Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.06.2016, Page 16

The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 7 — 2016
16
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A Matter
Of Life
And
Death
The sad, strange case of
Eze Okafor
Words
PAUL FONTAINE
Photo
NO BORDERS
As I write this, Nigerian asylum
seeker Eze Okafor is on the streets of
Sweden. He owns little more than the
clothes on his back, has nowhere to
sleep, and barring some kind of au-
thoritative intervention, will soon be
sent back to Nigeria, where Boko Ha-
ram—who murdered his brother and
badly wounded him—will in all like-
lihood find and kill him. Last week,
he was in Iceland, as he had been for
the past four years, celebrating with
his many friends the decision of the
Immigration Appeals Board that he
could no longer be deported. So what
the hell happened?
What happened was the Director-
ate of Immigration disagreed with
the Appeals Board, had him arrested
immediately, and put him on a plane
to Sweden the next day.
One could be forgiven for wonder-
ing how the Directorate could defy
the Appeals Board, a body specifically
created for those prospective new
Icelanders who want to plead their
case to a higher authority. The Di-
rectorate would tell you it’s because
the Appeals Board merely gave their
opinion—not a definitive ruling.
This contention is questionable at
best: having read both the Appeals
Board’s ruling and the Directorate’s
response, it is difficult for me to read
the Appeals Board’s “opinion” as any-
thing but definitive. How then can
the Directorate get away with it?
The short answer is: because no
one holds them accountable. For ex-
ample:
When Directorate head Kristín
Völundardóttir told reporters in 2013
that asylum seekers included those
who are essentially tourists looking
for free food and shelter, former Min-
ister of the Interior Ögmundur Jónas-
son did nothing, despite the fact that
she had no evidence for her claims
and never apologised for them. When
the Parliamentary Ombudsman told
the Directorate last year to provide
evidence for how they process asylum
seeker cases, the response deadline
came and went in total silence.
When it was found last March that
the Directorate had actually broken
the law in the case of a Vietnamese
couple falsely accused of having a
“fake” marriage, again no apology
was issued. When they attempted to
squash a story the national broad-
caster was running on asylum seek-
ers earlier this month, by threaten-
ing reporters with the police and
issuing an unconstitutional ban on
interviewing asylum seekers in Ice-
land—crickets. And now that the Di-
rectorate has defied their own higher
authority, current Minister of the In-
terior Ólöf Nordal is refusing to offer
any kind of explanation.
The Directorate can do what it does
because everyone they answer to is ig-
noring the elephant in the room: the
Directorate is broken, arbitrary, horribly
managed and insulated from criticism.
I have on occasion been asked why
it is that, when I cover asylum seeker
issues, I speak primarily with activ-
ists. This is sometimes accompanied
by accusations of bias. Putting aside
that “bias” is a strange accusation to
make when it comes to how to report
on an illegal deportation to almost
certain death, there’s actually just
one reason why most of my sources
for asylum seeker stories are activ-
ists: because they’re the only ones
who provide any kind of information,
legal documentation, and contacts.
Try asking a Directorate official for
a comment on any given asylum seek-
er, and you will get the same stock
response: “We cannot comment on
individual cases.” This pat response
is tiresome and frustrating, but is a
testament to the calcified nature of
the Directorate.
The strangest part of all this is
that the Icelandic people themselves
are decidedly more progressive when
it comes to asylum seekers, refugees
and immigrants than the Director-
ate itself. In addition, there are a sig-
nificant number of Icelanders willing
to get themselves arrested in order
to stop the Directorate. You wonder
just how far things need to go before
someone, anyone in the halls of Par-
liament stands up and makes some
real changes.
Eze Okafor can’t afford to wait for
the practically geological timeframe
of political change in this country.
He needs to be brought back home, to
Iceland. Otherwise, he may very well
soon join the ranks of the many peo-
ple whose lives have been destroyed
by the Directorate of Immigration.
SHARE: gpv.is/eze
OPINION