Why We Chose to Go Covert to Uncover Criminal Activity in the Kurdish Population

Two Kurdish men consented to operate secretly to reveal a network behind unlawful main street businesses because the lawbreakers are negatively affecting the image of Kurds in the UK, they state.

The two, who we are calling Ali and Saman, are Kurdish-origin reporters who have both resided legally in the UK for a long time.

The team uncovered that a Kurdish-linked crime network was running convenience stores, hair salons and car washes throughout the UK, and sought to learn more about how it worked and who was participating.

Equipped with secret cameras, Ali and Saman presented themselves as Kurdish asylum seekers with no permission to be employed, attempting to purchase and operate a convenience store from which to sell illegal cigarettes and vapes.

The investigators were able to reveal how simple it is for someone in these situations to establish and run a commercial operation on the commercial area in public view. Those involved, we learned, pay Kurdish individuals who have UK citizenship to register the operations in their identities, assisting to fool the officials.

Ali and Saman also succeeded to secretly record one of those at the centre of the network, who asserted that he could erase government penalties of up to £60,000 imposed on those employing unauthorized workers.

"Personally wanted to participate in uncovering these illegal operations [...] to loudly proclaim that they don't represent us," explains one reporter, a ex- asylum seeker himself. Saman came to the country illegally, having fled Kurdistan - a region that spans the boundaries of multiple Middle Eastern countries but which is not officially recognized as a country - because his safety was at threat.

The journalists admit that disagreements over illegal migration are significant in the UK and explain they have both been worried that the investigation could intensify tensions.

But Ali says that the unauthorized working "harms the entire Kurdish-origin population" and he believes driven to "expose it [the criminal network] out into the open".

Additionally, the journalist says he was worried the reporting could be seized upon by the extreme right.

He states this particularly affected him when he discovered that radical right activist Tommy Robinson's Unite the Kingdom march was happening in the capital on one of the Saturdays and Sundays he was working covertly. Placards and flags could be spotted at the protest, showing "we want our nation returned".

Saman and Ali have both been monitoring online response to the investigation from within the Kurdish population and explain it has generated strong outrage for certain individuals. One social media message they spotted read: "In what way can we find and track [the undercover reporters] to harm them like animals!"

Another urged their families in the Kurdish region to be attacked.

They have also encountered accusations that they were informants for the British government, and traitors to fellow Kurdish people. "We are not spies, and we have no aim of hurting the Kurdish-origin community," one reporter states. "Our goal is to reveal those who have damaged its reputation. We are proud of our Kurdish-origin identity and profoundly troubled about the activities of such individuals."

The majority of those applying for refugee status say they are escaping politically motivated persecution, according to an expert from the a refugee support organization, a organization that assists refugees and refugee applicants in the UK.

This was the case for our undercover reporter Saman, who, when he first came to the UK, faced difficulties for many years. He says he had to survive on less than twenty pounds a per week while his refugee application was reviewed.

Asylum seekers now get approximately forty-nine pounds a per week - or £9.95 if they are in shelter which provides food, according to Home Office policies.

"Practically speaking, this isn't adequate to support a respectable lifestyle," states the expert from the RWCA.

Because refugee applicants are generally prevented from employment, he feels many are open to being manipulated and are practically "obligated to labor in the unofficial economy for as little as three pounds per hour".

A spokesperson for the authorities stated: "The government do not apologize for not granting asylum seekers the permission to be employed - granting this would establish an reason for individuals to travel to the UK without authorization."

Asylum cases can require a long time to be processed with approximately a one-third taking more than one year, according to official statistics from the late March this year.

Saman states being employed illegally in a vehicle cleaning service, hair salon or mini-mart would have been extremely straightforward to accomplish, but he told the team he would never have engaged in that.

Nonetheless, he explains that those he met laboring in unauthorized convenience stores during his research seemed "confused", particularly those whose asylum claim has been rejected and who were in the appeals process.

"These individuals used all of their savings to come to the United Kingdom, they had their refugee application rejected and now they've lost all they had."

The other reporter acknowledges that these people seemed hopeless.

"If [they] state you're prohibited to be employed - but also [you]