Our statement on the leaked HO report about the Park Inn Tragedy

The shocking details revealed in the BBC article highlights what we already knew -- that the conditions of the hotel accommodations and inhumane treatment of people seeking asylum led directly to the tragedy at the Park Inn hotel.

The Home Office and their private agents, the Mears Group, have inflicted psychological and physical harm on people seeking asylum and refugees in Scotland during this pandemic.

People have died, been injured and traumatised, and irreparably damaged as a direct result of the conditions that the Home Office and the Mears group have created. There has been no meaningful investigation and no one has taken any responsibility for this harm.

Refugees for Justice, as the organisation of the impacted community, have knocked on every possible door to ask for a fair, public, transparent, and independent investigation but all our calls have fallen on deaf ears up until this day.

We have been denied the basic right for a fair investigation, for our evidence to be heard, and for lessons to be learned.

Justice has been so painfully out of reach for us.

This would have not been the case if the victims of this unjust and inhumane tragedy were not Black asylum seekers, and we don’t say this lightly. This is a clear manifestation of the inherently racist UK asylum system in practice — costing lives and inflicting pain on individuals and cities.

The Home Office internal evaluation is a shameful coverup attempt by the Home Office. It is a completely biased assessment of the tragic events that took place in Glasgow and the conditions that led to it. There has been no meaningful participation of the victims of these conditions. The evaluation is conducted by the very same people who caused the tragedy and the conditions that led to it.

The Home Office and the Mears group are the ones to be investigated here; they are incompetent and unqualified to conduct a fair and impartial investigation into their own gross misconduct. Misconduct that has resulted in deaths and damage for hundreds of people. This can only be done in an independent public inquiry — which we have been and are still asking for.

When the Home Office came to Glasgow to conduct this evaluation back in 2020, we condemned it—along with a range of human rights organisations and MPs and legal agencies in Glasgow—because the process of conducting the evaluation was far from impartial and transparent. Glasgow MPs also condemned it and walked out of a meeting with the Home Office. We proposed constructive ways to work with the Home Office to make it a meaningful, transparent, and independent investigation, but they did not listen.

It is disgraceful that they have kept the outcome and report of their biased cover-up attempt secret for so long. They have done this to avoid taking any responsibility and continue implementing the exact same practice in Glasgow and in other areas across Scotland.

The Home Office and the Mears Group continue to warehouse asylum seekers, who are moved from Northern Ireland and England, not only in Glasgow but also in other cities and remote areas across Scotland (in Aberdeen, Perth, Falkirk, East Kilbride, and Edinburgh) where there is very limited support infrastructure for people.

Lessons have not been learned. There has been no meaningful investigation. The biased evaluation report by the Home Office has been kept hidden and they have now expanded the exact same practice that led to these tragedies in Glasgow to other areas in Scotland. This is utterly unacceptable.

• We urge the Home Office, the Mears Group, the Scottish Government, COSLA, Local Authorities and all duty bearers to act urgently to stop warehousing asylum seekers in these inhumane conditions and to give them adequate housing and homelessness support like every other Scottish resident.

• We urge both, the UK and Scottish Governments, to instigate an independent and public inquiry into the tragedies that took place in asylum accommodation and the conditions that led to those tragedies so that lessons are learned, justice is served, and the system is improved to prevent further tragedies.