Eleven years ago, I was in the United Kingdom as an asylum seeker due to the persecution I suffered as a journalist (including arbitrary imprisonment and being declared “wanted”) in my country, Sierra Leone.
When I sought asylum in 2004, I was relocated from London to MP Michael Meacher’s constituency of Oldham West and Royton, Greater Manchester, where I became a total stranger. My initial asylum bid was rejected by the Home Office. I faced the prospect of being deported to my home country, where I could have obviously faced further persecution.
However, one person that stood by me in those trying times (after he was approached by the Manchester branch of the National Union of Journalists and the leadership of the church I attended) was Meacher (Obituary, 22 October). He not only wrote supportive letters to the Home Office on my behalf, he made a personal intervention with immigration ministers (and someone whispered to me that he might even have taken it up with the then prime minister, Tony Blair). His actions kept any planned move against me at bay and gave me an opportunity to file a fresh asylum claim. A change of government in Sierra Leone that saw the opposition taking over the reins in 2007 caused a change of fortunes for me as well, as the new president called me to return home to serve as his press secretary.
Journalists in the same situation as I had been said that MPs in their areas were not as supportive. I am a living testimony to Jeremy Corbyn’s tribute to Meacher in the House of Commons as “a lifelong campaigner against injustice and poverty”. I send condolences to his family, the Labour party and his constituents, and pray that the Good Lord would “grant a good road”, as we say in Sierra Leone, to this good man.
Sheka Tarawalie
Deputy minister of internal affairs, Freetown, Sierra Leone
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