Like many other Ghanaians, I was quite amused by the news the other day that some 25 Ghanaian football fans who travelled to Canada for the recent World Cup tournament have failed to return home and have indeed gone on to make asylum claims there, citing fears of persecution upon return to Ghana.
I believe this development reflects the general desire of many young Ghanaians to seek the proverbial green pastures abroad.
Canada is certainly one of the prime destinations and I get the sense that the families of some of these 25 persons would probably have disowned them if they had dared return home.
Familiar script
This is not the first time Ghanaian fans have failed or refused to return home after an international sporting event.
Following the Brazil World Cup in 2014, over 200 football fans who had accompanied the team reportedly refused to return home, claiming a fear of religious persecution.
Many Ghanaians were as amused as they were irritated by what they believed was nothing more than an economic survival ploy by those fans.
After all, with Brazil being closer to the United States than Ghana is, the fans probably surmised they could stay in Brazil with the prospect of entering the United States, their ultimate dream destination, at some point.
Twelve years on, I am sure many of them are still stuck in Brazil, harbouring dreams that one day…
In 2018, two Ghanaian athletes reportedly disappeared after that year’s Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia, with as many as 200 athletes and officials from Africa failing to leave the country after the games.
In 2022, one Ghanaian athlete was among the 17 from Africa who disappeared after the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, UK.
Of course, this is not just a Ghanaian or African issue. Over the years, major global sporting events held particularly in Western countries have routinely seen a failure of some team members to return home, citing fears of persecution.
This was particularly pervasive at the height of the Cold War, from the 1950s and 1960s onwards, among sportsmen from the then Warsaw Pact countries, which comprised the former USSR and seven other Eastern European countries.
Because of the known brutalities of these regimes, such applications usually found favour in the West, leading to the grant of refugee status, which made the Warsaw Pact governments fume.
Down memory lane
With my previous life in the UK representing and supporting asylum applicants and others in a rather mixed caseload both at the application and appellate stages before the immigration tribunals, the story almost naturally caught my interest and drew me back to yesteryear.
What I found most amusing was the general sneering tone of many on social media platforms, wondering what on earth there was to fear in Ghana such that a person who had travelled out would be afraid to return.
Per the UN Refugee Convention of 1951, together with domestic law, the drivers for a successful asylum application would be a proven fear of persecution upon return to one’s country by reason of one’s political opinion, religious beliefs, race or membership of a specific social group.
Other factors include armed conflict, running away from state-sanctioned torture, arbitrary detention or systematic oppression where local authorities cannot or will not help.
Most people would readily dismiss any of these factors as applying to the Ghanaian situation.
I suppose the commentary amused me for two main reasons.
First, in my line of work back in the day, I heard literally every story there was to hear as a basis for claiming asylum.
Some sounded genuinely horrifying and their applications were successful, whilst others sounded quite fanciful and clearly contrived, and were duly thrown out by the Home Office and subsequently the immigration tribunals on appeal.
Perhaps, one of the most amusing asylum stories I came across in my line of work was a claim by a young man from an African country, who said that his role back home in government included taking the President’s dog on walks every evening around the presidential villa.
One day, the dog suddenly collapsed and died during their walk and he had to flee the country because the President believed he had killed the dog and, therefore, ordered his arrest and torture!
A mother of five children by three different men also insisted she was a lesbian and would be attacked if returned to her home country in the Caribbean due to public attitudes there.
The second reason the social media sneering amused me was that in most cases, these asylum applications are based on real events in their home country that some latch on to, even if there were credibility issues with the individual.
In June 1989, when the Rawlings-led PNDC government banned the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints and ordered their missionaries to leave the country, there was a sudden surge of asylum applications in Europe by self-styled ‘adherents’ of the two faiths, who conveniently claimed fear of religious persecution back home.
Reported chieftaincy disputes bordering on violence, as well as various ethnic tensions in parts of the country, have also given some claimants convenient grounds to claim fear of being harmed upon return home.
The political tensions in Zimbabwe in the mid-2000s under President Mugabe literally opened the floodgates for many successful asylum applications by Zimbabweans in the UK, even if credibility issues did hang over some of these individuals’ claims.
The wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, DR Congo, Rwanda, among others, also attracted waves of asylum applications in Europe.
In recent times, the strong public commentary over LGBTQ issues in this country, alongside the passing of the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, have also given some cover for asylum claims in the West.
The irony here is that some of these claimants have strong, virulent anti-LGBT views.
No judging
Whilst I may have my own views, the basis of the asylum claims made by the ‘Canada 25’, I have long learned from my immigration work in the past that sometimes people make decisions that they feel they have to make.
From behind a computer screen in relative comfort, it may be hard to put oneself in their shoes or even determine what one would have done if one had found oneself in the same situation.
To aspire to travel abroad to better one’s life is certainly a legitimate pursuit.
Some easily obtain visas and work permits without any immigration worries on arrival.
Some begin the real struggle of regularising their stay after arrival, which can take years at great expense.
Some negotiate perilous journeys across deserts and through multiple countries to their dream destinations, whilst others migrate as stowaways aboard ships.
Some have been trying for years in vain to leave the country, whilst many are trapped abroad and desperately want to return home but cannot, for various reasons.
Each situation comes with its own unique struggle. May God continue to bless these struggles.
Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng.
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