Semira Adamu

Semira Adamu (15 April 1978 – 22 September 1998) was a 20-year-old Nigerian asylum seeker.

Semira Adamu sitting at a table indoors

Quotes

• I was woken at 6.30 a.m. and given twenty minutes to prepare for departure... When we arrived at the airport my hands and feet were bound and I was thrown into an isolation cell for over three hours. At 11.15 they forced me onto the plane. I began to scream and cry as I was surrounded by six gendarmes and two men from Sabena. The airline men pushed me around and one held a cushion to my face. He almost suffocated me. These men were supposed to accompany me all the way to Lome. Passengers intervened at this point, saying that they would get off the plane if the men did not let me go.
  • Statewatch News online: Five police officers on trial over the death of Semira Adamu in 1998, Statewatch, 28 March 2012.

Quotes about Semira

• As commander of the security detachment at the national airport I believe that I am officially responsible for the death of Semira Adamu.
  • Luc Tempels as quoted in Statewatch News online: Five police officers on trial over the death of Semira Adamu in 1998, Statewatch, 28 March 2012.
• Her (Semira) death is not a singular incident. The deaths of refugees are the symptoms of policies that no longer see the humanity of those fleeing their homeland, but prefer to see them as numbers, or worse, as a natural disaster, a "flood".
  • UNITED as quoted in Statewatch News online: Five police officers on trial over the death of Semira Adamu in 1998, Statewatch, 28 March 2012.
• Semira was vulnerable to various racialised intersections of exclusion:
  She was Black, female, young and ambitious
  She was attractive, eloquent and well educated
  She was an asylum-seeker whose application had been rejected
  She was an undocumented person with an 'illegal' status
  She was a deportable detainee who was deemed expendable
  She was a whistleblower and defender of detainee rights.
  • Nyanchama Okemwa as stated in Semira Adamu, Never Again, Rektoverso, 24 March 2021
• The death of Semira is part of a series of complaints and is the result of several new laws to get asylum in Belgium.
  • Joelle Noel as quoted in World: Europe Outrage over death of immigrant, BBC, September 23, 1998
• Whatever judgment Brussels Tribunal (Tribunal correctionnel) hands down on 12 December to five law enforcement officers tried in connection with the death of Semira Adamu, during an attempt to deport her forcibly by air in September 1998, it has always been clear that governments and state officers have a responsibility to ensure respect for the physical safety and inherent dignity of all people in their custody, including deportees.
  • Amnesty International as quoted in Belgium: The death of Semira Adamu - Responsibilities past and present, Amnesty, December 10, 2003