An asylum seeker staying at a hotel that has been the flashpoint for anti-migrant protests has described being called a “scumbag” and treated like a criminal by local people.
Dozens of residents of Epping’s Bell hotel face an uncertain future after a court ruled on Tuesday that it cannot be used to house asylum seekers because of a breach of planning rules.
The verdict came after weeks of violent protests outside the hotel by far-right activists sparked when an asylum seeker resident was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.
Khador Mohamed, 24, from Somalia, says residents were locked in their rooms during the protests. When they are allowed to venture outside they are insulted, he says. “People call you scumbags sometimes and they throw cans of soda at you.”
He adds: “I wasn’t expecting this in England. I thought it would be friendlier.”
Mohamed says local attitudes changed sharply after the charge against the resident. “Now we’re seen as criminals. Before that we were just normal people,” he said.
The Bell hotel in Essex. Drivers have been passing by honking their horns since the court ruled that residents must move somewhere else. Photograph: Jack Taylor/The Guardian
He claims one woman shielded her children behind her when she saw Mohamed on the street. “It was a painful thing to happen to me – now we’re seen as rapist, paedophiles and thieves,” he says.
He adds: “I am sorry for what happened, but there is nothing much I can do. We are not all the same.”
On the road outside the hotel on Wednesday many drivers sounded their horns in apparent celebration at the court’s decision. One unfurled a union jack from a black Audi as he passed. The driver of one van leaned out the window to shout: “Shoot the lot of ’em”. The driver of a meat company van shouted: “Goodbye, goodbye” and “We pay our taxes.”
Mohamed says he arrived in England earlier this year in a small boat carrying 60 people after he paid €1,000 (£865) to people smugglers.
He says: “The only offence I committed was coming to this country illegally. I had to do it. I had no any other option but I’ve not done any other crime.”
He says he understood why people were angry at asylum seekers being put up in hotels. “I don’t need a free house, or free food. I just need my asylum application to be accepted. Then I can work on my own and I can earn my own food and my rent,” he said.
Mohamed, who worked in Somalia as a tuktuk driver and in Austria as a dishwasher, says: “I’ll do anything to earn money, even if it’s cleaning toilets, I don’t mind. I don’t have the luxury to choose.”
“Anything, as long as British people are not mad at me sitting in hotel getting stuff for free. That’s a reasonable thing to get mad about.”
The Bell hotel’s owner, Somani Hotels Ltd, has until 12 September to comply with Tuesday’s court decision. The ruling has thrown the government’s asylum policy into chaos as other councils seek similar injunctions to stop hotels in their areas being used to accommodate those waiting for asylum applications to be processed.
It potentially leaves about 30,000 asylum seekers currently housed in hotels in limbo. Those at the sharp end of the crisis, the residents of the Bell hotel, do not know where they will be staying in the coming days.
Mohamed says: “They just keep us in the dark. And if you ask them what’s going to happen they just ignore you.”
Yonas (not his real name), a 29-year-old from Eritrea, says: “We have no information from the hotel. Nobody has said anything. I’m new here. I’ve been here two weeks and I don’t know anything.”
Yonas says he arrived in England by a small boat from France after paying smugglers €1,700.
Speaking beside a mini-roundabout that had been painted with a cross of St George, Yonas says: “Britain is a democracy. That is why I come to ask to be a refugee. But there’s no freedom here in the UK. It’s like jail. I don’t have anything here.”
Yonas says he could work as a mechanic or driver and had served in the army in Eritrea. “I would like to work but I don’t have documents,” he says.
The remnants of previous protests remain scattered outside the hotel. They include a Reform UK sticker stuck to a “no parking” sign, and an “Epping says no, the hotel must go” flyer; and a discarded placard saying “Children’s Lives Matter”.
Broxbourne council was among those to announce it would be mounting a legal challenge against the housing of asylum seekers in a hotel in its area. On Wednesday the sign for the Delta Marriott hotel in the Hertfordshire town had been obscured by a white covering. For the last three Fridays anti-migrant protesters have gathered there, angry about having asylum seekers accommodated on their doorstep.
The hotel is one of six across Hertfordshire used to accommodate asylum seekers and is used to house families with children. Some could be seen nervously leaving the hotel with their children riding bikes or scooters.
“Our children were terrified when the protesters came every Friday,” says one father. “We kept them away from the windows. We have heard that the council want to close this hotel but nobody has told us where we will go. Will the Home Office put us in the street?”
“Like other asylum seekers we did not leave our country willingly – we had a nice house and a good business there. We only left because our lives were in danger.
“The Home Office could solve this by allowing us to work while we are waiting for our claims to be processed then we could provide our own accommodation and buy our own food. We know the UK is a civilised country but we have seen racism here. Racism is killing the world. We are here for peace.”
One man who has lived in the hotel for more than two years says: “This is my only home. Our bedrooms are on the ground floor and sometimes the protesters come up to our windows and film us. I have filmed them too as evidence of what they are doing to us. How would an English person feel if someone came into their home and filmed them.”
