Campaigners have urged airlines deporting asylum seekers to France as part of the UK’s controversial “one in, one out” scheme to stop facilitating the “cruel and forced deportations”.
Letters have been sent by 28 refugee and human rights NGOs on both sides of the Channel to four airlines believed to be involved with deportation flights – Air France, Titan airways, AlbaStar airlines and Corendon airlines – urging them to halt what signatories call “shameful involvement” with the flights.
The letter calls for a boycott of Air France and demands the other three airlines make public declarations that they will stop deporting people for the Home Office. They accused the carriers of “complicity in cruel and forced deportations including of victims of torture, trafficking and modern slavery”.
It is understood that dozens of asylum seekers were forcibly removed to France on Thursday morning, despite warnings that their lives would be in danger there from traffickers.
The deportees on Thursday had staged a hunger strike in protest against their removal. Detainees told the Guardian they were in deep distress about their situation, with some crying and others saying they were suicidal.
One Syrian man said: “This is a prison, not a detention centre. We are locked up but we have done nothing wrong. The Home Office tell us we are criminals because we arrived here in a small boat but we are not. People are in such a bad state they are shouting and hitting themselves against the walls and doors.”
Another man said he was in agony with a medical problem and has been told by a detention centre doctor that he needed urgent surgery. He did not know whether he would be put on the plane. “I can’t eat, drink or sleep because I’m in so much pain,” he said. Home Office sources said he had been assessed as medically fit to fly.
Two previous flights have been cancelled so far this year, one because of “operational complications on the French side”, according to the Home Office. The agreement allows one asylum seeker to travel to the UK legally in exchange for another, who arrived in the UK in a small boat, being forcibly returned to France.
A peaceful protest last month before a deportation flight, which did go ahead, led the Home Office and its contractors to send in riot officers and dogs and to fire teargas. UN experts have cautioned that the scheme could breach international human rights laws.
Thursday’s deportation comes after the launch of a high court legal challenge by 16 asylum seekers against the one-in, one-out policy. The challenge is seeking to overturn new guidance to restrict asylum seekers’ ability to have trafficking claims reconsidered.
Some of the 16 are also challenging whether France is abiding by its obligations under an international treaty designed to protect victims of trafficking.
The case has been expedited owing to the continuing forced removals to France.
Griff Ferris, spokesperson for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: “This deportation scheme is a sick and dehumanising way to treat people who came here to seek safety from war and persecution. These are people with hopes, dreams and loved ones, who deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. We call on these airlines to cease their complicity in these cruel, inhumane and racist deportations.”
Since removals began last September, the one in, one out scheme has returned fewer than 2% of asylum seekers who have arrived in the UK on small boats, with 305 people deported to France and 367 transferred to the UK.
So far this year, 1,528 people have crossed the Channel. The relatively low number is thought to be because of poor weather conditions.
The Home Office and the airlines have been approached for comment.
