local politician, was suspected of opposing the President. Last Friday Ms Mwesigwa stopped her removal by refusing to go with the Yarl’s Wood guards when they came to take her to the airport. But the guards warned her that “next time” she would be physically forced onto the plane back to Uganda.
Ms Mwesigwa has been told that if she wants to appeal she has to do it from Uganda. This is both cruel and absurd. She won’t even have anywhere to live or means to feed herself, let alone access to lawyers and other support to pursue a legal case.
Ms Mwesigwa is still in great danger and needs your help to demand the Home Secretary allows her the right to an appeal in the UK. Ms Mwesigwa is a dedicated member of the All African Women’s Group which has organized a protest this Monday outside the Home Office. Ms Mwesigwa called to say:
“I do not understand why the Home Office gave refugee status to my ex-husband, who thankfully was able to escape with our children before anything terrible happened, yet refuses it to me when I was the one unable to get out in time and so suffered the terrible consequences. It took many years for me to escape from Uganda after the imprisonment and rapes. I lived those years in constant fear; hiding from place to place, rarely leaving the house and only in darkness. I had lost all hope, self-confidence, and nearly my mind. Finally I was found and ordered to make my husband come back to Uganda. My friends told me that I would be killed and organized my escape to the UK. It is here that I have found people who love and care for me. The men who abused me in Uganda are still in positions of authority. I can never go back and be safe.”
On Friday a High Court judge refused to grant an injunction stopping any further attempts to send Ms Mwesigwa back to Uganda.
WAR is writing in support of Ms Mwesigwa application for the High Court to get an oral hearing to investigate her case. We say her case has been dealt with unjustly:
• Ms Mwesigwa was imprisoned and raped because the President suspected her husband of being his political opponent. Ms Mwesigwa was told by the Home Office that she could go back to Uganda while her husband was given refugee status in the UK.
• The Home Office said Ms Mwesigwa has not shown “lack of state protection in Uganda”, that is she should have reported to the police that she was raped by soldiers. The UK Home Office is willfully ignoring the masses of evidence that show that rape survivors generally in Uganda can’t get protection from the police, let alone if your attackers are soldiers.
• Evidence of the ongoing and devastating impact of rape on Ms Mwesigwa has been ignored because she has not been able to get the resources and help needed to recover.
• No account has been taken of the terrible situation she would face if returned to Uganda.
• Her “enforceable right” as a victim of torture (accepted by the Home Office) under the UN Convention Against Torture to the “means for as full rehabilitation as possible” has been completely ignored. Instead she faces being sent back to Uganda where she has no-one to turn to for help, where she would be destitute and fears further rape and other violence.
• Ms Mwesigwa was accused by the judge of deliberately delaying her legal action to the last minute. But the delay was entirely the fault of Ms Mwesigwa’s previous lawyer at ROCK Solicitors. Despite taking £300 off her to pursue a Judicial Review, he failed to even return her calls for two months let alone do anything on her legal case.
Please write to Amber Rudd MP, the Home Secretary, to demand:
• That Ms Mwesigwa is given the right to an appeal in the UK.
• That government guidelines preventing the detention of vulnerable women are implemented and that Ms Mwesigwa, as a rape survivor, is released.
If you have written to the Home Secretary and not received a reply write again and protest to your own MP asking her/him to contact the Home Secretary on your behalf. Both the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister are women. What is the point of having women in high places if they pursue the same callous, sexist, racist policies as their male counterpart?
Please send your letter to:
Rt. Honourable Amber Rudd
Home Secretary
Home Office
2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF
Tel: 020 7035 4848
Email: privateoffice.external@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
Please copy your letter to Ms Mwesigwa’s MP, Harriet Harman: harriet.harman.mp@parliament.uk
And to Women Against Rape: asylumfromrape@womenagainstrape.net