A Congolese man has been threatened with deportation without having his claim for political asylum heard. Mr Alain Bruno Kanza (30), a member of a pro-democracy party in the volatile African republic, claims that his life would be endangered if he was forced to return.
Mr Kanza has been served notice that he will be deported this month, but he has not yet attended the mandatory interview to decide the merits of his case. Notification of the date for this interview was sent last June to an address from which Mr Kanza had moved.
He claims that he informed Eastern Health Board officials at the "one-stop shop" for asylum-seekers and refugees in Lower Mount Street, Dublin, of his new address. However, Department of Justice officials have told Mr Kanza's solicitor that when they sought his address to notify him of the interview his former address was the only one on record.
When Mr Kanza contacted the Department two months later to renew his asylum-seeker identity card he was told his case was "deemed abandoned" because he had not attended the interview and was uncontactable without "good or sufficient reason".
Mr Kanza has written to the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, appealing for his case to be examined. "If I am returned, my life will be in danger", the letter states. "I hope you will use your good office to help me in my plight. My request is to be readmitted into the asylum process and to have the merits of my case assessed."
Mr Pat Guerin, from the Anti-Racism Campaign, said that Mr Kanza's case highlighted the shortcomings of the bureaucracy in the Lower Mount Street centre, which was set up to streamline asylum applications.
"How is an asylum-seeker, for whom English is not the first language, to know exactly who he should tell when he moves address? As far as he knew, he had done the right thing, and he's being penalised for that", Mr Guerin said.
Mr Kanza arrived in Ireland in September 1998 and stayed in a hostel in Dun Laoghaire until February 1999, when he went to live with a French friend. He stayed with this friend until she returned to France last August. During this period he stopped claiming the social welfare allowance, as he was being supported by his friend, who had a job.
Since last August, when he says he was told his case was deemed abandoned, he has been trying to have his claim for refugee status reactivated.
The Department of Justice was not available for comment.