Authors profile
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Syndou Diarrassouba Syndou Diarrassouba came from Liberia three years ago to seek asylum in the UK. In Middlesbrough he has learnt to read and write and is studying car mechanics at Middlesbrough College, where he was named as Student Learner of the Year last year and is now taking the exams for his Level 3 Mechanical Engineering. In October 2005 the Home Office ruled that, since he has made such good progress in the UK, there is no reason for him not to return to Liberia. He says that if he returns he will die and he believes this profoundly. Liberia is in a chaotic state with little or no access to education and health care; Syndou’s home area has been destroyed by years of civil war and his immediate family are all dead. This is a talented poet, a new and remarkable voice in the Tees Valley, a person who has ‘crossed the horizon between hopelessness and hope’, yet now lives under this heartless and unthinking judgement. How cruel if we have helped him come so far only to break his spirit again. Mudfog Press joins the many individuals and organisations in Middlesbrough and the wider UK who are asking the Home Office to reconsider his case. |