A FAILED asylum seeker has des-cribed how he and his ill wife were ev-icted from
a Belfast hostel during the coldest period of the year.
Oleg Fedorovski and his wife Elena Kotrayenko were told to leave their
accommodation at 5pm on Wednesday and since then have been sleeping in a
friend’s house.
The 46-year-old, originally from Russia, said he was “devastated”.
“I’m worried that we will have to sleep in the street and if we do it will be an
illegal action because if we leave an address we have to notify police,” he
said.
“If we do not notify them it means we have absconded from control and will be
detained. My wife is ill. She has gall stones and being outside in the frozen
air is not good for her.”
The couple were last night promised temporary accommodation until Monday.
Mr Fedorovski’s asylum ap-plication has been refused and he is waiting for
another country to accept him.
SDLP South Belfast MP Alasdair McDonnell called for an investigation into the
asylum system following the eviction “on to the streets of Belfast in sub-zero
temperatures”.
“I have since been even more appalled by the attitude of government agencies
to-wards the couple's predicament,” he said.
“Each and every agency and body I have contacted has denied having any duty of
care to ensure that these two people do not freeze to death on the streets of
our city.
“We have been here before. How quickly we seem to have forgotten the case of
Oksana Sukhanova, who lost both her legs due to frostbite when she found herself
homeless in Northern Ireland.”
The MP said he would raise the matter with Home Office minister Tony McNulty.
“If no single agency is able to give some form of shelter, particularly in
severe Arctic weather conditions, then I believe it is time to investigate the
current set-up for dealing with failed asylum seekers because it clearly isn’t
working.”
In a parallel development,
a legal challenge is to be mounted to controversial new moves to ship asylum
seekers out of the north to detention centres in Scotland and England without
access to legal counsel.
Madden & Finucane solicitors, which represents several clients who have in the
past successfully applied for asylum upon entering the north, is investigating
the legal options open to its clients on the new policy.
Peter Madden said the firm was determined to challenge the decision in the
courts.
“This is an outrageous decision which we are currently considering challenging
by way of judicial review. Foreign nationals who enter the north in many cases
are entitled to claim asylum under the Geneva Refugee Convention of 1951,” he
said.
“If this policy is introduced people will be deprived of this very basic human
right.”