Help human rights defender Josy fight deportation

Can you help? Our friend Josy fears for her life after an attempt to deport her under the UK government’s hostile environment for asylum seekers.

Could you donate to her legal & living costs to fight for the right to stay in the UK?

A cheerful, caring person, Josy’s active defence of human rights and involvement with Zimbabwe’s main opposition party makes her a target for brutal reprisals from the ruling party, ZANU-PF. Her barrister believes there are sufficient grounds for her to be awarded asylum.

A Quaker from Harare, Josy arrived in the UK in 2018 after fleeing her home country, leaving her daughter behind. She has been a part of Norton Meeting in Stockton on Tees, County Durham, for the past four years.

A long-standing advocate of women’s rights, Josy is a former broadcaster, film maker and secretary of Women Film Makers of Zimbabwe. Her activism in allyship of LGBTQI+ rights in Zimbabwe and in the UK also places her at risk under current Zimbabwean policy.

Much loved by us, Josy is still receiving treatment for a leg injury sustained when resisting up to six enforcement operatives during the deportation attempt last month, prevented only by a successful last minute appeal by her barrister.

Since living in Stockton, Josy has continued to live out her Quaker beliefs, volunteering for an addiction charity and for the organisation Hart Gables which gives emotional support to vulnerable people from the LGBTQI+ community. For the last three years she has been a regular and reliable helper at the British Heart Foundation shop in Stockton High Street.

The climate of disbelief currently profoundly embedded in the Home Office leads to many undeserved refusals of asylum cases.

Josy has no access to legal aid or a stable place to live. She's in significant discomfort and pain as she lives with the ongoing physical and mental impact of being assaulted during the thwarted deportation attempt. She is also living with the ever-present threat of another deportation attempt. One thing we can do to help is to pay her legal costs and help with living costs.

Any contribution towards her ongoing costs would be very gratefully received. A donation could help prevent a terrible thing from happening to a kind and conscientious woman.