As the large van rattled along a treacherous rocky track, the Vucaj family stared despondently through the windows. They were returning to another world, a Europe far removed from the more prosperous and secure corner of the continent they had come to love.
After five years of living in Britain, the family had been deported. It is a journey made by hundreds of people every day, but one which is rarely recorded. What awaits the asylum seekers when they are removed from Britain?
After an uncomfortable, 45-minute ride, passing the odd horse and cart and women in peasant dress plucking plants from the valley slopes, the vehicle bumped into the final stretch of a mountain pass, and halted in the village the family left five years earlier.
An eerie quiet hung over their homecoming, the tiny place shrouded in gloom. Some of the houses were little more than shells, several windowless and doorless, their inhabitants long gone. There was no sign of electricity or phone lines and, except for some sheep, little sign of life.
Then a handful of villagers gingerly emerged — children with broken shoes and tattered, dirty clothes, gaunt and malnourished, beside their parents, smiling through broken teeth. Isen Vucaj recognised a man of his age — Shyqyri, a 45-year-old with a lined face and calloused hands. The farmer had some advice for the family.
”Please don’t stay here,” he said. ”If you do, you will die. It’s not safe. There is nothing here, no life, nothing here at all.”
It had been a harrowing journey since the family were bundled out of their home in Glasgow in a dawn raid by 16 immigration officers last month, put into a deportation centre and then deported to Kosovo and on to Albania. During their five years in Britain, they had settled in Glasgow’s Drumchapel area and integrated within the community. The children were doing well at school and had made many friends.
At first, the family slept on the floors of the homes of relatives in the Albanian capital, Tirana. Last week, they returned to the dilapidated mountain village above the northern city of Shkodra.
With them was actor Peter Mullan, who wrote and directed the acclaimed film The Magdalene Sisters and who is spearheading a campaign for their return along with a human rights campaigner from Glasgow, Robina Qureshi.
The Vucajs’ story has spawned an international campaign for their return on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. Concerns have been raised about the treatment of the three children, Elvis (18), Nimet (15) and Saida (13).
Human rights groups are especially worried about the safety of Saida in a country where young women are trafficked for sex and slave labour. There are as many as 30 000 Albanian girls working as prostitutes abroad and it is estimated that more than one-third are abducted.
The children’s grandfather was born in Kosovo, the majority ethnic Albanian enclave and former part of Yugoslavia. Although born in Albania, their father, Isen, spent three months a year working in Kosovo. He claims he was forced to spy for Serb forces who threatened to kill him, and that he was at risk from both Serb and Albanian fighters.
They decided to leave, crossing into Montenegro and helped by smuggling gangs across Europe. Initially, they were given leave to remain in Britain on humanitarian grounds, but the decision was overturned.
The family are shocked at the changes in Albania in the past five years. When they left, there were about 20 families living here; now there are four. The dilapidated school is locked because neither teachers nor pupils turned up in the rain.
”Look, everything is broken,” said Elvis. ”In Scotland, we had hope. I feel Scottish, it’s my home. I don’t belong here.”
His distraught mother, Nexhi, said: ”I’m scared for my children. I feel so sad, I feel terrible. All of our hopes have been broken.”
Traversing a steep incline on one side of the village, we arrived at the family’s former home — it resembles a cowshed, the wooden beams rotted and the front door off its hinges. Saida began to sob.
The children’s gloom deepened when they tried to talk to some of the village kids. An 18-year-old called Gena told Saida she had never been to school and spends her days gathering mountain plants, which the family sold in bags for a dollar per kilogram — one of the few meagre sources of income in the area.
With her clean clothes and Scottish lilt, Saida was clearly different and she felt it.
”They do not understand me,” she said sadly. ”They said to me, ‘Speak Albanian,’ but I don’t know it well … And it’s not safe for girls my age here. Some have just disappeared, and that could happen to me.”
Mullan was visibly shocked.
”Look at this place, the nearest hospital is 20 miles away and an ordinary car would be wrecked on the road. This looks like something you would expect to find like an opening scene of a Star Trek episode where they are beamed down to another planet.
”It’s a completely alien culture to these children. They are naturalised Scots … These are Scots kids who have been as good as kidnapped. The Home Office should have the courage to acknowledge they made a mistake and bring them home to Scotland.”
Saida is traumatised by the deportation.
”I said to one of the immigration officials I don’t want to go back because I don’t remember anything of Albania and it’s not safe. He told me it was my parents’ fault for bringing me here.
”I said, how can it be my parents’ fault if it was not safe where we were? He just walked away with his pals and they were laughing at me.” — Guardian Unlimited Â