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UK orders doctors to accompany Tamil man ‘too unwell’ to be deported

Britain’s Home Office have ordered at least four medics to accompany a Tamil man who is due to be deported to Australia later today, despite the fact that other doctors have ruled the man “unfit to fly”.

Sangarapillai Balachandran, a 60-year-old who holds Australian citizenship, is due to be deported from the UK later today, despite fears over his health and fitness to fly. Balachandran has had three increasingly serious strokes and is known to have raised blood pressure. Long flights increase the risk of serious events such as strokes, and his family fear he could die on the flight.

Earlier this year he was due to be deported to Australia, but was taken off the flight and sent to hospital to be treated for his high blood pressure.

“We are concerned about the number of times the Home Office has attempted to remove from the UK seriously ill immigration detainees who our volunteer doctors have assessed as being unfit to fly,” said Theresa Schleicher of Medical Justice. “As well as endangering the health of the detainee, in some cases this also puts at risk the safety of the airline crew and passengers on the flight.”

Balachandran is a highly specialised engineer with expertise in water purification systems, reports the Guardian, and adds he was headhunted by a British company to come and work in the UK in 2007. However, his work visa has since expired and his whole family now no longer have permission to work in the UK.

“We have struggled with the Home Office for five years but now we’ve come to the end of the road,” said his younger saughter Sinthua. “When I hear the words ‘Home Office’ I get scared. My primary concern is to protect my parents and my siblings. If anything happens to my dad on Monday’s flight we will all be crushed.”

Unable to work, the family have exhausted their savings and were forced to spend a night sleeping at a Heathrow airport terminal, before turning to the UK government in desperation and asking to be locked up in detention as an alternative to being on the streets.

“The Home Office told us that our father was too unwell to be detained and agreed to put us up in a budget hotel next to the detention centre on condition that we signed papers to return voluntarily to Australia on Monday evening,” said Sinthuja. “We felt we had no choice but to sign as we cannot survive on the streets. But if we get on the plane our father might die.”

See more from the Guardian here.

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