‘The car stopped and I saw that my husband … had been shot in the throat and upper body, and was bleeding heavily … Soldiers came and pulled me out of the car. They made me take off all my clothes to examine me. Then they left me on the ground, bleeding from the wounds and in labour. I asked for something to cover myself with but they didn’t give me anything.’ Her husband was dead and she gave birth in a hospital lift.
Amnesty International also cited the case of Rula Ashtiya who was forced to give birth on a dirt road at the Beit Furik checkpoint after she was refused passage in August 2003. She went into labour in the eighth month of pregnancy and her husband called an ambulance. They were instructed to go to the checkpoint because the ambulance could not get past, and it would wait for them on the other side.
‘We took a taxi and got off before the checkpoint because cars are not allowed near the checkpoint and we walked the rest of the way; I was in pain. At the checkpoint there were several soldiers; they were drinking coffee and tea and ignored us. Daoud approached to speak to the soldiers and one of them threatened him with his weapon. Daoud spoke to them in Hebrew; I was in pain and felt I was going to give birth there and then; I told Daoud who translated what I said to the soldiers but they did not let us pass. I was lying on the ground in the dust and I crawled behind a concrete block by the checkpoint to have some privacy and gave birth there, in the dust, like an animal. I held the baby in my arms and she moved a little but after a few minutes she died in my arms.’ Her husband said, ‘She was holding the baby in her arms, covered in blood and the umbilical cord was on the ground, in the dust and still attached and I had to cut it with a stone; I didn’t have anything else to cut it with. And I picked up Rula in my arms and she was holding the baby and I carried her to the car and we went to the hospital.’84
The United Nations calls on Israel ‘to ensure the protection and safety of Palestinian women as well as their unconditional access to crucial services in health, nutrition, education and employment’. It called on the Palestinian Authority to legislate to ensure ‘equality and equity between men and women in respect to all their human rights, in line with the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women’.85
Pregnant Asylum Seekers And Mothers
Women and children form most of the casualties of war in the world today and it is estimated that many of these women have been raped. Rape is used as an instrument of torture. For liberating troops it is the spoils of war.
Women who state that they have been raped are frequently not believed in courts of law. This struggle for justice often starts in the country from which they flee. One woman was told by a judge that she could not have been raped because she was not a virgin, and men only want to rape virgins. Other women have been told that they could not possibly have been raped because they were too old.
In Britain, women and children suffer most from the way the authorities deal with asylum seekers. These women often speak little English, have no family or friends to support them, suffer immense psychological damage from what they are going through, have paid vast sums of money to get here, and come expecting to find freedom. Instead, they encounter persecution, are put into custody with their babies, or have them taken from them by the Social Services on the grounds that they are destitute and therefore unable to care for them. To be a refugee is to be criminalised.
This is happening in a country that has always been a sanctuary for people seeking freedom from oppression, and whose economy has relied on their skills for many hundreds of years.
Many of the women had no documents to show the authorities, because they had been snatched from their beds, put into custody, and socially isolated. A law passed in 2004, the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants) Act, deprives failed asylum seekers with children of all support and then takes the children away with the aim of encouraging their mothers to return to the countries from which they have fled. Women are also transported to the airport to be removed even after removal instructions have been cancelled. The whole situation is chaotic.
To be of any help to a failed asylum seeker who is pregnant and can’t find a doctor or midwife to give her care, has a baby taken from her, or who is put on a plane to be forcibly returned to a country where she was raped, entails instant and decisive action. It can’t be left to committees. Crossroads Women’s Centre does this superbly, and is one of the organisations I have worked with closely.
Legal Action for Women (LAW) is a grassroots anti-sexist, anti-racist legal service for all women based at the Crossroads Women’s Centre. They have told me how they can sometimes only get action from the authorities, lawyers and professionals, when someone from their organisation rings up with an English accent. If an African worker calls the request to speak to a woman may be turned down. When an educated English voice is heard, the response to the same request is positive.
In 2004 many women who had escaped from Eritrea and Uganda, where there are systematic human rights violations and torture is endemic, had their claims for asylum turned down by the Home Office. The result was that they were no longer entitled to housing or support and were made destitute. Some were offered a floor to sleep on by men who then raped them and hired them out to other men. Some were offered help by unscrupulous solicitors, or people who posed as solicitors, who demanded money or sex and did nothing about their claims.
Organisations like Amnesty International publicised asylum issues and, Liberty, Legal Action for Women, Women Against Rape, Black Women’s Rape Action Project, and some MPs took up the cases of individual women. I often served as an expert witness, a specialist in the anthropology of birth and motherhood, and always focused on the rights of the child, since legally this gave us most chance of keeping the mother and baby together, prevent them from being expelled from the UK, or free them from detention. I stated that women as mothers and caregivers are discriminated against, as defined by the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. I claimed that mothers and their babies are treated in a cruel, inhuman and degrading manner, as defined by Article 37 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and according to the European Court of Human Rights’ statement concerning the Rights of the Child.
Sometimes I needed specific knowledge about the situation in the country from which a woman had escaped. It was often difficult to get up-to-date information about a particular country.
Lily (not her real name) was from the Gambia. Her mother died when she was two, and her father when she was five. She was sent to live with a paternal uncle who, she alleges, raped her from that time on. She was discriminated against, abused and beaten by 20 or more male relatives as well as her uncle. When she was 14 she was married against her will to a 70-year-old man, who beat and raped her. She was treated in this way because her mother was from Senegal, a very different culture in which girls are not ‘circumcised’, and the men of the family said that she was the bastard child of a prostitute. Sometimes older women in the village helped bind her wounds. One woman paid for her to go to a herbalist and treat a fracture in her arm as a result of beating. If she was returned to the Gambia she believed that her husband would abuse her for running away, and her uncle might kill her, because he had always told her he could have her killed like her mother. There was no one else to whom she could return and she had no way of earning a living.
I wrote: ‘Being forced to return to the Gambia is bound to deepen her trauma. From my understanding of precept and tradition among the Mandingo, social pressures in the community, and perception of her duty to her uncle as the father of her child, will cause her suffering. If she does not conform, she will be treated as a social outcast.
‘The Gambian record on women’s rights is inferior to that of many other African cultures and progress toward outlawing clitoridectomy and infibulation is very slow. In a jointly commissioned report, A Situation Analysis of FGM in the Gambia, three UN Agencies, WHO, UNFPA and UNICEF, expressed concern in 2003 th
at 80 per cent of girls and women are at risk of genital mutilation. Activists are banned from using the public media for their anti-FGM campaigns. The UN has urged governments to take action to provide an enabling environment to pave the way for protecting girls from the practice and its negative repercussions.
‘Though I cannot comment on Gambian prejudice against women from Senegal and the stereotyped view that they are prostitutes, Senegal has an active health and human rights programme to end female genital mutilation recognised by the WHO as groundbreaking, and it is planned to eradicate female genital mutilation entirely in the next few years. This may accentuate different values in relation to women’s bodies in Senegal and the Gambia.
‘Lily is very unlikely to be able to find counselling and support if she returns to the Gambia, or to receive state protection, especially as there is no law against family rape.’
Rose, from the Cameroons, aged 24, and speaking very little English, arrived in England on her cousin’s passport and eight months pregnant. She was immediately imprisoned and was facing deportation in a few days. I learned from her that she had two previous children by her father who abused her, and who abducted the first child when two years old, and either sold or killed him. Her aunt sought a reconciliation with her father, but he beat her up and made her pregnant again. The aunt took the baby and told the father that it had died. Then she again sought reconciliation at a family get-together, after which Rose was forcibly returned to him. He sold her to a friend of his own age who already had three wives. This was when she escaped to England with the false passport.
Her great fear was that if she was returned to the Cameroons her father would kill her. She had found a solicitor, whom I contacted, who had not yet had time to study the papers, and asked Immigration to defer her removal on the grounds that she would not get the care she needed as a pregnant woman in the Cameroons.
Meanwhile she was taken to the airport, but refused to get on the plane. She was put in Gatwick Detention Centre.
I had to go abroad, and my daughter Tess took over. She rang the director of the airline to point out that this pregnant woman was at risk of going into pre-term labour if she was forced onto a plane, and that his airline would be acting against international law. The airline refused to carry her. The Immigration Authority relented after she had already been made to board the plane. She was taken off just before it flew. From that point on the solicitor built a strong case, and she was granted asylum.
Yasmin was also from the Cameroons and had been in detention for three months. Her son was born prematurely at 34 weeks. I talked to her in May 2002 when he was four months old and what she told me is typical of women’s experiences in detention when they have a baby: ‘I was in hospital for three weeks and then went home. After one week there was a knock on the door at 7 a.m. They said, “Your case is over. You are going into detention.” They put my things into bags. I could not tell the midwives or health visitor where we went.
‘My baby has not had his immunisations. Every day I ask and they say, “We are looking into it.” I am really worried about him. There are many people here, many children, from many different countries, who may have diseases. What will happen if he catches a disease? The rooms are very cold. My baby has eczema. For three months the medical centre wouldn’t give me anything for it. They said it was dry skin. They don’t do nothing, just speak, speak. I am depressed. If I was outside and my baby was sick I would go to hospital, or buy medicine. Here you go to the medical centre and you have to wait two weeks to get one cream. Every day wait, wait. They give you a few baby things and clothes, but you have to give them back when you leave. I have nothing. When I was at the Bedford Detention Centre they told me to leave my things at Reception and then they burnt them. My baby’s birth certificate was burnt. How can I show that he is my baby? My friend has brought me some clothes. You have to go to the office every time you need nappies or milk. Sometimes the office is closed. They only give out three nappies at a time. One time when his milk was finished I asked for a new tin and they said they wouldn’t give me a tin, just enough for one bottle, so I should go to the office every time he needs a bottle. But he needs a bottle every two hours! So I prefer to use the milk which my friends bring me from outside. But sometimes they refuse to give me milk which my friend has brought.
‘Today, when I came back from church, my room had been searched. They went into my cupboard and took away all the milk and baby food my friend had brought me. I went and told them it was mine. They said, “Do you have a receipt?” So I showed them the receipt. They should wait until we are there before checking the rooms. What would happen if they left the door open and someone else went in and took something?
‘This place is not for children. Here they don’t even weigh the baby. They do nothing to protect him, even though he was born premature.
‘When I arrived in August last year I was detained at Oakington. There was no care there for my pregnancy. Then I was released and they sent me to an address in Leeds. But that address was full so they sent me to another place. But they sent the court papers to the first address and so I missed the court hearing, and when I did not come they dismissed the case. The solicitor has said, “Your case is closed.” They think I am a person whose heart knows my case is over. But how can they remove me when they have not heard my case? I can’t back down, because I have a baby. What will happen to him if I go back? I have no money, no family.
‘They tried to remove me, but they didn’t tell me. They came to me and said, “Give your baby to the nurse. We need to weigh him.” I said, “No, I’ll come to the medical centre with him if he needs attention.” When I was there, they took him from me and put me in the van to the airport. They only gave him back to me when I was in the van. It was a trick. But in the end there was no place for me on that aeroplane, so they brought me back here.
‘Because they came to take my baby I’m worried all the time, whenever I hear keys. I can’t sleep at night – a small noise and I’m awake. I walk around at night – just walk, walk.
‘They have a library here and a church, but suddenly they say you can’t take your baby with you into the church. I want to go to pray, to forget this place. But I’m nervous of leaving the baby, being separated from him.
‘We don’t eat good here. Sometimes I eat just once a day. Every day rice, chicken, rice, chicken, and they give very little. I can’t breastfeed him as I don’t eat well.
‘I’m alone in this place. You don’t trust anyone. I’ve lots of friends outside, but in here I have nobody to ask advice or tell my worries. The medical staff just say, “It’s OK. It’s nothing.” They don’t listen. They should listen to me. I am the mother and I know when something is wrong.
‘You don’t have any information about when you will be moved. People disappear. You don’t know if tomorrow you are going to be here. In the night neighbours disappear.
‘Sometimes the staff ignore you when you come to speak to them. But the conditions here are better than Bedford. It was like a prison. I was there with a premature baby and the midwives had given me vitamin K to give to the baby every day. They took away the vitamin K. You had to ask to go to the health centre, but the officers would never bring me to there. They always said, “Later, we are busy.” So he only got vitamin K for the first month. Babies here – is not good. They tell me detention is not prison, but it is. The baby is closed up in one place. You can’t do anything, see people, get fresh air. You can’t enjoy your baby.
‘Tell me, why should they keep us here? How can I run away when I have a baby and no money? Where can I go?’
Gloria was from Vietnam, aged 25 with a baby three months old. She did not speak much English. Her benefits were removed when her application for asylum was turned down, she had no legal representation, and no interpreter had been provided. The Bureau for Immigration Detainees asked if I could help her. She was in Campsfield House, an immigration removal centre outside Oxford, had been served a deportatio
n order, and was terrified of being sent back, since her father, a senior police officer, had been murdered and all her family were missing. She had a heart problem, had been unable to get registered with a GP, and had stopped eating.
GPs often turn down failed asylum seekers. Kate, for example, was from Romania, a music student who was married and pregnant with her second baby, now two days past her expected date of delivery. She had been trying to find a GP to accept her for two weeks, but no-one would take her on because, though she had a valid passport, she had no visa. I acted swiftly and found her immediate midwife care at a hospital with a freestanding Birth Centre.
Anna, a 20-year-old Nigerian woman and 21 weeks pregnant with her first baby, did not realise she was pregnant when she fled from the country. Her partner was a British citizen and lived in London. She was very stressed, vomiting more or less non-stop, and had no antenatal care. The detention centre staff would not take her to hospital for a scan because they told her she might try to abscond, and by the time they got around to it, it was too late. When she arrived in England immigration officials instructed her to claim asylum in Ireland, so she went there, could not get it, and was then told that she could not claim asylum in England because she had already tried to do so in another country.
Giving Birth In Prison
After a prisoner gave birth in chains in Wythenshawe Hospital, South Manchester in 1995, her solicitors contacted me and it was then that I first realised the sheer cruelty with which prisoners were treated in childbirth. I took up the prisoner’s cause, achieved wide media coverage, and, among other things, had an article on the subject published in the journal Birth. One result was that a new midwifery service was developed to enable women in Styal prison to have top midwifery care. The aim is ‘to provide midwifery care which is woman-centred, recognises and is sensitive to the needs of each individual woman with the emphasis on choice, continuity and control throughout the pregnancy continuum, at the same time ensuring accessibility of all services.’
A Passion for Birth Page 39