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In Iraq his nickname was
Hoshyar, meaning "awake". Like others opposed to
Saddam Hussein's regime, he adopted it so that the
authorities would not know his real identity. Kalan
Kawa Karim was given the name because he was always
on guard, always looking behind him. When he came to
the UK just over two years ago, he stopped using it;
here he would not have to be awake all the time; he
could drop his defences, he would be safe. But he
wasn't.
In the early hours of Monday morning the man who had
escaped torture in Iraq was hit on the head from
behind in a Swansea street. His assailant felled him
with just one heavy blow, leaving him dying on the
pavement.
Mr Karim, 29, had been in Swansea for 18 months.
When he lived in the Kurdish town of Dohuq in
northern Iraq he was a political activist fighting
the Saddam regime, but he was caught and shot in the
leg.
During his three years in prison the leg became
infected, because the authorities refused to treat
him, and eventually it had to be amputated. In
Britain he walked with a prosthetic limb.
Released
Deciding to seek asylum, he left Iraq as soon as he
was released from prison. Living first in
Middlesbrough, he was granted refugee status, and he
moved to Swansea because his uncle and a friend
lived there. Six months later his brother Nazar
joined him. But his wife remained in Iraq.
Recently he had been talking about going back to
join her.
In Britain there was not much for Mr Karim to do,
since his artificial limb and poor English made him
largely unemployable. Life was mostly spent in the
ninth-floor flat he shared with his brother and
friends. Time did not really mean much, and at
12.30am on Monday he left the flat with his friend
Ahmad to go to pick up a pizza.
The men walked to King Pin Pizza in Kingsway, an
area of Swansea with the reputation of being "rough"
at night: it is lined with clubs and bars with names
such as Zanzi Ba and Iso Ba.
Of all of them, the Potter's Wheel is the biggest.
Here, signs in the window offer "free mixers with
all spirits", G&T at 99p and pints of Guinness and
Carling at £1.49. At 4.30pm there is not a seat to
be found at the dozens of tables inside. Nor are
there any black faces. It was round the back of
here, at 1.30am, that Mr Karim was attacked. Now a
few bunches of carnations are tied to a lamp post to
mark the spot.
There are almost 200 Iraqi Kurds living in Swansea,
all of them gathering with other Muslims at the
local mosque to say al-Fatiha, a verse from the
Qur'an, in Mr Karim's honour. Amid the grief, there
is anger.
The police have said they believe Mr Karim was
killed because of the colour of his skin.
But the police and others are keen to point out that
it is an isolated incident.
Mr Karim's friends and family disagree. His uncle
Tahseen Shaho, 34, a refugee who has lived in
Swansea for two years, wipes tears from his eyes. He
said: "I feel like all around me are murderers and
animals, like in a safari. Karim thought that he
would come to a civilised society where people
respect human rights and respect other people's
right to life.
"These people are worse than Saddam. In Iraq, you
know who your enemy is. Here, you never know who is
going to hit you in the back. I think that his
killer was a coward.
"We didn't think we would have to do it here, but in
this society, when you are foreign you have to look
behind you all the time to see who is there. I feel
responsible for his death, because I was the oldest
relative here and the family were always asking me
to keep an eye on him."
Mr Karim's best friend, Sarkat Junad, also feels
responsible. "When he was in Middlesbrough he phoned
me and asked me what it was like in Swansea. I said
it was a nice city. He didn't really ask me what the
people were like, otherwise I would have told him I
don't really like it as a city because we get so
much abuse here."
Team
Mr Junad runs a football team called Swansea World
Star, whose players are mostly asylum seekers. All
of them, he says, have experienced problems in
Swansea.
"Ask any Iraqi Kurd if they have been abused in any
incident, and each of them would have experienced
one or two. We had a problem last year when they
brought around 60 Iraqi asylum seekers and it was
all over the papers. Once they see us and the way we
look, they think straight away, Iraqi."
Now the family are awaiting the return of Mr Karim's
body. They will take him back to Iraq.
His best friend shakes his head and thinks of the
old nickname. "He became Karim again because he
didn't think he had to be awake all the time. When
you think you are living in a civilised democracy,
then you think that you are safe. But somebody hit
him from behind. It was hatred."
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