By Staff Reporter

Dublin City University has called on the Department of Justice to quash a deportation order given to a Zimbabwean student.

Shepherd Machaya, one of DCU’s ‘University of Sanctuary’ scholarship recipients and a second-year student in Management of Information Technology and Information Systems, was recently served with an order to be removed from the State.

DCU says Machaya is a model student whose predicament has prompted concern across the university’s community.

“I am calling on the Minister for Justice and Equality Charlie Flanagan to review Shepherd’s case with a view to allowing him to remain in Ireland in order that he may complete his course of studies at DCU,” said the DCU president Prof Brian MacCraith.

DCU’s student union has also risen in support of Machaya, stating that the deportation order has put his life in danger, and at the minimum drastically affects his quality of life — adding that the student now faces potential torture from political groups that he came here to escape.

The union has urged Minister Flanagan to take executive action and revoke his deportation order immediately.

“Shepherd Machaya’s deportation order is completely inconceivable to us,” said students’ union president Vito Moloney Burke. “Not just because he is a model citizen, who has contributed so much to our communities through the sheer commitment to his studies and bettering himself to contribute to society, but also because of the undeniable danger he will be placed under should he return to Zimbabwe.

“We urge Minister Flanagan to prevent him from being forcibly returned to a place where he was tortured and his best friend was murdered.”

The union has campaigned online and on the ground with a demonstration outside the Department of Justice, and has sent petition with thousands of signatures calling on the minister to not send Machaya back to Zimbabwe as it “is in no one’s best interest”.

At press time, the deportation order on Machaya, which was to effect on Sunday 21 October, was being reviewed.