Crispen Kulinji, a senior Zimbabwean opposition politician, claims he faces certain death if deported. The 32-year-old was released from custody today following a hearing at the Asylum and Immigration tribunal in Birmingham.
Mr Kulinji, from Harare, was being held at the Campsfield detention centre near Kidlington in Oxfordshire. He said he would continue his hunger strike until all of his compatriots had been released. "Although I have won the battle, the war is still on. I am urging all the people left behind not to lose heart," he said.
The member of the Movement for Democratic Change also urged G8 leaders to help make changes in his homeland. "If they are saying they want to make poverty history, they should also make dictatorship history," he said.
The government wants to send Mr Kulinji back to Malawi as he entered the UK using a Malawian passport. But he claims the regime of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe would be able to track him down there.
Mr Kulinji won a temporary reprieve from being deported last month after the intervention of Labour MP Kate Hoey. Another hearing will take place at the tribunal on August 10.
Mr Kulinji's case comes after a two-year blanket ban on all deportations to Zimbabwe was lifted last November.
The home secretary, Charles Clarke, confirmed today that 33 other asylum seekers from Zimbabwe were still on hunger strike in protest at being deported against their will. He said that none of the hunger strikers had yet needed hospitalisation.
"Food is available to all hunger strikers and they are seen daily by a medical practitioner to check their condition," he said in a written statement to MPs.
Home office figures reveal that 106 failed asylum seekers are being detained in Britain awaiting removal to Zimbabwe. During the first three months of this year, 95 Zimbabweans were sent home.
The government has come under increasing pressure over the removals, which have been bitterly opposed by MPs on all sides of the Commons. Media reports say Zimbabweans who have been returned to the country are being ill-treated.
Mr Clarke admitted today that the government did not "routinely" monitor the treatment of deportees but said the situation in Zimbabwe was constantly assessed by a variety of sources.
In Strasbourg today, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, called on Zimbabwe's neighbours to follow the lead of the European Union and condemn "the gratuitous and violent actions" by Mr Mugabe against his own people.
In recent weeks, Mr Mugabe has launched a so-called urban renewal drive aimed at clearing away shantytowns, markets and other structures deemed illegal. Aid workers and opposition leaders estimate the campaign has displaced up to 1.5 million people.S
