Eddie Hanson recounts his own experience in the Town Hall chamber

A NEW councillor at the Town Hall has spoken about his life as a child refugee as he fled the civil war in Sierra Leone, telling a meeting last night (Monday): “You don’t know if you’re going to survive until the next day.”

Eddie Hanson, who was elected to the council for the first time last May, was speaking as all parties voted in favour of a motion to declare that Camden is now a ‘borough of sanctuary’ for people fleeing war and prosecution, and desperate to reach a safe haven.

Sierra Leone was ravaged by a civil war in the 1990s, a conflict which led to the deaths of around 50,000 people over eleven years.

In a moving contribution to the debate, Cllr Hanson told an all-member meeting in the council chamber: “I was a child – I was a kid – when the war happened in Sierra Leone. I was captured as a child by one of the militia and I was taken away for quite a while. When a war happens, when you’re a child, you don’t know if you’re going to survive the next day. You don’t know if they are going to kill your parents. You don’t know if they’re going to kill your loved ones.”

He added: “My brother died. He got killed during the war, and I know that a lot of civilians came to the UK as a sanctuary. I’m very delighted to be in Camden now, and for what Camden has provided myself and my family. Today I’m smiling – happy – but things were hard. Things were hard.

“You just want to go underneath the ground because you don’t know what to do. I really feel for these kids [recent refugees], and their parents. They have to look at their children and say ‘I don’t know how to help you guys’ when you’re so far lost. Camden has always been helpful, supportive and it grows leaders to serve the community to help others.”

Highgate councillor Camron Aref-Adib also said his family was grateful at how Camden as a council and a community had opened its arms to his family.

“For me it’s more than providing refugees with a place of shelter, it’s giving refugees the tools not just to survive but to thrive,” he said.

“That’s exactly what Camden did for my family. In the mid 80s, my mum and dad and older sisters were forced to flee from Iran on foot in the dead of night after an arrest warrant was issued for my father because of his political affiliations Their journey to this borough was marked by constant distress, fear and uncertainty as they were smuggled from Turkey to Yugoslavia and eventually to western Europe.”

He warned that asylum seekers faced treacherous journeys like this before they stood any chance of applying for help from the UK government.

“My family were lucky but they  are reminder that for so many you have to get to western Europe before you have any chance of claiming asylum,” Cllr Aref-Adib said.

“There are no legal safe routes unless you are from a narrow selection of three countries: Hong Kong, Afghanistan and Ukraine. I’m eternally grateful to my parents and my sisters as it’s because of their sacrifices that I had a childhood that my sisters growing up in hostels Yugoslavia and hotels in Camden could only have dreamt of.

“I’m also grateful to this borough for giving my family the chance to succeed by providing social housing when they needed it, by helping them to learn English and by ensuring that they could use the qualification that they earned in Iran here in London. Between them, my parents and sisters have now given back over 100 years service to the NHS – so I think they’ve probably paid back the investment that this borough made.”

More reports on last night’s debate follow