A woman who admitted taking part in savage evictions of white farmers from their homes in Zimbabwe has lost her bid for asylum in the UK, a report said. According to the Daily Mail, High Court judge Mr Justice Ouseley threw out the widowed mother-of-two's appeal to remain in the UK after she confessed to beating up 10 people during two land invasions.
The story quotes the judge as saying that the state-sponsored mob violence, which saw white farmers' land seized and shared out among President Robert Mugabe's cronies, was akin to genocide. "We are satisfied that the two farm invasions were crimes against humanity," the judge said, likening the 39-year-old woman's role to a concentration camp guard who followed Nazi orders during the Holocaust.
According to the report, the woman, who cannot be named, came to Britain illegally in 2002 and did not claim asylum until six years later. Her bid for refugee status was rejected on the grounds that her own violent actions in Zimbabwe disqualified her from humanitarian protection in the UK. She reportedly admitted to being part of a gang of thugs from Mugabe's Zanu-PF party who invaded two white-owned farms intent on causing maximum terror and driving away black workers and said that on one occasion, she beat a woman so badly she thought she would die.
However, the report says she insisted she had taken part in the raids under duress to prove her loyalty to Mugabe's regime and she had never intended to kill anyone. The Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber accepted that the woman was a "lesser participant" in the bloodshed and others were even more brutal. However, she took "a voluntary, even if reluctant" part. Even though not a ringleader, the same could be said of concentration camp guards who "make a substantial contribution to genocide" despite their peripheral role, said the judge.
Source: IoL
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