Media Storm - S4E6 World Refugee Day: Inclusion and solutions

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Today is #WorldRefugeeDay - an international day designated by the UN to honour refugees around the globe. World Refugee Day feels especially relevant at Media Storm, because refugees make one of the strongest cases for this podcast’s existence. They are one of the groups characterised most frequently and most voicelessly in our mainstream media, and consequently, clouded by myth. Joining us to bust some of the biggest myths about refugees are two people with lived experience - Journalist, Editor-in-Chief at Egyptwatch, and host of the podcast Untold Stories, Osama Gaweesh - and Afghan journalist, newsreader, and women's rights activist, Zahra Shaheer. We talk about what the mainstream news media so sorely lacks - the focus on inclusion, positivity, and solutions. Plus, we discuss the biggest story in UK immigration and election news - the Tories' Rwanda deportation deal. Find out more: Mobile Refugee Support Refugee Journalism Project IMIX Follow us: Helena Wadia (@helenawadia) Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) Media Storm (@mediastormpod) Music: Samfire @soundofsamfire Assistant Producer: Katie Grant Support Media Storm on Patreon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Peloton. A new era of fitness is here. Introducing the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ. Built for breakthroughs, with personalized workout plans, real-time insights, and endless ways to move. Lift with confidence, while Peloton IQ counts reps, corrects form, and tracks your progress. Let yourself run, lift, flow, and go. Explore the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus at OnePeloton.ca. Calling all Book Lovers.

The Toronto International Festival of Authors brings you a world of stories all in one place. Discover five days of readings, talks, workshops and more with over 100 authors from around the world, including Rachel Maddow, Ketourou Isaku and Kieran Desai. The Toronto International Festival of Authors, October 29th to November 2nd. Details and tickets at festivalofauthors.ca.

Hello, hello, hello. Today is the 20th of June and it's a relevant day in the new cycle every year, but especially here at Media Storm. It's World Refugee Day, first held globally in 2001 to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees. The Convention defines the term refugee, which we'll get on to later, and sets international standards for their protection. Back then, the UK was one of 28 signatories.

but it now has over 100 countries on board. Now, as we mentioned, World Refugee Day feels especially relevant at Media Storm because refugees, asylum seekers, illegal immigrants, whatever the press wants to call them, make one of the strongest cases for this podcast's existence. They are one of the groups characterised most frequently and most voicelessly in our mainstream media and consequently clouded by myth.

That's why the refugee crisis was our first. first ever topic. And as we approach a general election, UK headlines will continue to fix eight on political pundits' promises to stop the boats, overinflated and under-explained immigration statistics, and the UK's never-ending mission to deport refugees to Rwanda. Matilda, any fresh takes on any of these old stories? You know what? I do actually have what I think is a really fresh take, and it's thanks to an Uber driver I was chatting with. He got onto the subject of immigration. We were talking about it for probably about 25 minutes before he revealed that he himself had come here from Ethiopia as a refugee. He'd passed through Calais and entered the

country in a way that would now be classed as illegal and, you know, make him vulnerable to being deported to Rwanda. But he said something I just hadn't heard before. And that was that if this was a voluntary scheme, he would have at one time considered it, really considered it. You know, if this was a scheme that had been set up in a way that actually had the interests of refugees at hearts, it could potentially be a scheme that works, that even I could get on board with, because the UK doesn't end up being the destination that serves everybody right. And of course, there are problems with resources. However, the way that it's currently set up is just with one thing in mind only, and that is deterrence. And so no one who is vulnerable to being deported to Rwanda has any

faith or should have any faith that this will ultimately not put them in more danger. And I feel like I spend as much time as anyone studying this topic. Yet this guy, this driver, was the first time I ever considered such a take. And he made me realize how simple solutions could be if we just shifted our approach. We've heard so much about this scheme in terms of it getting people out of the UK. But almost nothing about what's supposed to happen to them when they get there. And maybe Rwanda wouldn't be such a terrible idea if it was. honestly intended to help refugees and not just deter them.

And if it was a scheme people could opt into rather than having to be forced into, there might actually be some take-up. Yeah, I completely get what you're saying. But I read that there is a voluntary scheme that refugees were being offered money if they wished to go to Rwanda. There is an optional route. But the messaging around Rwanda, the priority has been how is it going to speak to voters who are anti-immigration?

The priority hasn't been how is it going to speak to the people whose lives it's actually going to affect the most? How is it going to speak to refugees and migrants? So there's been no transparency, there's been no openness. As this guy was telling me, he was like, I couldn't have any faith in the system as it stands because it's so clearly not designed to help us. It's so clearly designed to hurt us. But ultimately, this story is yet more proof to me that nothing compares to lived experience in terms of helping us understand a topic.

And also, it's a reminder that refugees are all around us, normal, interesting, diverse people embedded into our communities and our economies, not just like scary, voiceless, anonymous hordes and swarms who inherently threaten our way of life. Normalising, not other-rising, focusing on what we have in common, not just what sets us apart, would be a great place to start in making this. crisis seem solvable. But sadly, in that area, the media abjectly fails. As we mark the 24th World Refugee Day, global displacement continues to rise, a reality only predicted to intensify as the

world's climate keeps heating. At the same time, wealthy nations find ever more creative ways to close their borders and reduce their intake. This combination charts an unstoppable force heading towards an unmovable object. In other words, more and more chaos at the borders and whatever your views, that is just not desirable. We have no choice but to do things differently. So this World Refugee Day, Media Storm turns the microscope on our media and calls out their total failure to set the conversation on a road towards solutions.

World Refugee Day, according to its pioneer organisation, the UN High Commission for Refugees, exist to focus on inclusion and solutions. This is sourly at odds with most news coverage about refugees, which emphasises crisis over resolution without really defining what part of the problem the term crisis refers to and systemically fails to include refugee voices in the coverage about them. So today we'll do the opposite.

I'll be taking on this discussion alone as Matilda is off on a top secret project, incidentally related to this very top. or be revealed down the line, and when it is, we promise MediaStorm listeners will get the inside scoop. This does mean we've had to record the introduction ahead of time, and I'll be heading off now. But don't worry, we'll have some wonderful guests lined up who are more than make up for my absence. You'll be begging for me to stay away. Yeah, okay, Metauri, you can piss off now. Let's get on with the show.

As migrants load onto a boat in Normandy... Oshu-Soonak insisted his proposed new immigration law will prevent every legal challenge that has ever been... including the Human Rights Act, to stop us removing illegal migration. Europe will be overwhelmed by migration unless the EU finds solutions. The UK government's Rwanda asylum bill is finally to become north. Welcome to MediaStorm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Helena Wadia and Matilda's Away. This week's Media Storm.

World Refugee Day, Inclusion and Solutions. Welcome to the Media Storm Studio. We're so thrilled to be joined today by two special guests. Our first guest is a journalist and TV anchor based in London. He has written for The Guardian Newsweek Middle East Eye and the African Arguments. He's the editor-in-chief at Egypt Watch and host of the podcast Untold Stories. He is a refugee, a former dentist and an advocate for refugees and asylum seekers' rights. Welcome to the studio, Osama Gawish.

Thank you for having me. Our second guest is a journalist and newsreader who worked in Afghanistan for more than a decade. Following the Taliban's rise to power in August 2021, she fled to the UK where she has volunteered and worked with the Refugee Council, BBC Afghan, the International Rescue Committee and more. She is also a former Refugee Week ambassador at IMX, the charity which offers training, coaching and mentoring to those with both lived and learnt experience of migration. Welcome to the studio, Zara Shahir. Thank you for having me.

Happy World Refugee Day and thank you both for joining us. The first topic we want to discuss is language. A word that so often follows refugee or migrant in our media is the word crisis. A humanitarian crisis is typically defined as an event that critically threatens the health, safety, security or well-being of a community. We find it telling that in most cases when our media describes the refugee crisis, the crisis they seem to be referring to is not the hundreds of millions of people who have been displaced from their homes, but the tens of thousands trying to come to hours. Is the term crisis accurate when we talk about the UK's refugee crisis or what do you think crisis should refer to in this context? This term is definitely a gut term that we can use for refugee crisis. Because it highlights the urgency, it highlights the need, that refugees need help, they need support, like the same as we have economic crisis.

When there's some problem, all governments think how to find a solution through diplomatic relations with other countries. It's the same with the refugee crisis. They need to think why the refugees forced to flee what was in their country. they must stop the war and conflict in the countries that the people had to flee and come for safety. So the term crisis is accurate when we're describing the refugees who are forced to flee their home. But unfortunately, I guess in our media,

they often use the word crisis about the amount of refugees coming to the UK. To be honest, I disagree with Zahara because describing people as crisis is not fair. We can talk about economic crisis. We can talk about border crisis. We can talk about inflation crisis, but we can label people as crisis. I describe this as racist label because people are not crisis.

People force it to flee. People force it to have this horrible journey that the media here in this country and in Western media, to be honest, they use this crisis to label refugee at their threat. So I think we need to reconsider describing people as crisis. Well, I think actually while we're speaking about language, I think we should move one step further and actually talk about some of the terms that are used so frequently in the media, but often really like never thought about with any kind of detail. As mentioned in the introduction, we celebrate World Refugee Day today, and it's the anniversary of the 1951 Geneva Convention, which laid out an international definition for refugees. This definition is someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality,

membership of a particular social group or political opinion. But this is not the definition used by media outlets who reserve the term refugees for people whose request for asylum has been approved by a host country. Instead, we use terms like migrant, asylum seeker, illegal immigrants. What is the problem with this differentiation in language between the legal and the literal meaning of refugee? Sometimes and walls can make us confuse. It brings confusion to the audience. I'm against illegal migration.

There is no illegal migration because people forced to flee. They don't choose to come for a better life. They come for safety. Some people choose to come through safe routes. Some people, there's not safe routes for them to come. It's in the media job. They should use the proper terms to make it clear for the audience and for the people to understand. And they can imagine themselves as a refugee.

If we call it like illegal migration, it's not fair for a person who forced to flee and lost everything. And we call them illegal migration. it is, in my idea, it's not something fair with refugees. I totally agree with Zahra and we both had prominent job in our country for origin. She was a prominent speaker and I was a prominent dentist. I was a manager of a hospital. So if you asked us a few years ago, do you think you need to move to the UK to seek asylum and to be a refugee?

I said, what? No, I'm happy with my country. I'm happy with my job. I'm happy with everything here. We didn't look or think about a better life. We just looking for safety. We had an military coup and then start targeted every activist in the country. So we forced it to leave.

The only place we got is here. And we tried and struggled to find a new life, a new job. And we pay a taxpayer. And we are, as any British citizen in this country, we're not overload in this country. No, we're adding value to this society. So this should be the way the media treat with us, who in the Western countries experience a war in 2022,

when Russia invade Ukraine. I didn't remember any ministry media or any outlet, even with the deployed or the other, labeled Ukrainian as illegal immigrant. It was asylum. No, no, no. It's Ukrainian refugee and this is our commitment in the country and there is safe routes for Ukrainian.

So there is safe road and we are respecting the white refugee. I think this is another hypocrisy. Do you think that we as a society are almost scared to call it racism? Do you think we call out the fact that it is racism enough? I think it is racism and it's intentionally doing this. The covering of media of refugee stories like victims or criminals. There is no midpoint between both. a victim and we we sympathize with you, oh my God, and that's it. And the other thing, you are

a criminal. You are illegal. You come from Nabat. We will send you to Rwanda. So there is a midpoint between two. He is a human pain. She's a human pain. Just treat with him like this. Yes. And this brings us, I think, very neatly onto what we want to talk about next, which is this kind of disproportionate distribution of positive refugee stories in our media and negative refugee stories in our media. Now, we did some searching and we did find some positive but vastly more negative stories about refugees in general. Most of the stories were about the poor conditions that refugees live in, the record number of displaced people or the number of so-called channel migrants. What is the impact of this coverage, this consistent negative

coverage about refugees? There's a lot of negative news about refugees. And show the refugees how dangerous they are in the host country. Like nowadays, in Germany, there's all news about Afghan refugees. One Afghan refugee called the police officer. And a lot of Afghan refugees deported back in Afghanistan in this situation. Because what happened? They never thought about the other angles of the accident, how it happened. I'm not going to support that Afghan man. He's a criminal. But the governments changed their policies against refugees and they become stricter to make strict the law against refugees. Yeah, I think this covered, this negative coverage, it's like a collective punishment

for the whole refugee in this country. You know, you are a refugee so we will punish you by negative coverage. In the early days of 2020, we had very sad news that three members of the frontline NHS doctors have died and the surprise was that they were refugees from Sudan and Somalia. So this was a good example For everyone in the ministry, media These are the refugee in this country The other one is the brilliant Hassan Akad

The Syrian refugee who won't Bafta Who crossed the border Who came from Syria And then he volunteered As a worker in the NHS In the first wave of COVID This what the refugee Can do to this country

They are a part of this country They want to be a part of this country. They want to feel belongings to this country because they can't look back. They can't go back. There is no Syria. There is no Egypt. There is no Afghanistan for many of us now because we can't go back. We can't return to our homeland.

So if we have a chance, we will do. But we can't. So this is our new country and we are belonging to this society. We want to add values to this society. When we were searching to find, you know, how many positive versus negative stories there were, It was very interesting because when we were searching the term refugee on individual news sites, we'd find a varied selection of stories. When we search migrant, almost all of the coverage was negative or about party manifestos, so about policies.

We've mentioned a few times about positive stories, and one story we did see this week was this. Former refugee becomes Northern Ireland's first black mayor. This is, of course, a really great story. It's a success story. However, often we see kind of two extremes with refugee stories. either they're kind of, you know, faceless, nameless people crossing the channel or their successful refugees that beat the odds,

you know, they're the first mayor, they're an Olympic gold medalist, they're a BAFTA winner. What does this say about how we value refugees? I think we need in the mainstream media to focus not on the successful stories only or in the refugee as victims and so on. No, we need to focus on the job,

the history, the positive points of this man or woman or girl or whatever in his homeland or her homeland. Just raise this, highlight this, telling the people in the UK that we have a good man, we have a good girl, we have a good woman. They were brilliant in their homeland and they will do the same in this country. We need to deal with these people with proudly. Sometimes refugees can be change makers in other countries in the host country, why they don't think positive about it. They only think about like some people think in the UK.

Refugees are coming here, taking our jobs. They also do work hard. They bring changes in this country. They pay tax, everything. So they are also working as a human, as a citizen of this country. You've mentioned Rwanda a couple of times and I just want to ask about that quickly. When the government's Rwanda deportation scheme was announced, there was outrage about how callous and dangerous the whole idea

to send refugees to another country and an unsafe, potentially unsafe country was. I want to know that, first of all, were you surprised when the government created the Rwanda deportation scheme? Did it surprise or shock you in any way? Both. Surprised. and shocked me because I came from this continent.

I came from Africa. I know well Kagami presidents. He's like Egyptian presidents. He's like Libyan late presidents, Gaddafi, and they are authoritarian leaders. And we all know what authoritarian leaders do to its people, to their people, persecution, injustice, and every single topic, the media here advocates against and we need to respect the human rights.

There is no human rights in this country. We all know this. But the government here is proud to do this. And this is something even against the British values. When I arrived in the UK, I was new in this country and they said they were going to send refugees in Rwanda. And I was thinking, if they send me in Rwanda with my two children, is there any kind of good facilities for my children to learn? Is there any rights as a refugee that I have in the UK?

It is the plan is wasting the people's life. value your time. We don't value your life. I think we move from dealing a mistreat the refugee in this country to export our racism coverage to other countries. For example, I'm originally from Egypt. And you know in Egypt, the national media are fully owned and controlled by the general intelligence where the President's son is working. And when people start to advocate for refugees and asylum seekers in Egypt, the national media owned and controlled by the general intelligence said, look to Britain. They are sending refugee to Rwanda. This is a country of democracy. This is a country of human rights. This is the idol of you. So we need to do the same

as UK. So congratulations to the government. You are exporting this racism and this mistreat to refugee to authoritarian leaders in the Middle East. That's a very incredible point. Thank you. How much do you think that the decisions to ramp up immigration control are made in response to media pressure or media negativity? A lot. It's not only the media's job that they just cover the news. It has a lot of impact. Whatever we say today, when people hear these words, they keep in mind and they think about it. It's the same with policymakers. When they listen to the news, they see the impacts. and they make their decision. And I think here there is a good statement I've learned the first week I arrived to the country.

Refugee is not your enemy. Your enemy is the regime that make this refugee. The ministry media here need to understand this. Refugee didn't cause the inflation to increase. Refugee didn't make the NHS salary law. Refugee didn't force Britain to leave the European Union. Refugee are not the problem of any of this. The government here in this country

and some political parties with their pathetic policies and their support and backing authoritarian leaders in the Middle East, they are the problem. They are making this refugee and they are making this problem to this society. Just please understand this. We are not a problem. Solutions-focused, positive reporting does exist,

and we found an increase in this recently, likely because it is Refugee Week. In the BBC this week, Refugee Week aims to bring communities together. Council calls for volunteers to help refugees. Cathedral given new status for supporting refugees. However, a lot of these stories still don't speak to actual refugees. World Refugee Day is specifically focused on the inclusion of refugees,

and yet our media sets a terrible example by failing to include them in the coverage about them. Research from 2021's London College of Communications Refugee Journalism Project shows 64% of news broadcasts about refugees, migrants and asylum seekers do not feature a refugee migrant or asylum seeker voice. You are both journalists. To start, Asama, could you tell us about the importance of hiring refugees as you? journalists. Yeah, I need to highlight the importance of the refugee journalism project. I owe this initiative and I say thank you to Vivian and all the staff in the refugee

journalism project because they helped me a lot. They put me on the right start in this country to just be a freelancer to write training for one year, attending a mini workshop with Plumberg, the Guardian, BBC, and then a fellowship for six months in two. media news outlet in the country. So a huge experience. It's helped you to build your self-confidence as a journalist in this country, to help you to improve your language so you can overcome the language barrier and to introduce you probably to the industry here.

And does the language barrier contribute to a lack of refugee voices in UK media? It needs much work from us to just learn language and then learn how to write. but it needs a lot of work to be done from the industry as well. Just help these people to integrate with you, help these people to overcome this language barrier because we are talking here in the industry about the diversity, the inclusion. Okay, these topics are brilliant, but please do these topics on the ground.

Hire more refugee journalism and be patience with their language, train them and develop their skills. And you will get a lot of things. because we have an area of experience. No one in this country, even a correspondent, can write about Afghanistan better than Zara or about Egypt better than me, even a correspondent live in Egypt or Afghanistan for many years.

No, I've spent 28 years in Egypt. So I know every single angle of this society. Absolutely. Sarah, I wonder what helped you maintain your journalism career when you had to flee to the UK? When first I come in the UK, I was in the hotel for six months. and spending trauma, stress, anxiety.

And everyone was teasing me. A journalist is coming from Afghanistan, and they were saying, oh, you can go to McDonald's and wash the dishes because you can't do anything with the language barrier, first of all. And I was thinking the same, okay, if I want to live in this country, what job should I do? And I was only thinking about washing the dishes

or just walking a dog. Nothing else. But refugee journalism project helped me. It's very difficult for a journalist to throw away her pen, don't write anymore. It's very important to hire them. And they have better experience and also they have better understanding with lived experience. I can cover about Afghan women very easy, very easy. If I want to interview an Afghan woman about a thousand days that schools are closed in Afghanistan,

a million of women are ready to come and to be interviewed by me. But if an English journalist wants, she will find it's very difficult to find even one person for an interview. It's very difficult. So it's better to support refugee journalists as well. Experiences the mother of the knowledge. You raise such an important point and, you know, probably the key theme of Media Storm. Because sometimes at Media Storm, we get called up by outlets like BBC Today program looking for refugees that they can interview. and this would be great

except that the line of interviewing often puts refugees off from wanting to speak because they are only asked about their trauma and we believe that refugees should be invited to not share their trauma but their expertise

their expertise by experience clearly you've seen that this happens in the media have either of you had experience of this Yeah I collaborate in 2021 with the European Center of Journalism. We put together a toolkit for refugee journalists how to cover refugee stories.

We put some advice that just consider the mental health because these people been through a horrible experience. Maybe the experience death many times, threats. Maybe they had nightmares. And for myself, I myself spent many years with the same nightmare that have been arrested in the airport I'm being deported to Egypt. I'm in jail. So considering mental health for these people, it's a crucial point for them in the early stage in any new country.

I think it's a fatal mistake for any journalist to go deeply with this point. If the refugee want to tell you this story, okay, respect his willing and go ahead. But rather than just don't go to these issues a lot. And also sometimes we can put others at risk. Like I have my family back in Afghanistan. When I share my story, I know it has a big risk for them. Maybe Taliban come and arrest my family. Because it happened with me.

It happened with me because I was sharing my story. And when they had the house searching, they find out about the house, whose house is this, and what's she doing? She said that she's a British spy. Not a journalist. Welcome to the team. He said that same thing. It's very important when we want to share us to our story, be careful to think about others' life as well. One of the Egyptian mouthpieces, he always called me shamefully refugee.

The shameful refugee, Osama Gawish. Okay. And I'm taking this opportunity to say, I'm brashash. a refugee and I respect to every single refugee in this country or in the world because they are human being. It is not a shame to be a refugee or asylum seekers. You are looking for your safety because this authoritarian leaders made your life in danger and put your life in danger. So you will be a stupid man to stay and let them kill you or jail you. No, we are here.

Zara mentioned at the beginning we need to be alive. And here we go. We are alive in the country. And yes, we are refugee and we are proud. And even if you're alone, we don't think about only ourselves. We think about our family. Everyone has a family. Like myself, I have two children. I need to look after them. They need me. I know it hurts me. It's painful. How I left my life behind and I had a good life. I was so happy with my life in Afghanistan. And I'm trying my best to break down the language barrier, to learn, to improve my language and to work. As Osama mentioned, just be patient with their language barrier.

Give them chance. We can support them. If I have a lot of English community to speak with them every day as a job or somewhere as friends, I can improve it soon. We're human. When humans want to do something, they can do. Everything is possible. But they need time.

Zama and Zara, thank you so much for joining us. Before we leave you, do you have any closing thoughts and where can people follow you? Thank you for having us or whoever is listening to us. I always ask them, please don't forget. Countries like Afghanistan, like Iran, like Syria, other countries. They are in war and conflict. They need your support.

We should be united as human, not thinking about the borders. The human are all the same. Why we shouldn't think about Afghan girls. They are not allowed to go to school. Just please be united for those girls and we need to campaign for them. We need to find ways for them to help them. All girls are starving, not for food,

for education in Afghanistan. So they can just search my name on Google and they can find me. Firstly, thank you for having me. But for everyone listen to this conversation, please think about people in Gaza. in Palestine. They are now 1.7 million Palestinian people forcibly displaced from their houses and they're stuck in Rafah in a very

tiny area. And they are possible refugees. So please, in July 4th, vote for any candidate stand for humanity. Vote for any candidate calls for immediate ceasefire. What does matter is he's supporting Refugees, he's supporting human being, he calls for ceasefire. Thank you. Find me on Twitter, Osama Gawish and on TikTok as well. Osama Gawish too, because the one has been deleted. And on YouTube, I have a YouTube channel in Arabic and in English as well.

Coming up, the press has been filled with comments, speeches and theories about the government's Rwanda deportation scheme. The Conservatives insist that it is the best deterrent. After the break, we'll hear from the people at the center of the story. Refugees about what they think of this scheme. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Presale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race.

Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. Did you lock the front door? Check. Close the garage door? Yep. Installed window sensors, smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision? No.

And you set up credit card transaction alerts, a secure VPN for a private connection, and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web? Uh, I'm looking into it. Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more. Conditions apply.

Before we continue, I wanted to tell you about a podcast we absolutely love listening to. It's the Art Persists podcast, a series of conversations with artists and activists from around the world who talk about their lives and work that drives social change. If you're interested in arts, culture or human rights, or just want to hear more about feminist performance art in Chile, protest art from Hong Kong, political cartoonists in Sudan, and so much more. then this podcast guarantees to leave you inspired and with a greater understanding of how artists are using their work to voice the changes they want to see in society.

Search the Art Persist Podcasts wherever you get your podcast. We highly recommend you check it out. Welcome back to Media Storm. It's me again, Matilda, and I'm here to introduce our lived experience section. And it's about the biggest story in UK immigration news. Incidentally, also the biggest story in UK election news, and that's the Tories-Rwanda deportation deal, a scheme to relocate asylum seekers who enter the UK without proper entry clearance.

We've seen hours of debates about whether this policy will achieve its core goal of deterring people from crossing the channel. We've heard spokespeople promising no one would risk it if they realistically think they'd be deported. We've heard critics arguing this fails to understand the reasons they're coming in the first place. But strangely, we've heard almost nothing from the people it's actually designed for because very few outlets have made the effort to actually ask them.

So we've gone and done that. Thank you to the team at Mobile Refugee Support, who helped us to collect these interviews on the ground. You can learn more about the group in our show notes. Here's what they told us. Okay, do you want to tell me where you're from? Yes, I'm from South Sudan. South Sudan.

Yes, I'm Germans. And you've heard about the Rwanda plan in the UK? I've heard about it. It's still, you know, it's frustrating for me and then to like to hear about it. But I don't have any other option again, you know. You were saying that you heard about the plan when you were in Italy on your journey. Yes, yes. I heard about it when I was coming here.

So, but I don't have any other country here where I can live, that I accept the UK. Okay. Because, you know, my country is English. country. So I had to go and continue where there's English because it's really hard for me also to catch up here with French or with any other language and then accept English. And if you could speak to the UK Prime Minister, what would you tell him? I would tell him that you cannot just send someone to Ravana without knowing the basic,

like the main reason why the country, like what someone left, is all country. They are my neighbours and then if it was going to be safe. for me, then I would have gone there because it took me like four years and then to reach here. But then you can see how someone risked his life and then to come up to here rather than going to Rwanda because if it was good and then I would have gone there. Hey, do you want to tell me where you're from? From Iran. Yes.

And have you heard about the Rwanda plan in the UK? Yeah, yeah, I heard about this. But they said that's just for vote. I don't know. And so if there is a risk that you would be sent to Rwanda, why is it that you still think of going to the UK? Because if I go back to my country, maybe they will kill me. Not maybe, they will kill me, I'm sure.

Because I did something wrong and the government won't meet. So they will kill me. That's better than die if you go to Rwanda. But they don't stay doing this, I'm sure. I hope I arrive in UK because I need a better life, a normal life. I don't need a reach on money, because I had the money from my country. I have a lot of money.

So I escape it from government. So I need a safe life, not more. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure. Good luck. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week with more current affairs. Before we go, a special shout-out to our Patreon supporters

who help fund MediaStorm investigations. And thank you everyone for listening. Follow MediaStorm wherever you get your podcast so that you can get access to new episodes as soon as they. drop. If you like what you hear, share this episode with someone and leave us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast and our aim is to have as many people as possible hear these voices. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helen Awaddea and Matilda Mallinson. Katie Grant is the assistant producer and the music is by Samphire.

You can follow us on social media at Matilda Mal at Helen Awadier and follow the show via at Media Storm pod. Listen and hit follow on Spotify. Thank you.