Model Letter to Stop the Deportation of Mit Singh Chopra

We need to maximise the pressure to stop this outrageous injustice to a young

Afghan student asylum seeker. Please use (and adapt as necessary) the attached
model letter. Get it to your own MP, community or faith leader, trade union
organisation or student union, Stop the War, Unite Against Fascism or anti-racist
group etc.

Send it yourself to Theresa May (Home Secretary) and Emily Thornberry (Mit’s MP) –
omitting the last paragraph.

For the Home Secretary, Theresa May: mayt@parliament.uk or fax 0118 934 5288.

For Emily Thornberry MP: THORNBERRYE@parliament.uk

Please copy to mail@movementforjustice.org.uk

....................................

Re: Home Office reference: J1162567

Dear……

I am writing because I am alarmed and angry at the mistreatment and threatened

deportation of Mit Singh Chopra, a 19-year old Sikh asylum seeker from Afghanistan.
Mit is a student at Westminster Kingsway College and lives with his brother’s family
in Islington. He has three older brothers in this country; all of them and their wives
are British citizens. Their children were all born in Britain. That is Mit’s whole family -
he has no-one left in Afghanistan.

Mit came to Britain in 2007. He left Afghanistan to escape persecution and abuse as
a member of the dwindling Sikh minority: at one point he was kidnapped by Taliban
supporters who tried to force him to convert.

On Friday 24 September officers from the UK Borders Agency raided the flat where
Mit lives at 6.00am, woke up his family, went into all the rooms, lifted the bed covers
to peer at his niece (6) and nephew (2) as they slept, and took him away under
arrest. He is now in Harmondsworth Detention Centre and has a deportation order for
5 October.
The judge who turned down Mit’s asylum claim said that “I accept the credibility of
the fact, and order, of the events described by the appelant” (Mit Chopra). The sole
basis for sending him back to Afghanistan is the claim that it is now ‘safe’. That claim
is based on the British Government’s own ‘Country Guidance’ on Afghanistan, but it
is plain to everyone that this is not true. It is a political fiction to justify the
continuance of a deeply unpopular war.

The US/British led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan has made the country
more unsafe. The persecution Mit experienced and witnessed came after the
invasion. In the early ‘90s there were 200,000 Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan;
today there are 3000. Very many have left since the invasion.
I do not accept Mit Chopra and other Afghan refugees being sacrificed to maintain a
lie.

Moreover, Mit suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression as a result
of his experiences in Afghanistan and is receiving regular psychiatric support. There
is virtually no mental health care in Afghanistan. The Medical Foundation for the Care
of the Victims of Torture has stated “… If Mr. Chopra were to be returned to
Afghanistan where he was previously tortured… the inevitable re-traumatisation
would cause his precarious mental health to deteriorate further…. There would be a
high risk of significant self-harm.”

I am calling on you to support Mit Chopra’s right to live in Britain, demand that the
Home Secretary (Theresa May) that she stops his deportation and urge Mit’s MP
(Emily Thornberry, Islington South).

Yours sincerely,

Mit’s Home Office reference: J1162567

Home Secretary, Theresa May: mayt@parliament.uk or fax 0118 934 5288.

For Emily Thornberry MP: THORNBERRYE@parliament.uk .

Please copy to mail@movementforjustice.org.uk