'I'm proud of being a refugee who came to the UK'

Andrew Kueth was nine years old when he was forced to flee his country due to civil war.

It was the start of an eight-year journey across two continents and thousands of miles which would see him survive beatings in jail and two sinkings in the Mediterranean.

But the 20-year-old told the BBC he was determined to tell people what life was like as a refugee, amid the hot button issue of migration.

Mr Kueth said he was not ashamed of being labelled a refugee, having been granted the right to remain in the UK, instead calling it: "Awesome. You have a story... you live something others didn't live."

Warning: Graphic material

He grew up with his mother in South Sudan in a village in Unity State and said he was happy as a child.

His life changed in 2013 when civil war broke out in the country, forcing millions to flee their homes.

At first Mr Kueth went to live with his sister but, when their town was captured by soldiers, they decided to move to a camp for safety and then cross into Sudan.

He said he was worried about the small children on the journey with them and remembered his younger cousin kicking what he thought was a ball in the darkness.

"He didn't realise this was a skeleton, a dead person and I'm like: 'You realise you're kicking a skeleton?'" Mr Kueth said.

On reaching Khartoum, they had to build their own shelters and he described conditions in the camp, where they stayed for three years, as "dirty".

Three years later, a family friend convinced him to attempt the journey to Europe.

He got to Libya but was put in prison several times including in what he called one of "the toughest jails" in the country.

Mr Kueth said each time he was jailed after being caught attempting to cross the Mediterranean.

He was beaten several times in prison and on one occasion taken to hospital with blood pouring from his nose and mouth.

The Red Cross visited the site and he spoke to them about the conditions but this, he said, angered his jailors.

"That evening they came and took me out and beat me with other guys as well," he added.

Afterwards, Mr Kueth said they poured urine and other human waste on him and left him.

When he was 15, a friend in jail was able to contact a man who paid to arrange his release.

He set off for the coast to renew his bid to cross the Mediterranean.

On one of them, he and others on a rubber boat were left in the sea for six hours after it sank, clinging to pieces of wood.

They were rescued by a ship but 40 people died in that attempt, he said.

On another occasion he tried to make the crossing in a larger wooden boat with Eritreans and Egyptians but Mr Kueth said it was overcrowded and also sank.

He remembered getting back to shore and seeing the bodies of children he had travelled with.

"The image, it's always there," he said.

Despite this, Mr Kueth said he had a belief that God had freed him from jail for a reason and he would get to Europe.

He eventually reached Malta and was put in detention for six months but said: "There's no place they could put us, there's a lot of people coming there."

A couple he met at a church took him in, rented a room for him, gave him a laptop and sent him to school.

Mr Kueth stayed in Malta for a year but when the couple offered to adopt him, he turned them down.

"I don't want to be adopted because I want to tell my story," he said.

"I have to be me."

He thanked them, said he was grateful for their help and then sneaked on to a boat to cross the sea to Italy.

On his journey across Italy, France and Belgium he said sometimes the police would catch him but the people he met along the way were not hostile and gave him food.

But Mr Kueth said he did not want to settle on mainland Europe, partly because he spoke little French or Italian.

He remained in France and Belgium for six months, trying to find a way across the English Channel before eventually arriving on 4 July 2021.

After initially being detained, he was released into the hands of social care on 9 July that year, a date special to him because it is also South Sudan's Independence Day.

Mr Kueth said officials had given him the right to remain in the UK.

He was found a home in Shrewsbury and said: "I love it, I don't want to go anywhere. It's quiet, it's very chilled."

Since then he has taken his GCSEs, performed a monologue at a local theatre and started making his own podcasts.

He is studying at a college in Shropshire and says he has dreams of becoming an actor.

Mr Kueth's story comes amid the widespread political debate around migration and asylum.

Net migration into the UK hit a record 906,000 in the year to June 2023 and then fell to 728,000 in the year to June 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics.

But more than 108,130 people claimed asylum in the year ending December 2024, the highest number in the UK since records began in 1979 and an increase of 18% compared with 2023.

The 2024 figure was also 5% higher than a previous peak of 103,000, recorded in 2002 as people fled conflicts in Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq.

A total of 8,200 people who were not granted asylum were returned to their home country, an increase of 28% from 2023.

Successive Conservative and Labour governments have brought in measures aimed at reducing migration for the last 15 years but pretty much all of these have failed to hit the targets promised.

The government spent £5.5bn on support, resettlement and accommodation for asylum seekers in 2023/2024.

Mr Kueth said, despite being in the UK legally, he was aware of the stigma the word refugee could bring.

He admitted he did not like being given the title at first but had slowly changed his mind.

"You've got to embrace that and you've got to keep that," he said.

Being a refugee was a "positive thing" he insisted and not something to be ashamed of.

"Even if I have a kid and they were born in this country, I would still be saying we are refugees," Mr Kueth concluded.

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