Herald Leader: Tragic death of an innocent

Date: 6th Aug '01

Name: Lion Rampant

Country: Alba

Herald Leader (Editorial) 6 August 2001

Tragic death of an innocent

City must re-examine its policy on asylum-seekers

When the late Cardinal Winning penned a powerful condemnation of the attacks on asylum-seekers in Glasgow for The Herald in June he concluded on an optimistic note, hoping that the city could rise above its recent ugliness. How misplaced such optimism looks after the weekend murder of a Kurdish asylum-seeker, apparently the victim of a racially motivated attack. He had been sent to a part of Britain he had probably never heard of, after arriving in a country he believed offered a real prospect of freedom from the violence, persecution, and intolerance his people had suffered in Turkey over many generations but which he had managed to escape. Like some 1500 other asylum- seekers, he had been sent to live in the Sighthill flats in Springburn while his application for British residency was considered.

Glasgow City Council's motivation for taking on the mantle - and responsibilities - of the leading Scottish city for asylum-seekers was largely economic.

It stood to benefit from millions of pounds in Home Office grants from letting empty accommodation (mostly high-rise) that no-one locally wanted. But the city also had a reputation for opening welcoming arms to refugees from discrimination.

That reputation has suffered potentially irreparable damage. The asylum-seeker died where he had been sent to live for an interim period. Perhaps he had planned to settle in the city if his application had been approved. We shall never know. Sighthill is once more a tinderbox. Paradoxically, relations between its long-standing residents (some of whom irrationally and wrongly blamed the incomers for their own predicament in one of the city's most deprived and disadvantaged areas) and the asylum-seekers seemed to be improving.

But expectations of harmony and tolerance have proved to be misguided; just like the late Cardinal's hopes. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but Glasgow's policy of putting so many asylum-seekers together in concentrated areas (they are, of course, blameless in this) where viscerally ugly attitudes are allowed to fester and spill over into violence now looks mistaken. It is truly tragic that it might take the death of an innocent young asylum-seeker to force the council fundamentally to re-examine its strategy; as it must.

-Aug 6th

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