Naseh Jabar Ghafor has given up hope. The 20-year-old Kurdish shepherd from Iraq has sewn up his lips and is ready to die. After 30 days without food and only a few sips of water a day, he lies on the floor in the corner of a terraced house in the industrial city of Sheffield, in the north of England. His friends fear he may die at any time.
Mr Ghafor feels he has nothing to live for and much to fear after being refused political asylum in Britain, according to those who have tried to help him. His father and brother were murdered when the Saddam Hussein regime was trying to clear the Kirkuk district of Kurds. His mother and two sisters were arrested more than two years ago and have not been heard of since. Mr Ghafor believes they, too, are dead.
His friends know only sketchy details of his past. But he is understood to have fled the country in the back of a truck, destination unknown, later to find himself in England.
Myra Davis, one of the founders of Assist, a voluntary group set up a year ago to befriend and raise money for Sheffield's growing community of destitute asylum seekers, visits Mr Ghafor every day. She believes he is deeply traumatised by his ordeals in Iraq and now Britain, and is in need of mental health care - before sewing his lips together he had also slashed his body. But doctors who have assessed him concluded that his hunger strike was a political protest.
'Being forced out of his accommodation triggered panic. He did self-harm. Surely the authorities would say he was in need of care, but they didn't,' said Ms Davis. 'Sewing his lips is a symbol of his rejection of a world that has failed him. He wants to live, if he can be given hope not to be returned to Iraq.'
Mr Ghafor is one of thousands of refugees in Britain who have had their applications for asylum rejected, and are left destitute and in limbo because of tighter asylum rules and continued danger in their home countries.
