45991 Kizza Musinguzi is a physics teacher at a secondary school in London. As a child I travelled a lot due to my father’s job, a chemical engineer working for Shell. For me, travelling to the UK was not by choice. In 2005, I joined the ranks of people seeking asylum in this country. The UK is signed up to the Geneva Convention and the European Convention of Human Rights. Some people consider these human rights conventions to be an administrative nuisance. I agree there are people who do take advantage of human rights laws but I will also argue that there are a lot more people for whom this protection is their only life line, from Russian oligarchs fleeing to England, to the Tamils in south east Asia and sub-Saharan Africans looking for a safe haven. I am one of those people who fled to the UK seeking protection. I am going to detail my journey through the immigration estate, exemplifying with snippets of scenarios that I remember. While writing this article I could not resist discussing my experience without offering an opinion on my view of the implementation of immigration control procedures. I claimed asylum on arrival in England in 2005. I was involved in human rights work, following in my father’s footsteps. He was unfortunately murdered whilst campaigning for election as the Member of Parliament for his local area upon retirement from Shell, having served Shell for 25 years. He was campaigning against a high-ranking government minister. I was also then persecuted for human rights campaigning. I fled my country with the assistance of a very loyal relative, who used his connections in neighboring Kenya to find temporary refuge. While I did not expect my final destination to be London, my uncle was able to put me in touch with colleagues of his who facilitated my journey there. I went through the administrative rigors of establishing my reasons for gracing the United Kingdom with my presence. I was then sent away to live in a hostel in south London with about 200 other asylum seekers. The day I was detained I received a letter from the Home Office requesting me to attend an interview to verify my biometric details. The letter asked me to turn up at 9am in the morning the following day, which I did. After waiting for about 10 hours, I was starting to get anxious and agitated; I had not eaten all day, I was worried I would miss dinner and signing in at the hostel (not signing in meant losing your place). At 6.45pm, I was called up to the counter and told to go through to the back office. As I made my way to the 4 back office I was faced with four private security personnel who ordered me to remove my belt and shoes, I was then frisked. My personals were sealed and tagged in a plastic see-through bag and sent to the waiting area. I asked one of the immigration officers present at the time what was happening and her reply was ‘we are going to transfer you to a different hostel where we shall be able to look at your case in detail’. This calmed me down and I complied throughout the process. At this stage, I have to emphasise that I do not and have never had a criminal record. I had always complied and was sure I had nothing to worry about. No stretch of the imagination could have prepared for what I was about to go through. On arriving at the centre, I was shocked by the exterior of the ‘hostel’: high walls with barbed wire on them, triple lock gates, security buffer zones and tiny windows — a fortified hostel. We waited outside the centre gates for about 45 minutes as the vans ahead were processed. It was now our turn to go through. The tall gates were clanked open, the driver drove into the buffer zone, switched off the engine, and waited. We were counted and paperwork was exchanged. We remained in the buffer zone for about 15 minutes. At this point my mind was racing. Why was I here? Why so much security? Was I on the set of an upcoming James bond film? We entered the facility and I was led to reception, where we proceeded to wait for about three hours. We were offered a drink of water from the water cooler type cups and a choice of chicken or tuna sandwiches — I chose the tuna. I had been eating combinations of chicken at the hostel and did not want any more chicken. We were fingerprinted again (my first experience of this was at the HO) and I wondered why security at the centre could not access biometric details remotely to save us what would turn out to be routine finger printing throughout my stay. The waiting room was very clinical, white walls, tiny windows and a distant television holstered in a top corner — I felt like was waiting for surgery, only I had not been told of this upcoming procedure. At about 2am, I made my not so grand entrance into Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) Wing B — my heart sank! It was late at night and people were wandering around like lost souls — I wandered around too, another lost addition to the population. People were dotted around in the TV rooms, playing cards and elderly men hunched in corners — I had never seen elderly men sob in such a way. My cellmate was a very nice guy and polite, but he Prison Service Journal Issue 205