Save Amin Buratee

By Alex Perkins, Liberal Democrat Canterbury City Council Leader

 

I wonder if you fully understand the terrible crime that is being perpetrated in your name. Some times individuals have no choice but to take any action they can to right a wrong - and I believe this is just such a case. And that’s why we need you to act. Let me explain.

Imagine for a moment that you are alone in the world. Your mother, father, uncles, brothers and sisters have all been murdered and you have to flee from your home and everything that you know just in order to stay alive. Eventually, after a long period of terrible uncertainty, you find a place where people seem to care. They take you into their homes. At last, for the first time in a very long time, you are no longer scared. They feed and protect you. They find you a school and give you clothes to wear. Slowly you learn their language and become part of the community. Everyone seems pleased that you have started to cope so well despite the terrors that have previously dogged your life. You make friends. Join clubs. Start to make new friends and after a while you find once more the thing you thought you might never find again - happiness and a feeling of belonging. At last you do belong. You have become a welcome and much loved member of the community.

Then one morning, just as the sun is coming up there is a crashing at the door. A snatch-squad have arrived at your new home to arrest you – it probably seems no different from the way your family were taken from you before. They have a piece of paper that says you have to go with them to prison. They are going to lock you up and then they are going to send you back to the place where your family members were tortured and murdered.

It must be baffling for any young man. Particularly for one who has faced such torment already in his young life.

In case you haven’t guessed yet what I am describing is the fate of Amin Buratee. A young Afghan boy who now languishes at her Majesties pleasure in a detention centre in Dover while waiting to be sent back to the hell from which he escaped. Sent back because, according to a diplomat somewhere, Afghanistan is now a safe place. I wonder, would that diplomat send his own children there unaccompanied? Some how I doubt it!

So that is where we are. A young boy about to take his A’level exams has been ripped from the community that welcomed him and is being sent back to the murderous gutter from which he escaped. Apparently it is of no relevance whatsoever to the immigration service that his new friends are distraught and furious and cannot understand that their own country could act so inhumanely. It is also irrelevant to them that the Lord Mayor, the entire council, the archbishop, the local MP, his school and hundreds of those whose lives Amin has touched are literally screaming in the streets that we welcome him. He is our guest. Our City and district want him to stay.

But apparently we have no rights in the matter. The rules are now so inflexible that we our not entitled to ask for our guest to be treated with the respect and compassion we require of our supposedly civilised society.

Only David Blunkett, the Home Secretary now has the power to intervene on Amin’s behalf. We have all written to him. I have asked dozens of MP’s and MEP’s to contact The Minister and mention Amin’s name. Time is running out and we have to find a way to make him listen.

If you know anyone who knows David Blunket then maybe you can help. Maybe you know his chauffeur, window cleaner, secretary or gardener. If so give them a ring and ask them to mention the name “Amin Buratee” in the minister’s presence. Maybe yours will be the straw that breaks this camel's back.

For the sake of this young man’s life – please for God’s sake try!