On Christmas Day in 2019, Otis Bolamu was alone in a detention centre room. After immigration officers beat down his door and took him from his home to Gatwick detention centre in the early hours of Thursday, December 19, Otis was far away from his community in Swansea who he did not get the chance to say goodbye to.
Otis had been volunteering seven days a week at the Oxfam Bookshop in Castle Street since he arrived in Swansea and when he did not turn up for his shifts his friends started to worry. Once they contacted the police and found out he had been taken by immigration, Otis' support network of different groups across Swansea rallied around him and campaigned for him to be released.
The now 42-year-old had fled his home in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2017 after he was labelled as a spy for an opposition political party and arrested and tortured. Fearing that he would be killed, he managed to escape his country and came to the UK to claim political asylum. You can read more stories about Swansea here.
