Akyol Family 'Snatched' on Wednesday 8th FebruaryRefugees are welcome here - Immigration 'snatch squads' are not. Join the picket at Brand Street Immigration Enforcement Unit
Saturday 11th February, from 7.00am onwards
Glasgow Enforcement Unit 
UK Immigration Service
Festival Court
200 Brand Street
Glasgow
G1 1DH
At the end of 2005, it appeared that the government's brutal programme of dawn raids had been halted in Glasgow. When the abductions became widely know there was public outrage. A campaign of demonstrations, lobbying of the parliament in Edinburgh, vigils at Brand Street Immigration Enforcement Unit and direct action against the snatch squads seemed to have put a stop to the dawn raids. Less that two weeks ago Jack McConnell claimed in the Sunday Observer to have secured changes to the way in which the Home Office would carry out 'dawn raids' in Scotland but without giving any details.
This week, the Akyol family was woken before dawn, dragged from their home and taken to imprisonment at Dungavel.
Last year, No Borders Glasgow pledged to picket Brand Street every time a dawn raid was launched from there.
Please come along to show solidarity with every family living in fear of the dawn raids, and to send a message to the Home Office: we will not tolerate these attacks on our communities!
Brand Street is close to Cessnock Underground. For a map click here: http://snipurl.com/brand_street_map
If you can't make it at 7am, come later. If you can only make it for a short time, still come. Spread the word.
UK Immigration Service
Festival Court
200 Brand Street
Glasgow
G1 1DH
At the end of 2005, it appeared that the government's brutal programme of dawn raids had been halted in Glasgow. When the abductions became widely know there was public outrage. A campaign of demonstrations, lobbying of the parliament in Edinburgh, vigils at Brand Street Immigration Enforcement Unit and direct action against the snatch squads seemed to have put a stop to the dawn raids. Less that two weeks ago Jack McConnell claimed in the Sunday Observer to have secured changes to the way in which the Home Office would carry out 'dawn raids' in Scotland but without giving any details.
This week, the Akyol family was woken before dawn, dragged from their home and taken to imprisonment at Dungavel.
Last year, No Borders Glasgow pledged to picket Brand Street every time a dawn raid was launched from there.
Please come along to show solidarity with every family living in fear of the dawn raids, and to send a message to the Home Office: we will not tolerate these attacks on our communities!
Brand Street is close to Cessnock Underground. For a map click here: http://snipurl.com/brand_street_map
If you can't make it at 7am, come later. If you can only make it for a short time, still come. Spread the word.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees press release:
Dawn Arrest Of Akyol Family For Deportation
Despite the massive opposition across Scotland to Home Office policy, refugee families are still being dragged from their homes in the early hours of the morning, as a step in the process of deportation.
On Wednesday morning (8TH Feb), Lutfu and Gultan Akyol and their two children, Erem, 10, and Eren, 6, were taken from their flat just after 6 a.m. when Home Office officials battered their door in. They are now in Dungavel Detention Centre awaiting deportation.
The family is Kurdish and both parents have already been imprisoned in Turkey for opposing the government's treatment of Kurds. The Turkish government has destroyed thousands of Kurdish villages over the past few years and imprisoned or killed many Kurds. The Kurdish language has often been totally banned and Kurds in Turkey have been very brutally treated for many years.
The family has been here for nearly five years. The children, Erem and Eren, have spent their whole school lives in Scottish schools. They both speak with a Scottish accent and consider themselves Scottish. They desperately miss their school and their friends.
Lutfu is a qualified car mechanic and had hoped to open his own business here in Glasgow. Now his health is broken and he is suicidal because of worry about his family's fate.
If they are forced to return to Turkey the parents expect that they will be gaoled immediately and probably tortured. The family has many friends in the Scottish community who are outraged at what has happened to them. Yet again, people in the city of Glasgow are faced with having their friends dragged off in the middle of the night for deportation to a brutal regime.
Jack McConnell, Charles Clarke and Tony Blair seem determined to ignore the wishes of the people in Scotland, who want to welcome refugees here to live and work and become part of our communities. The Akyol family should be allowed to remain in Scotland.
An attempt to remove the family to England this morning, caused the children so much distress it had to be abandoned.
We are calling on the Home Secretary to use his discretion and to grant the family leave to remain on humanitarian grounds.
Glasgow Campaign to Welcome RefugeesPlease contact: 07870 286632
Margaret Woods
Campaign Trade Union Organiser
Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees
glascamref@hotmail.com
