Dielli

Where are you at right now?

After a long fight with the Home Office I was recently granted refugee status. I worked so hard for this moment. And now I am doing my best to make possible a dream that started in very difficult moments.

When I received a negative asylum decision with no rights to appeal, and my solicitor said they could no longer help me, I started to manage my case myself. I am openly gay and I had been trafficked in Albania and abroad and in the UK. There was hospital documentation of the many times my bones were broken – my face and my body, by strangers and by people I knew, from the time I was a child. The trauma was visible. It was in medical reports. And still it felt invisible to the system. The Home Office dismissed crucial evidence. They applied the wrong law. They didn’t allow me to speak for long enough to share my story, and they didn’t read my statement.

So I worked on my own, with a bundle, writing letters by myself. I checked my statement, my documents, multiple articles of the ECHR and made my case follow the law. The Home Office finally said they had made a mistake and gave me the right to appeal. And I won the belief that I can do it even alone.

With a new lawyer we prepared a great case for the appeal and my court hearing lasted just 20 minutes – the Home Office apologised for everything that they had done to me, and I got status.

But it cost me, because I had to make the choice to either work with my trauma, or work with my case. And so I shut myself down – my humanity and my feelings, and I became distanced from who I am in reality. I locked my trauma away and I stopped caring about myself. And even now it is quite difficult for me to connect with that part of myself.

No person who has endured trauma should have to become numb in order to survive a system that was created to protect them. This is the reason why I am fighting for others and helping others with my voice. The system was not built by survivors but by the people who support them: solicitors, caseworkers, social workers, everyone who understands the boundaries – survivors don’t know the system and they need protection from this system that was created for them, not by them.

And so here started the dream of becoming an immigration adviser. Now I am doing level 1 and level 2 qualifications. I have a place to study a law degree. And I am working as a caseworker for an organisation that helps asylum seekers.

When I arrived I knew just a few words of English. After I escaped, I knew that I had to work a lot and become part of society, so the first thing to do was learn the language. I worked very hard on this and became fluent very quickly in around six months, taking lessons at college. I started to take business courses, and I became student representative and student union president for my college. I kept doing training online, read many books in the library and went to many meetings.

At the end of the night I had nobody to call except my sibling. I didn’t have friends and I was afraid to accept new people into my life and to trust them. But being a volunteer for different organisations helped me to be less isolated. I became an ambassador and leader of client voices. And those organisations helped me to say proudly that I am gay.

I want people to understand their rights. Safety is not a country – it is not a safe route to come – it is the ability to live a normal life. To sleep without fear. To exist without hiding. To rebuild without being retraumatised. Survivors of trauma and of trafficking are in my opinion the most vulnerable part of society. Being safe is very important for them. And I want everyone to understand: When people say, “Albania is safe,” they do not understand what safety means for someone who has been tortured. For us, safety is not about geography. It is about protection, dignity, and the possibility of healing.

What would you tell your younger self?

If I met myself aged 21, when I first started my asylum claim, I would say keep fighting: you have survived one time, you are going to survive each day, and one day the fairness in your life will come.

What would you like to share to other young asylum seekers?

We come from a country where, since when we are children, we say ‘don’t speak, don’t say anything.’ I would say to every Albanian asylum seeker: speak, think, believe, do actions out of the box. Speak freely, request help. To ask for help is nothing wrong. To speak about your past life is nothing wrong, and to speak about your trauma is nothing wrong. This will make you into a true survivor.

And I would say just be patient. In this country it feels like sometimes it is unfair, but it was a starting point for hundreds of thousands of survivors which is beautiful. I learned that being honest is the only card that we have in our life to create a life – a normal life with normal problems, daily problems, not the life of being a survivor.

If we believe and we are honest we are going to take back the positive at the end of the day. Blend with society and the culture. Be honest, patient, understanding, accepting, and believe. We are not here just to survive, but to live, to belong, and to become.