Vaccine dream of refugee doctor saved from deportation by Covid

Dr Bashar Al Hana, 36, has been living in Darlington since March 2019 after spending seven years seeking sanctuary in numerous countries as he cannot return to Syria because of the civil war. He was due to be deported in March 2020 after his initial application for asylum was rejected, but his flight out of the country was cancelled when the country was plunged into the first lockdown, and he was left destitute.

He was taken in Fran and Martin Wood of the Darlington Assistance for Refugees group and his case was taken up by Darlington MP Peter Gibson.

“When it comes to friends, I think I’m the luckiest person,” says Dr Al Hana, who is qualified in medicine and surgery. “I carry their friendship with me. They took me in when I lost everything and they treated me like a family.

Now Dr Al Hana has been granted leave to remain in the UK for five years, he is studying to register as a doctor and has applied to join the NHS mass vaccination programme.

Mr Gibson, who met Dr al-Hana the day after he was elected last December, said: “It struck me that this was someone who I needed to give as much help to as I could because he’s exactly the sort of person we want to stay in this country and help our NHS.”

“NO ONE wants another person who needs help, that’s the thing, no one,” says Bashar al-Hana, who has spent much of the last decade seeking a place of safety and a society to which he can contribute away from his war-torn Syrian homeland.

“Even here, I got rejected a first and second time.

“I was counting on someone considering me as a refugee, someone who needs refuge, someone who shouldn’t be sent back, someone who needs treatment.

“It hasn’t been easy to convince them.”

But, having escaped deportation from the UK due to the lockdown, and having survived months of destitution in Darlington due to the kindness of strangers, he has been given leave to remain and soon hopes to begin an NHS job on the mass vaccination programme.

Bashar was born in Damascus in 1984, and his family encouraged him to study medicine in Sudan because of the university’s leading reputation.

However, while he was studying, President Bashar al-Assad cracked down on protests against his government in Syria, sparking a civil war in which about 500,000 people have been killed and 5m of the country’s 21m population have fled and become refugees.

“The regime wants to stay in power and we didn’t want that,” he says, referring to his family. “We were giving medication and bandages to our injured people, that’s all, and we were accused of undermining the current government. We were told that because they were fighting we should let them die.

“Now we are wanted there.”

His family have all been forced to flee Syria and are trying to make their own ways in the world.

“My family is all over the map,” he says.

Once he graduated in Sudan, he studied for a masters degree in Malaysia, but was unable to stay there. He found work in a hospital in Cairo, but was unable to stay there.

“I started travelling in 2014, just trying to be in a place that I’m allowed to be,” he says. “The last place I was allowed to be was Turkey, everywhere else I needed a visa – although now even Turkey requires that.”

He was offered post-graduate places and scholarships to attend universities in Prague and in Belarus. But he couldn’t get a Czech visa, and once in Belarus, he found he was unable to stay.

“I had been tricked,” he says. “I hit rock bottom, had nothing to lose and I decided to go to Europe through Poland to go to Germany, but Germany sent me back to Poland. I went to Estonia, tried Germany…

“I do anything. I work everywhere, I did anything to survive. I play an oud, like a lute, so I played music – we all play music in Syria, it used to be a happy nation.”

Back in Poland, he worked as an online content moderator until a medical condition resurfaced and he lost his job. Due to the Dublin Regulation, as Poland had been his point of entry to Europe, it was the country that needed to sort out his refugee status. However, Poland did not want a refugee in need of medical treatment.

“No one wants another person who needs help, that’s the thing, no one,” he says.

He hoped for a kinder reception in Ireland which said he might be able to register as a doctor, but when he arrived, he found that the examination he needed to pass was no longer being held. So in January 2019 in Northern Ireland, he presented himself to British authorities…

“I was sent to a special dormitory, in Derby from where they distributed us, and I was sent to a room in a terraced house in Darlington to wait for my first interview,” he says. Not allowed to work, he was given £5-a-day to subsist – but he felt secure enough to have his oud forwarded to him.

“Whenever I am travelling, I leave my oud with a friend, and when I meet a new friend, I ask my old friend to send my oud. It has travelled as much as I have, and it arrived in Darlington last year, and I enjoyed going to the folk clubs in the Britannia and the Copper Beech,” he says.

The only other possessions he has are his cellphone and a necklace his mother gave him to sell.

“She told me ‘use it whenever you need it’ and after Germany, when they sent me back to Poland, I was almost about to sell it, but my friends helped a lot and luckily I didn’t,” he says.

But another low point came in early 2020 when the Home Office decided Bashar had no right to stay in the UK, and that he should be deported – not to Syria because it was too unsafe, but to Poland once more.

“For some reason, they could not find my identity documents,” he says. “They used the word “misplaced”.

“When they found them, they called me that day and said ‘Monday is your flight’, and then next day the first lockdown happened.”

Even failed asylum seekers were not permitted to move last March, and so Covid granted him a reprieve – but his daily £5 was removed.

“I was called a destitute person,” he says, “and they want to send me somewhere to a camp, but Fran and Martin Wood, of Darlington Assistance for Refugees, they took me in when I lost everything and they treated me like a family.

“Fran took me to see Peter Gibson. He has been very helpful. He was keen to help, and always with a smile.”

Bashar’s case became even more complicated because when lockdown was lifted, his identity documents had expired, but with the help of the Darlington MP, he was able to persuade the Home Office to give him leave to remain, and he began studying for exams so he could register with the General Medical Council.

He has applied for a job on the mass vaccination programme with the NHS.

“It will be a nice opportunity to get into the hospital environment, but it is a very, very important job and I am lucky,” he says.

However, he intends to keep Darlington as his base. “I hope to move back, I really like being here,” he says. “It’s a very peaceful place.

“When it comes to friends, I think I’m the luckiest person. I carry friendship with me.

“Wherever I go, people are what surprise me – I’m not fascinated by buildings and technology as they are everywhere, but the kindness and goodness of people is not.

“When I came to England and started meeting English people for the first time. I noticed that they have many different accents, but they all share the same nice, kind, and friendly words.”

He has had a decade of stressful insecurity and perpetual motion, unable to return to the home of his birth and unable to call anywhere else home. He has travelled alone – “I wouldn’t inflict this on anyone else,” he says – except for his oud, and is now he is looking forward to being able to look forward without the footsteps of fear and doubt at his back.

“I would like to become a neurologist but that’s slightly more difficult with my own medical condition, so I might become a GP,” he says.

But then, apologising for the blandness of his dreams, he says simply: “It sounds a bit cliched but I just want to have a normal, happy life. I know that’s big ask, but for me, just a stable life would be happy. That has been missing for the last 10 years.

“My new family here have helped so much, and now I have received the hope that I can stop running, stop moving around from country to country and place to place, and that’s the key to starting to have a normal life again.”

BASHAR AL-HANA was Peter Gibson’s first case as the day after he was elected Darlington’s MP in December 2019, Fran Wood of Darlington Assistance for Refugees introduced them.

“It has been a baptism of fire,” says Mr Gibson. “It has been challenging and immensely rewarding and I hope Bashar has become a friend. It has also been an eye opener over how the Home Office operates.

“I listened to his story, got the facts and the dates. He qualified as a doctor when the civil war broke out and is a man with medical expertise and knowledge. It struck me that this was someone who I needed to give as much help to as I could because he’s exactly the sort of person we want to stay in this country and help our NHS.

“Leaving the EU sent a clear message that we want to control who comes here and what levels of qualifications they have. We want to be open and respectful to those in need.

“I see no conflict in the country having a robust, clearly articulated policy to control immigration, and helping people fleeing persecution and those who are able to contribute to our society.”