On 10th December 2021, on Human Rights Day 2021 and part of Disability History Month, a new mural was inaugurated on Easton Community Centre, Kilburn Street, BS5 6AW. The mural brings together the messages and experiences of Deaf, Disabled and asylum-seeking people living in the Bristol area. The mural is dedicated to Kamil Ahmad, a disabled asylum seeker who was murdered in Bristol in 2016.
The project was coordinated by Dr Rebecca Yeo, senior research associate in SPAIS, working on issues of disability and forced migration. She explained ‘the disabled people’s movement has long argued that the system itself is disabling. The new mural highlights the particularly disabling impact of the UK asylum system and the urgent need for solidarity.’
Artist Andrew Bolton collaborated with Yeo. He created the mural design, bringing together messages and images contributed by people with lived experience of disability and / or forced migration. This included activists, students and academics, local authority employees, refugees, asylum seekers, homeless people and people with many of those experiences combined.
The mural includes an image of Kamil Ahmad which he contributed to a mural with Yeo and Bolton in 2012. He is seen holding his head in despair at the injustices he was facing in the UK. The mural is designed to build understanding and solidarity in his honour.