No Borders Glasgow

2007-10-04T22:42:00.001-11:00

26 October 2006
"Minister for Dawn raids visits Scotland
Home Office Minister Liam Byrne visited Edinburgh and Glasgow to announce new measures to process and reject asylum applications and deport people to danger more efficiently. Scottish refugees and supporters gathered to incentivise him back to London. two reports...

9 October 2006
Early morning vigils to stop dawn raids
Across Glasgow just before sun-rise something new is happening. Early in the morning friends and neighbours are gathering outside tower blocks in their local communities to mount vigils against dawn raids on asylum seeker families living there. more details...

7 October 2006
Transnational day of action against migration controls
For reports on the march and rally in Glasgow and from across Europe, click here

2-4 October 2006
Resistance to dawn raids in Glasgow
The morning of 2 October 06 saw a brutal dawn raid on a young woman in Glasgow, her babies torn from her and locked away in a seperate van as they were all taken to prison. The following day, over 100 residents of her block in Kingsway Court were on the streets at dawn to protest, and stopped the dawn raid vans when they returend for more families. The next day, locals of Tarfside Oval in the south of the city came out in force to resist the snatch squads that had came for a Kurdish family.

8 September 2006
Deportations to Iraq
The UK government, under vicious Home Secretary John Reid, has begun forced removals of Iraqi refugees, even those with outstanding legal appeals read more...

29 June 2006
Protest at the Scottish Parliament
Asylum seekers from Glasgow travelled to to the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh, calling for the rigt to work and an end to detention in a protest orgnaised by Unity, the union of asylum seekers in Scotland. read more...

27 June 2006
Victory in fight against forced relocations in Glasgow!
Following an upsurge in resistance to plans to uproot dozens of families from their homes and communities in Pollokshaws in the south side of Glasgow, the Home Office has caved in to demands that people be found homes nearby. read more...

19 June 2006
Forced removals: Public meeting Tues 27 June, solidarity and resistance.
1,000 people in Glasgow seeking asylum, currently housed by the council, are to have new private sector landlords. The landlords and NASS are forcing families to move from the areas where they have been living for years, at very short notice and with no choice. Resistance is building. Read more... YMCA and NASS: What a mess!
The YMCA is one of the landlords forcibily relocating families across the city, from their homes in the southside to it's mega-hostel in the north. read more...

18 June 2006
Smile for the week and to hell with you for the rest of the year!
A Refugee Week round-up from Indymedia. Read more...

17 June 2006
"We Belong To Glasgow" Rally
at Brand Street, Ibrox, Glasgow on Saturday 17 June at 11am till 1.30pm. Protest against dawn raids; detention and Dungavel; deportations; destitution and for the right to work for asylum seekers read more...

27 May 2006
Asylum rights protest in Glasgow city centre
Over 100 asylum seekers and supporters held a protest in the city centre, calling for an end to dawn raids, detention and deportations, and for the right to work for all. read more...

17 May 2006
Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees reports on the pastor Daly case.
Pastor Daly and family have won the right to have their case re-assessed WITHOUT going to judicial review. read more...

5 May 2006
Home Secretary Sacked!
There should be dancing in the streets. read more...

27 April 2006
Dawn Raid on Sri Lankan family.
Why is the UK government terrorising Glasgow residents from Sri Lanka the day after the United Nations issues a statement of concern at the escalating violence? read more...

8 April 2006
Unity March & Rally Glasgow
Around 300 asylum seekers, refugees, sans-papiers and their supporters marched across Glasgow this afternoon, calling for the right to work and an end to detention and deportation read more...

29 March 2006
Direct Action stops eviction
Supporters rushed to the aid of Mr Bajaj and his family this morning, as Glasgow City Council tried again to evict the elderly disabled man and his family from their home. read more...

27 March 2006
McNulty not welcome here.
Government Minister for Dawn Raids, Tony McNulty, visited Glasgow today...and the scumbag was treated to the welcome he deserves. read more...

11 March 2006
Brand St protest and Unity Centre opens
read more...

10 February 2006
First dawn raid of 2006
Picket at Brand St as Aykol family is abducted
read more...

24 January 2006
Time for direct action against dawn raids.
Through solidarity, mutual aid and direct action we CAN stop the dawn raids
read more...

12 January 2006
First Brand Street blockade of 2006.
The Brand Street Immigration Centre gates were blocked again on the morning of 12th January
read more...

4th January 2006
Happy New Year, Brand St.
The Home Office at Brand Street in Ibrox re-opened this morning after the New Year Holidays. Activists from No Borders Glasgow were also there, picketing from 7 till 10:30am
read more...

14, 15, 16 December 2005
Brand Street Blockades.
For three days running, no Immigration Service snatch squads have been able to leave the Scottish Enforcement Unit at Brand Street to carry out dawn raids. The gates have been chained and blockaded from 5am til after dawn
read more...

21 November 2005
Brand St locked down - 3 detained.
Once again the Home Office Immigration offices in Glasgow have been closed down by protesters. The protest ended at 11am with 3 protestors detained by Police
read more...

14 November 2005
Ahmed family - another abduction.
Another family has been abducted from their Glasgow home and deported, this time leaving behind a 16 year old boy who was away from home at the time
read more...

11 September 2005
Temperate McNulty and Grassroots resistance.
Immigration Minister bars officials from speaking to Brand Street protestors.
read more...

2 November 2005
Brand Street office occupation.
Protestors storm the Immigration Reporting Centre in Glasgow.
read more...

14 October 2005
Kupeli Family abducted - another dawn raid in Glasgow
Mr Sinan Kupeli (38), wife Songul (37) and daughters Suna (9) and Yagmur (6½) were torn from their home and community in the Gorbals, where they have lived for the past 5 years, in a terrifying dawn raid.
read more...

26Oct06 - Minister for Dawn Raids visits Scotland

2006-10-26T23:32:00.000-11:00

Liam Byrne's Trip to Glasgow

Liam Byrne came to Glasgow today and received a warm welcome. Kind of. Here is a report from a participant, and from Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees.

After a trip to the Parliament in Edinburgh, the Minister for Dawn Raids arrived at Glasgow City Chambers at 2:45. There was already a substantial crowd outside the front door when the two purple Merc people carriers pulled into the St. Vincent St entrance.

On arrival, our VIP was met with jeers and shouts of "No Dawn Raids" and "We belong to Glasgow," leaving him in no doubt as to his popularity amongst the victims of his government's vindictive policies. Whilst he was inside, people kept chanting and the crowd outside numbered around 70.

Around 3:30, the gates were opened and police forced a path through the crowd by shoving people. Some in the crowd complained about the rough treatment, one man was grabbed by the throat. The vans trundled off behind some cyclists enjoying the afternoon air.
---------------
Protesters followed the Minister to the Home Office at Brand St, where the police presence was heavier and more aggressive. About 100 protesters sang, danced and chanted whilst the Minister met with staff inside. The "reforms" he announced today are bound to have raised their flagging morale, given that they consist of carrying on with the "fast-track" system recently introduced to no acclaim.
An attempt by Police to cause a diversion to allow the Minister to sneak away in the opposite direction caused the situation to descend into a melee as police over-reacted when protesters ran into the road and blocked the first car in the convoy. Despite their best attempts, protestors succeeded in bringing the car to a halt.
One over-zealous policeman, officer G116, was seen to push people to the ground, knock an elderly African woman to the ground then stand on her and attempted to snatch cameras from witnesses to his behaviour, described as "out of control".
Unfortunately, one asylum seeker was arrested after an empty plastic bottle was apparently thrown at the car. During his arrest, as he was panicking, our friend G116 chose to put him in a choke hold despite the man already being restrained by 3 other officers.
After the confusion, an ambulance had to be called for the lady knocked to the ground by G116. She appeared to be suffering from a panic attack brought on by the over-the-top, heavy-handed policing.

Despite the negative end to a day of determined protests, with Liam Byrne being dogged everywhere he went, today was overall a massive success showing the determination by asylum seekers and their Scottish friends and neighbours to resist the barbaric policies of the Home Office.

The man arrested was charged with resisting arrest and molesting police (!) and was released on bail the following day from Glasgow Sheriff Court much to the relief of his wife and friends who were deeply upset at his arrest and worried about his safety.
He has got some bruises, a ripped coat and marks around his throat - thanks to the violent way in which he was handled, especially by G116 but otherwise he is fine.
He's due back in court on 15th Feb.

If anyone has photo's, can be a witness or just wants to support the family please contact the UNITY Centre.
0141 427 7992

- - - - - - - - - - - Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees Report
No Dawn Raids No Deportations

80 of us travelled through to Edinburgh early on Thursday morning. We had a short rally outside the Parliament and then went inside to conduct a press conference/public meeting in one of the large committee rooms. Thanks to Sandra White MSP and her office for their invaluable help in this.
Nearly a hundred of us crowded in to hear statements of support from 7 cross party MSPs.Bill Butler, and Patricia McNeill, Labour, whose constituency include the Kingsway flats,Sandra White and Linda Fabiana, SNP, Patrick Harvie, Greens, Colin Fox, Convener of the SSP, Tommy Sheridan, Solidarity.

There is not agreement among the MSPs about their attitude to Liam Byrne's new arrangements but their support is a great encouragement.Rev Ian Whyte represented Positive Action in Housing and spoke of the parallels with the fight 200 years ago against slavery.

Margaret Woods spoke for the Campaign and emphasised that the new fast tracking arrangements are not an improvement. Given the loaded nature of the hearings they are a fast track to deportation not to asylum. Also that this is not a special deal for Scotland, other regions will have the same set up. Scotland will not have control of its own asylum arrangements, it will simply administer Home Office policy locally. It is the local defence networks set up by friends and neighbours and refugees which have the power to make a difference.

Evelyn Louden, a local campaigner from Toryglen, asked why they had been given money to help integrate refugees with their community only to have the heart ripped out of it. Jean Donnachie spoke of the Kingsway residents determination not to have any more of their friends and neighbours dawn raided and deported.Last but not least Amal Azzutin of the Glasgow Girls spoke eloquently and passionately for refugees themselves.

TV cameras were there and the meeting was covered on the lunch-time and evening news. Several newspapers, including the Guardian, Herald and Scotsman had reporters in attendance who interviewed several of the participants. Margaret Woods had been interviewed and was on the BBC TV News the night before. Thanks to the Kingsway residents success in turning back the Home Office vans, dawn raids and deportations are big news.

We travelled back to Glasgow in time to demonstrate outside the City Chambers where Liam Byrne was meeting representatives of Glasgow City Council. About 100 of us chanting, effectively barricaded the exit for an hour so that the police had to call reinforcements to clear a way. They brought this Minister of Her Majesty's Government out in two large vans with blacked out windows so that the people he represents could not see him and he could not see the people he represents. But he heard us all right.

We punched the air and chanted, knowing we had let him know there is serious support for refugees in this country and growing anger at our Government's abusive and racist asylum policies. How dare they assume that ordinary British and Scottish people are all racists whose xenophobic instincts have to be pandered to. The fight back against their racist asylum policy is being led and organised by ordinary local people who have learned to value "their refugees" as neighbours and friends and whose best instinct is to show solidarity with them in their adversity.

A smaller number carried on to demonstrate further at the Home Office centre at Brand Street where unfortunately one of the asylum seekers was arrested. It is of paramount importance that asylum seekers, refugees and campaigners get together to discuss how to demonstrate effectively and robustly but making sure that asylum seekers, whose legal situation is very fragile and vulnerable, and refugees, against whom anti-terror laws and even trivial criminal charges are being used to deport them, are not put into danger.

Jock MorrisChairGCtWR

9Oct06 - early morning vigils to stop dawn raids

2006-10-09T11:19:00.000-11:00

Across Glasgow just before sun-rise something new is happening. Early in the morning friends and neighbours are gathering outside tower blocks in their local communities to mount vigils against dawn raids on asylum seeker families living there.

Last week in the early morning gloom, 100 people gathered outside Block 50 in Kingsway Court and managed to stop a dawn raid by immigration officials because the family were not at home – they had joined everyone else outside on the vigil.

The next day when the Immigration Enforcement Team arrived to detain Ceb Cohan and his family, neighbours and friends gathered outside his tower block to support him and to protest making it much, much harder for the immigration officials and police to take the family away.

One week later this tactic is being repeated across the city, in Kingsway, Cardonald, and Red Road, families have been coming together between 5.45 and 8.00 am to protect each other against the dawn raids. And Scottish neighbours and friends are joining in.

Instead of having to deal with just one family the police and dawn raid team find they now have to deal with maybe as many 150 people, meaning they need more police and they are met with protests rather than being able to sneak off with the family in their blue vans.

Already there are many political problems for the Home Office in Scotland. Today an emergency meeting is being held between the Home Office and the Scottish Executive to try and come up with a way of making the dawn raids more humane.

Whether this will work remains to be seen. But we too can make problems for the Home Office by joining together early in the morning for peaceful protests against the dawn raids.

UNITY are calling for all asylum seekers in Glasgow to copy what has been happening.

Talk with your neighbours and friends and arrange to meet with them outside your home between 5.45 and 8.00 in the morning.
If the dawn raid vans arrive – find out where they are going and warn everyone you know
Make a peaceful protest
Call UNITY immediately on 0141 427 7992

Please make sure to keep together and keep SAFE! You will not be arrested by the police if you are making a protest about the dawn raid but if you try to stop the dawn raid or if you make too much noise or if you do anything that frightens anyone you may be arrested by the police and this could cause problems for your case.

7Oct06 - Day of action reports

2006-10-07T11:00:00.000-11:00

October 7 saw many decentralised, coordinated migration-related actions and events across the world.

From Warsaw to London, from Hamburg to Nouakchott, thousands of migrants and their supporters protested against the denial of their rights, against the criminalisation and scapegoating of refugees and, above all, against all immigration controls. They were demanding a European unconditional legalisation and equal rights for all migrants; the closure of all detention centres in Europe and everywhere; an end to all deportations and the 'border externalisation' process.

For a round up of events across Europe on indymedia, go to: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/10/352902.html

Report on march and rally in Glasgow:

Several hundred people converged on Glasgow's George Square on Saturday for a march and Rally organised by Unity the Union of Asylum Seekers as part of the 3rd International Day of Action for Migrant Rights.

Marchers set off from points North, West and South of the city centre, numbering several hundred by the time they reached George Square. Asylum seekers were joined by people from across Glasgow and beyond who wanted to show their solidarity at the end of a particularly brutal week (even by Home Office standards).

Addressing the rally, Rosie Kane MSP called for Glaswegians to make the place a City of Compassion and Sanctuary. A common theme in the speeches was the need for solidarity between native-born Glaswegians and their (relatively) new neighbours. Graham Campbell of Solidarity called for people to support the work of the Unity Union of Asylum Seekers, organisers of the event. A speaker from the No Borders Network thanked asylum seekers for rekindling Glasgow's spirit of direct action in resistance to State persecution.

But as ever with these events, it was the refugees' and asylum seekers' voices that had the most vital contributions to make. Pastor Daly, no stranger to the inside of a detention centre, made a fiery speech that lost no power in its translation from French. We want to live, we want to work. This is not a speaker that any government would like to have opposing it.

Mama Henriette of Karibu African Women's Group reminded us of the government's role in creating refugees and its hypocrisy in dealing with them. "Asylum is a gambling game, all about numbers," and welfare is not on the agenda. Given that, we shouldn't talk about "failed" asylum seekers: people are Refused asylum by a system that isn't interested in fairness or justice.

The rally finished with a performance by local / international hip-hop crew Fugees United. A mixed group of fans danced and chanted "I don't give a damn what you call me." The energy and determination to resist government attacks on communities in Glasgow is there and here are talented people who want to contribute to this city they are making their home. John Reid would do well to note, "The Worse He Gets, the Stronger We Become"

more pictures at www.citystrolls.com

4Oct06 - Unity against dawn raids

2006-10-04T23:09:00.000-11:00

This week saw asylum seekers and Scottish residents with nothing left to lose, coming out and protesting against the regime of fear the home office is imposing on them.
This morning another of Glasgow’s asylum seeking families was brutally dawn raided. The Coban family who are Kurdish Turkish and have lived in Tarfside Oval in Cardonald for over 5 years were woken and dragged from their beds.

Their son attends Cardonald’s Lourdes Primary School. He said afterwards that he was sad and upset at what had happened and what he had seen.

During the dawn raid a home office snatch squad forced their way into the family flat but Cem Coban broke free, ran out to the balcony on the 20th floor and threatened to throw himself off.

There was then a stand off as the Home Office snatch quad withdrew and Strathclyde police took over. Friends, neighbours and people from asylum seeking communities from around Glasgow and campaigners gathered. They chanted in support of the family and begged police and home office to leave them alone. Both asylum seekers and Scottish citizens in the local community were resolute in their determination that dawn raids must be stopped. They spoke of the terrorisation of their children and their fear of seeing them dragged from their beds mid sleep by home office officials. “If it can happen to the Coban family it can happen to us. Enough is enough.” Said one mother who is also an asylum seeker.

Mr Coban was terrified of being dawn raided and had made his way to the Kingsway flats the night before to support that community in their resistance to dawn raids and to learn from them. One neighbour who had been a victim of dawn raids by a military dictatorship in his own country commented that “I knew it was bad in my home country but I didn’t think in Scotland they did this to families”.

After five hours, Mr Coban decided to come in from the balcony and hand himself to the police, who arrested him for committing a breach of the peace. The demonstrators downstairs feared that he was being taken to Dungavel and lived up to their words not to allow this by blocking the path of the police van he was inside.

There was a five minute stand off after police were not able to move protestors who had sat down in front of their van. Eventually the police van reversed around the block of flats to where another van was waiting. The protestors saw this and ran round with police following, to block the path of this van as well. When the police caught up they began to push men women and children to the ground to allow the van to eventually leave. During this one woman collapsed and had to be taken in an ambulance to hospital.

Protestors said that if the police had came down and explained to them that Mr Coban was not being taken to Dungavel, this situation might not have happened.

Mrs Coban was later taken by ambulance to a hospital. Mr Coban was taken to Helen Street police station where he was charged. He will appear in court tomorrow.

3Oct06 - Community action stops dawn raid

2006-10-03T23:24:00.000-11:00

Campaigners claim victory against dawn raid
Immigration officials were stopped from removing failed asylum seekers this morning as protestors barricaded the entrance to a block of flats in Glasgow. The demonstration was prompted by yesterday's removal of a mother and her two daughters, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who have been taken to Dungavel Detention Centre.

Just before five this morning residents of the Kingsway estate began gathering to make their point. Yesterday's forced removal of a mother and her two children by immigration services in a dawn raid was met with outrage in the community and locals were determined to ensure there was no repeat.

The early morning peace was shattered, however, as immigration officials returned to carry another raid. Tensions were running high but eventually the flashpoint reached a satisfying conclusion for the crowd of around 90 protestors. With their intended targets seemingly not at home, immigration officials left without detaining anyone. Later it emerged that the family was out on the streets at the protest when the snatch squad came calling with their battering ram.

2Oct06 - State attacks on refugee women

2006-10-02T23:02:00.000-11:00

Below is the testimony of a young woman, Caritas Sony. Please read this testimony of a young woman and her babies, and the suffering they have experienced at the hands of the state. It is the kind of story that Immigration Judges routinely throw out as unbelievable, but it is sadly true. Please read this testimony and act.

Every day, in Immigration Courts in Britain, women like Caritas are forced to go over their experiences again, trying to persuade officials to give them sanctuary. Telling again of the time that the state forces came, smashing down the door before dawn. How the children were snatched from her breast, bundled in a van, how she cried and cried, fearing she would never see them again. And every day Immigration Judges throw out cases like these - that sort of attack doesn’t happen to women like you in a country like that, they say. Case dismissed.

But that sort of attack does happen, and this one happened in a Glasgow high rise. Children were torn from their mother by British state forces.

Please read this testimony. Please read of how this is only the latest state attack on this young woman. But this attack was carried out by your government, in your name, on your behalf.

Another dawn raid in Glasgow. It’s happening every day now. Please don’t let this government think it can carry on with this violence in our names. Please raise your voice and demand an end to these violent attacks on our communities. Contact the Unity Centre in Glasgow for details of how you can get involved in the resistance. See www.unitycentreglasgow.org for details.

Thanks to Positive Action for putting this out. This is getting serious. Scotland’s refugee communities are under attack. We have to act.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
from Positive Action in Housing

TESTIMONY OF CARITAS SONY, 24 YEARS OLD, AND 2 BABIES AFTER DAWN RAID ON HER HOME AT KINGSWAY, SCOTSTOUN, GLASGOW

Churches, charities, schoolteachers, neighbours have condemned the treatment of 24 year old Caritas Sony who was brutally removed from her home of two years in Kingsway Court (Block 50, Flat 2/2) in a dawn raid by immigration officials this morning, Monday 2 October 2006. This is the latest in a series of several dawn raids on innocent families in Kingsway, Scotstoun and highlights the continuing brutality of the home office’s asylum policy on Scottish soil.

Dawn raid
Between 6 and 7 am this morning, Monday 2 October 2006, Caritas Sony, 24 years old, and her two children, Heaven (son), 2 Years old and Glad, (daughter), 4 Months old, were woken by around 10 immigration officials who broke down her door with a metal battering ram.

She was then handcuffed while her children were distressed in the bedroom, her two-year old was screaming for her. She asked to see her children and calm them down but immigration refused. Other immigration officers took her children away from her; both children were very distressed and cold. The officers did not put warm clothing on the children despite caritas’ request. They took the mother out first and placed her in a caged van, and then the two children were taken separately in a different vehicle in a very distressed state.

The family was taken into brand street home office. They wanted to look in her bag, she refused it, but they took her bag anyway and searched her documents. Then they searched her body and the children’s bodies too.

Dungavel
Immigration officials took Caritas and her children to another van. During the journey her two year old fell from the baby seat and screamed, she had to plead for immigration to put him back into the seat. She was too terrified to help her own child because she was warned by immigration officials not to touch her own children, or hold him to comfort him or keep him safe. Caritas hasn’t eaten or drunk anything. She said she would rather die here than go back to the Congo where she fears she will be killed as soon as she returns. There is no baby food for her 4 month old child, while her 2 year old has been eating only yoghurt. She is in a room with no other women and has been crying most of the day. There are 5 other empty beds in the room. Caritas’ baby needs SMA Gold baby milk, yet the only milk available in dungavel is for babies of six months or older. Caritas tried to breast feed the baby but because she herself can’t eat she cannot produce breast milk.

Why she left
Caritas fled Congo after her father, a politician, disappeared in 2001 and his body was never found. They were the all arrested. Then her mother was executed in front of Caritas in prison November 2003. In prison, her brother was ordered to rape her, he refused and was then executed in January 2004. Caritas was kept in prison where she was repeatedly raped and tortured. Her two year old son is the child of one of the men that raped her. She cannot count the number of times she was raped. Caritas managed to escape prison and she arrived as an asylum seeker in Glasgow in February 2004. Both her two children were born here. Caritas’s 19 year old sister was put in a different cell when the family were arrested. She never saw her again. In summer 2005, Caritas received the death certificate for her sister. Caritas has a twin sister who was not arrested and she understands fled the country for somewhere in Europe, Caritas does not know where.

Speaking from Dungavel, Caritas Sony said:
“I cannot go back to Congo because I went to prison and I know that if I return back there I will be killed, I want to fight for my children, I know that in Congo they will kill me because they don’t want any evidence left and I am the last piece of evidence. I cannot tell you how much it tears my heart to see my baby starving without the milk that she needs, or to see my two year old so crying and unable to eat, my children are restless; we have been put away like criminals. I came here to seek refuge and I feel like me and my children’s lives have the worth of nothing.”

Robina Qureshi, Director, Positive Action in Housing, said:
“The inhumanities of dawn raids have not stopped. A young woman was handcuffed in front her children without any regard to their psychological welfare. She was REFUSED PERMISSION to go to them when they were crying. She was FORBIDDEN from helping her two year old son when he fell from AN IMPROPERLY FASTENED baby seat. She was then given formula milk for babies 6 months and upwards instead of the proper prescription formula for a four month old, thereby putting her child in danger. According to Caritas, both her children has not been properly fed in dungavel since this morning.

This family’s treatment highlights yet again that absolutely nothing has changed regarding current policy of dawn raids. There are no safeguards to stop this inhumane treatment. There is no protocol to protect them. They are being treated worse than animals under the pretext of a ‘reserved asylum policy’.

“It is all very well for us as a country to complain about the human rights abuses going on abroad, and Congo DRC has many. What is shameful and disgusting is that the UK is prepared to allow this young woman to be further tortured by an asylum policy designed to force her back to the country she desperately fled. The worst shame of all is a Scottish government that is prepared to turn a blind eye to the inhumanities practiced by a Westminster run Home Office on Scottish soil as if it never happened in the first place. It did happen. It is happening. And we simply ask the Executive to intervene to stop any more inhumanities against children and their families.

“Enough is enough. We are calling on members of the Scottish public to write to their MSP, their MP, and the First minister and demand an end to any more dawn raids on Scottish soil, and an amnesty for Scottish asylum families so communities are no longer terrorised and school kids don’t have to be terrified by the disappearance of their school friends overnight without even so much as a goodbye.”

Caritas and her children are currently in Dungavel Detention centre and will be transferred to Yarlswood tomorrow, then due to be deported on Wednesday.

7 October Day of Action

2006-09-12T22:16:00.000-11:00

3rd day of Migration-Related Actions: 7 Oct 2006
A call from the European No Border Movement

When thousands of migrants and refugees collectively stormed the border fences of the Spanish enclaves in Ceuta and Melilla (Spanish border outposts in Africa) in October last year, the crucial demands for freedom of movement and for equal rights were clearly brought to public attention, at least for the moment.

Our new joint call for a Day of Action follows the mobilisations on 31 January 2004 and on 2 April 2005, when we held the first and second days of action on migration in more than 50 cities across Europe. The 3rd Day of Action will be directed against the denial of rights, against the criminalisation of migrants and against all immigration controls, articulating clear demands within the framework of freedom of movement and the right to stay [read the call]

Join the UNITY protest in Glasgow

12 noon - 3pm, Saturday 7 October
Together we are strong!

STOP DAWN RAIDS

WE ARE NOT CRIMINALS

MARCH to the UNITY rally in George Square

Feeder marches will be leaving from different parts of the city:

NORTH: Assemble 10.30 outside the Post Office Huntingdon Square, SIGHTHILL

SOUTH: Assemble 10.30 outside the Leisure Centre, Ballater Street, GORBALS

WEST: Assemble 10.30 outside Lidl, Maryhill Road, MARYHILL

maps of meet-up locations:

Gorbals leisure centre: http://tinyurl.com/ofod3
Lidl, Maryhill Road: http://tinyurl.com/fo8ma
Huntingdon Sq, Sighthill: http://tinyurl.com/flwet

Third International Day of Action for Migrants and Refugees Rights - Protests and actions in support of asylum seekers, migrants, refugees and 'sans papiers' will be happening in London and across Europe on this day.

In Glasgow come along to the protest rally in George Square in the city centre.
Called by UNITY - the union of asylum seekers and supported by the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees.

Let's make this the largest and noisiest protest by asylum seekers yet! Please help us to do this - tell everyone you know about the protest and bring them along to it!

Leaflets, posters and more information are available from:

The Unity Centre

30 Ibrox Street

Glasgow G51 1AQ

0141 427 7992

Sept06 - Deportations to Iraq

2006-09-12T21:24:00.000-11:00

32 Iraqi asylum seekers, who had been incarcerated in different detention centres, were deported to Arbil, northern Iraq, on 5 September, 2006, on a specially chartered flight from the RAF Brize Norton military base in Oxfordshire. There was a demonstration at the Home Office in London, called by the Coalition to Stop Deportations to Iraq and the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees, but that did not apparently stop the process, and neither did the warnings from international organisations [1 2 3] or the legal challenges.

The first forced deportation of Iraqi Kurds from the UK took place on 19 November, 2005. 15 men were taken to an airport at night, handcuffed, beaten and forced onto a military plane headed for Arbil through Cyprus. The move then sparked a lot of anger and protest [1 2 3 4 5], and the deportation of Iraqis was halted for a while until resumed this month. Tens of Iraqi Kurds are believed to be interned in UK detention centres, while thousands more have been served notice that they will be 'removed' from the country. Latest reports, 7 Sept 06

Read: initial report call-out for demo names of deportees Home Secretary resumes forced removals to Iraq EU-coordinated deportation of Afghani refugees

Links: Coalition to Stop Deportations to Iraq International Federation of Iraqi Refugees National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns Noborders UK communication channels

source: www.indymedia.org.uk

29 June 06: Report on Unity demo at Parliament

2006-06-29T00:11:00.000-11:00

Asylum seekers from Glasgow called for the right to work and an end to detentions outside the Scottish Parliament on Thursday 29th June. About 150 people, mostly asylum seekers - with about 20 supporters, some of whom had travelled from Newcastle to join the protest – gathered to hold an up-beat, noisy, protest outside the Parliament during the last First Minister’s question time before the Parliament shuts for the summer.

About ninety people travelled by train from Glasgow and held an impromptu procession from the station led by the Unity banner. Protesters met up with supporters and friends from Edinburgh. Others came by coach organised by a local church in the East End of Glasgow.

Chanting “Stop Dawn Raids!”, “No More Deportations!” and “We belong to Scotland!” the group spent three hours outside the Parliament taking turns to speak and lead the chanting. Speakers called for the right to be treated with dignity and respect and for asylum seekers to be given the right to work so they were no longer dependent on benefits.

Several speakers also mentioned the recent campaign against removals to the YMCA but called for continued vigilance against possible future attempts to move families and for the importance of solidarity and unity by asylum seekers.

Several MSPs, Rosie Kane, Sandra White, Colin Fox, Tommy Sheridan and Mark Ballard, joined the protesters for a shortwhile. Asylum seekers had been due to have a meeting inside the Parliament with MSPs but due to the size of the crowd the room booked was not big enough and it was decided to continue the meeting outside.

During a picnic lunch whilst children played on the grass outside the Parliament many asylum seekers however took the opportunity to be shown round the Parliament by SSP MSP Rosie Kane.

For many asylum seekers present it was the first time they had been at the Parliament (or in Edinburgh) and although we may not have made the impact we would have wished, many felt the day had been great fun and very successful!

One asylum seeker commented that the day was the first time that he had felt that he really had a right to live in Scotland.

27/6/06: Victory in fight against forced relocations!

2006-06-27T20:57:00.000-11:00

Following an upsurge in resistance to the plans to uproot dozens of families from their homes and communities in Pollokshaws in the south side of Glasgow, the Home Office has caved in to demands that people be found homes nearby.

Under the privatisation of asylum seeker housing in Glasgow, around 1000 people seeking refuge from political and religious persecution, war, torture and rape, currently housed by the council in flats leased from Glasgow Housing Association Ltd, are to be given a new private landlord.

The Council has been secretly working with the Home Office and YMCA Glasgow to get around guidelines which state that families should be rehoused within 3 miles of their current home, in an effort to move families out of GHA blocks scheduled for demolition, and into the YMCA mega-hostel on the other side of the city. Most families have refused to move away from their area and into a block that is totally inappropriate for families with children.

Now the council has pulled out of the unholy alliance, forcing the Home Office to extend the relocation process and allowing time for landlords to find accommodation in the local area. Until now, they had all been adamant that there are no family-sized flats in the south side of Glasgow, a claim derided as ludicrious by the community activists who live there, and who have been supporting their asylum seeking friends and neighbours.

The families have been receiving support from their local communities, and from UNITY, the Union of Asylum Seekers in Scotland, who have organised protests and a solidarity presence that has prevented some planned evictions. Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees and local community activists organised a public meeting in Pollokshaws Burgh Hall last night, attended by around 300 people.

Speakers from Glasgow's refugee communities told of their fears of being relocated to another housing scheme and how they want to have a proper flat in their own area, not live in a hostel. One family told how their son was badly beaten by local youths twice within two days of moving. Positive Action In Housing called for equal treatment for all families being moved out of the flats - why should asylum seeking families be denied rehousing in their area, have their kids moved to a new school and get no help with removals?

The meeting also heard that this is only a temporary reprieve, and that there are other vulnerable families across the city being moved by the private landlords - YMCA and Angel Group - from their homes to isolation in areas with no other refugees or support networks.

However, the mood of the meeting was upbeat. This was another small victory against the brutal Home Office machine. Earlier this year direct action and public protests led by the "Glasgow Girls" campaign forced the Home Office to halt the terrifying dawn raids on at least families with children studying for exams. The UNITY vigils and blockades of Brand Street Immigration Reporting Centre have resulted in families only having to sign monthly instead of every week. And now refugees with solidarity from their Scottish neighbours have won against a powerful coalition of Home Office, Council, YMCA and private landlords. No other city in Britain has won against the asylum system. Perhaps no other city has united in this way, the settled community alongside refugees, fighting back against the system.

The struggle continues!

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Positive Action In Housing press release. 27 June 06

NASS forced removals to YMCA halted - temporarily - but the asylum communities' fight to remain in Pollokshaws continues.

Further to this morning’s press conference to highlight the plight of asylum seekers who are being forced to move 10 miles away to YMCA hostel accommodation in Red Road, Springburn, as a result of Glasgow’s demolition programme, we are pleased that NASS has put an immediate hold on moves to the YMCA for three months. We understand that a private company, the Angel Group has been asked to procure more properties in the Pollokshaws area, where asylum seekers are currently being accommodated with the aim of rehousing families in the local area, allowing children to remain at their current school.

Robina Qureshi, director, Positive Action in Housing, said:

“We welcome NASS’s decision to put a freeze on forced removals of asylum seekers to the YMCA for three months. It’s an utter disgrace that they would to try to forcibly uproot whole families into what was effectively designed as hostel accommodation while at the same time their indigenous Scottish neighbours were given choice in the local community.

“YMCA’s role in all this is utterly objectionable, they were set up to address social need yet they appear to be cashing in on the plight of vulnerable families as well as cooperating in sending families back. How much are they exactly making out of asylum families moved to the YMCA in Red road? And if they think the hostel accommodation with its archaic communal laundry – four washing machines serving 30 storeys – is so good perhaps they should set the example and move their own families in.

“NASS and the Council should remember that these families are not outsiders they have been here for several years and are part and parcel of the Southside community. If NASS try to forcibly remove the asylum families in Pollokshaws then they will have to deal with the growing discontent of the rest of the local communities as well.

“There is no ‘them and us’ here. The asylum families now have three months before the forced removals start again, this is the time to build their campaign to ensure that when the new school term starts in august 2006, their children are going to the same schools like other Scottish kids. We will assist them and so will other charities, churches and trade unions as well as ordinary decent Scottish citizens. Forced removals have no place in a decent civilised society and we aim to make sure it doesn’t happen at all. The campaign starts now.”

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Glasgow City Council press statement, 27 June 06:

There follows a brief statement from Councillor Irene Graham, Glasgow City Council's Equalities Spokesperson.

"We have been working closely with our partner agencies and NASS to minimise any disruption due to the scheduled demolition of properties used under the dispersal programme."NASS has agreed to a three-month extension for the transition process,which means we can put an immediate hold on moves to YMCA properties.

The Angel Group has been asked to procure more properties in the Pollokshaws area, where asylum seekers are currently being accommodated. Our ultimate aim is to re-house as many families in the local area as possible, allowing children to reamin at their current school."Glasgow welcomes asylum seekers and refugees and across our communities, they continue to make a positive contribution to the life of the city."

Notes to Editors:Previously, the Council was the only provider of housing under the dispersal programme, as agreed with NASS. The new contract sees the Council retain 80% of the provision, with 20% disposed between Angel Group and the YMCA. If Angel Group cannot secure enough properties in the area, then there can be no guarantee that asylum seekers will not need to move to alternative accommodation. However, partner agencies are working to ensure this is notthe case. Most NASS-contracted properties have been sub-let to the Council by GHA. Under its refurbishment programme, a number of GHA properties have been scheduled for demolition. Where this is the case, alternative accommodation must be sought for asylum and refugee inhabitants, as well as the indigenous population.

Refugee Week on Indymedia

2006-06-19T12:49:00.000-11:00

From Indymedia Refugee Week feature...

Refugee Week: Smile for the week and to hell with you for the rest of the year!

At a time when enforced deportations are at their highest rate ever and corporate-run detention centres are packed with thousands of people, whose only crime was to seek refuge in this country; when dawn raids and the weekly reporting are constant nightmares for many asylum seekers; when the government is introducing increasingly more restrictive and racist immigration controls every day (asylum quotas, immigration point system etc.); comes Refugee Week (19-25 June) to "promote understanding and to celebrate the cultural contributions of refugees."

While the "nationwide festival" is, indeed, an opportunity for refugees and immigrants to make their voices heard, faced with all the "asylum madness" of mainstream media, there are many reasons to assume that the event is essentially a cheap public-relations exercise, both for the government and for some of the organisations and corporations involved.

The events appear to be designed to deliberately hide the real issues surrounding asylum and immigration. Serious political content is systematically suppressed. Besides the Home Office, some events -for example, Birmingham's Celebrating Sanctuary - are partly funded by such dodgy asylum profiteers as the Angel Group. Furthermore, the way in which things are organised mirrors much of Labour's discredited multi-cultural policies in terms of dividing refugees along ethnic lines.

18 June 06: forced relocations in Glasgow

2006-06-19T11:14:00.000-11:00

Below are details of a public meeting, and a statement from Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees in response to the forced relocation of hundreds of asylum seeking families in Glasgow. The Campaign has called a public meeting on Tuesday 27th June, 7pm-9:30pm in Pollokshaws Burgh Hall, and has launched a petition calling on the Home Office, the Council and the new private landlords to find decent housing in the areas where asylum seeking families want to stay.

For copies of the petition to print out, fill in and return, send an email to glascamref@hotmail.com or noborders-glasgow@riseup.net

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Keep our communities together!

Public meeting:

Tuesday 27 June at 7pm.

Pollokshaws Burgh Halls

2025 Pollokshaws Road

Speakers in support of keeping asylum seeking members of our communities in their own neighbourhoods:

Jock Morris, Chair, Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees

Councillor Stephen Curran (Ward 71 Pollokshaws)

Bill Spiers, Scottish Trades Union Congress

Robina Qureshi, Positive Action In Housing
Others being invited

Buses: Numbers 45, 47, 57 and Barrhead & Thornliebank buses to the doorTrain: to Pollokshaws West from Central Station.
For more information, phone Jock on 07896 877 315 or Colin on 0141 632 5811

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Keeping Communities Together

The insistence of the Home Office in including a 19% private element in the housing arrangements for asylum-seekers in Glasgow is causing great distress and disruption for asylum-seeker families.

Approximately 300 families have to change to a private landlord and for most, this will mean leaving the homes they have occupied for up to five years. Rather than being found accommodation in their own area, most families are being told they must move or have their financial support cut off. They are to be separated from their local support networks and their children moved from schools in which they are happy. Their communities will lose the friendship and integrated neighbourliness many local people have worked so hard to achieve.

Roughly half the families are being dispersed about the city by the Angel group and the other half are being sent to the YMCA's tower block hostel in the Red Road in Springburn. While the working class people of Glasgow strive to support their new friends and neighbours, the Young Men's Christian Association is intent on establishing an asylum-seeker ghetto in one tower block. In spite of being invited to state reasons why this accommodation is unsuitable, the first of these families has already been refused by the Home Office and told that they must move to the YMCA in Red Road.

The buildings that most of these families live in are due for demolition at some time in the future but none of them for at least two years. There need be no hurry to move these families and there are alternative empty houses in their areas.

We call upon the Home Office, Glasgow City Council, the Angel group and the YMCA to treat our asylum-seeker friends and neighbours with respect and dignity, to take due regard of their rights and needs and, where they choose, to delay their moving home and seek alternative accommodation for them in the neighbourhoods where they are established.

Signed:
Jock Morris, Chair, Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees
Colin Deans, Chair, Pollokshaws Burgh Halls

*To add your name, or your organisation's, contact the Campaign at glascamref@hotmail.com

or via noborders-glasgow@riseup.net

15 June 06. YMCA and NASS: What a mess!

2006-06-18T04:45:00.000-11:00

More information is coming out about how the YMCA in Glasgow is poorly treating asylum seekers.
Last night, 14th June, about 40 people, mainly asylum seekers, crammed themselves into
the community rooms in Pollokshaws for an emergency meeting. In an at times heated and emotional meeting, at least 15 families pledged not to move to the YMCA in any circumstances. At the same time friends and neighbours of the families pledged to do what they could to support them.

This angry rebellion is due to recent changes to how asylum seekers are housed in Glasgow. For the last five years all asylum seeker families were housed in Glasgow Housing Association flats rented by Glasgow City Council who had the contract from the National Asylum Support Scheme to accommodate them. In January this year fifty per cent of the contract was supposed to be 'privatised’ and Glasgow YMCA and a company called Angel, won part of the NASS contract.

Under GCC families were housed in mainly old tower blocks in housing schemes around Glasgow, some of whom are due for demolition in the next two to five years.

A month ago in mid May, the larger asylum seeker families received letters telling them they would have to move to the YMCA. They could appeal this decision using the ‘pink form’ and families with children studying for exams, for example, would not be moved. Alarm was immediately raised, as it seemed that only Congolese families received letters but since then they’ve been sent to a wider range of families.

Shortly after, within weeks, YMCA staff began to visit people in their homes and telling them they were due to move into the YMCA hostel only one or two weeks later. People due to move were told that they couldn’t take any of the larger items of furniture they had managed to acquire, nor have washing machines in their new flats or telephone lines and that the YMCA would only help to move smaller items.

Many of the families, have struggled against quite unbelievable odds to make safe and secure homes for them and their children and have built up strong connections in the areas they were ‘dispersed’ to. They are, understandably, reluctant to take children out of schools where they had settled and move to new and unfamiliar areas where they did not know anybody and so on. As a result a full-scale rebellion against moving to the YMCA has been brewing over the last fortnight as one by one, families have refused to move from their existing flats.

At last night’s meeting more information came out about the depths the YMCA has sunk to in its efforts to get families to move to inappropriate accommodation in the tower block hostel on the edge of the Red Road housing scheme. As a result of the YMCA’s failure to persuade the families that they can provide appropriate accommodation for them, the YMCA has colluded with NASS resulting in the cutting off of all financial support for families refusing to move.

Several families reported that they had been unable to collect their weekly NASS benefits – a meagre 70 per cent of regular state benefits. This was despite the fact that all the families affected are still waiting to hear the results of their appeal about the decision to move to the YMCA using the ‘pink appeal form’.

In a mean-spirited manoeuvre that could possibly be illegal, NASS and the YMCA are collaborating to stop families getting their benefits. The NASS office informs the YMCA which family should be moved to their hostel. The YMCA then gives the family a date to move and inform NASS of that date. NASS then cancels benefits for the family at their old address and issues a new benefits letter for the family to take to the post-office in Springburn, which is then sent to the ‘new’ address at the YMCA hostel and completely out of reach of the family. As a result families refusing to move, at least until they have had a formal response to their appeal about the decision to move them, have had their benefits simply and immediately stopped leaving families of four, five or six people with nothing to live on.

In effect the YMCA are saying starve or move to the YMCA. And that choice has come out of the blue for most families, who have had less than a month to prepare for it.

Determined efforts by some families with help from the Scottish Refugee Council had managed to get NASS to reissue letters to the existing addresses that they refuse to leave but it is unsure how long the families can keep this up.

What is shocking is that the YMCA is a Christian charity – or rather claims to be. The ruthlessness in which they are behaving is the sort of thing you would expect from only the most ruthless of greedy, profiteering landlords. What is also alarming is that the families affected in this way could very well lose their current homes as well as a result of losing their NASS benefits. Not bad for a charity best known (apart from the disco song) for its work with vulnerable Homeless people!

It gets worse. The YMCA’s behaviour is in stark contrast to the way in which Angel, the other company that also got part of the NASS contract in Glasgow, is behaving.

“Don’t like the flat we’re offering you?’ Angel say” Well if you can find one yourself that costs less than £450 a month to rent, then we’ll pay that for you.”

Unity has heard of at least three families this has happened to. With Angel, families have been given two or three weeks to find their own flats on the private market as an alternative to the ones Angel are offering them.

Are Angel a charity like the YMCA, we hear you ask? No, we reply. Do they claim to have an explicitly ‘Christian’ approach to everything they do? No, we tell you. Angel is providing accommodation for asylum seekers purely to make profit. Angel is an out and out capitalist company and has the charitable conscience of a worm.

As a small organisation that relies on donations for its survival, we at Unity understand the pressures that exist within charities and non-governmental organisations to maximise returns on your activities where possible. But the extent to which the YMCA seem to prepared to go in order to force asylum seekers to move to the YMCA without an alternative so the YMCA can get their hands on the dosh has made even the most cynical and hard-bitten atheists amongst us choke.

If Angel can find it profitable to give families the choice of flats and the opportunity to find flats for themselves, why can’t the alleged caring, compassionate, ‘Christian’ YMCA?

To give them some credit the YMCA have attempted to improve conditions. They have sent out new letters explaining that they have now put the locks back on the doors of the flats the families are being “invited” to move into. And they also say that the oppressive regime requiring everyone to sign-in and out every time they go outside of their home has been suspended for these families.

But that isn’t good enough, the damage has been done.

The YMCA has got to prove that they can provide appropriate accommodation. That they are prepared to give families a choice. Why can’t families have washing machines in their flats? Surely that is an essential for large families, especially those with small children. Does the YMCA really believe token operated communal washing machines shared by hundreds of people is reasonable?

Why can’t families have telephone lines into their flats? At least two of the 15 or so families refusing to move to the YMCA have children studying at university who depend on having Internet access at home. (Imagine that – studying for a degree at university when English is not your first language, without being able to receive any financial support, and then being told you can only use the Internet in the computer room for half an hour at a time.)

These are asylum seekers for goodness sake! Does the YMCA not realise how important it is that these families should be able to keep in touch with friends and families in their home countries?

Maybe it is due to the attitudes of the staff at the YMCA. Ignoring the several complaints of racist and hostile behaviour by some members of staff at the YMCA that we have heard, Unity has been told, “These families are only here temporarily” and that “It’s not our fault, we’re only following
the NASS contract.”

Well, first of all, most of the families involved have lived in Glasgow for four or five years. Most are still fighting complex legal battles with the Home Office to get permission to stay in the UK. In the last three months, of the dozen or so families that we know have been detained for forced removal, nine have managed to get released and have returned to safety in Glasgow. Out of the 1,800 asylum seeker families living in Glasgow, only 72 people have taken the £3,000 bribe by the IOM –the International Organisation of Migration - to voluntarily return to their home country. [The YMCA is a partner with the IOM for this scheme, incidentally.]

And secondly if both Glasgow City Council were able to get concessions out of NASS under the original contract and Angel seem to be able to behave more humanely with the new NASS contract then why can’t the YMCA?

We estimate that the YMCA hopes to fill at least forty of their three-bedroom flats with the largest asylum seeker families. With the current poor success record that the Home Office have in removing asylum seeker families from Glasgow either by bribes or by dawn raids (a failure
that we hope will continue and get worse, incidentally) it is likely that many of the asylum seeker families the YMCA are dealing with could be in Glasgow for much longer than a year. Much, much longer.

Unless of course the YMCA knows something that we don’t. In which case every family refusing to move to the YMCA are quite right not to go anywhere near the place.

This situation requires urgent action by anyone appalled that a supposed Christian charity has made such a mess of things. We urge anyone who has any influence with the YMCA to use it to get them to radically change what they are doing. At the same time we need people to contact NASS and Glasgow City Council to alert them to the crisis that is developing.

It is not good enough that families, some with very young children, should face having their limited financial support being taken away and homelessness because a charity has failed to adequately consult their future tenants about what would be appropriate accommodation for them.

The Unity Centre
30 Ibrox Street
Glasgow
G51 1AQ
0141 427 7992
theunitycentre [at] btconnect.com

You can contact the Glasgow YMCA on 0141 557 2355

The YMCA movement throughout the world has a [supposed] commitment to social justice and citizenship expressed through the Kampala Principles adopted in 1973. These commit the YMCA:

1. to work for equal opportunity and justice for all.
2. to work for and maintain an environment in which relationships among people are characterised by love and understanding.
3. to work for and maintain conditions within the YMCA and in society, its organisations and institutions, which allow for honesty, depth and creativity.
4. to develop and maintain leadership and programme patterns which exemplify the varieties and depth of christian experience.
5. to work for the development of the whole person.

http://www.ymcaglasgow.org

Protest at the Parliament, Thurs 29 June

2006-06-14T07:50:00.000-11:00

Come to the Scottish Parliament!

Come and protest outside the Parliament and meet MSPs inside to campaign for an amnesty, the right to work and the end to dawn raids and deportations!

On THURSDAY 29th JUNE Unity has organised train tickets from Glasgow Central for £4 return. Please buy your tickets first from the Unity Centre before Saturday 24th June so we know if we need to arrange more tickets.

Meet at GLASGOW CENTRAL at 9.30am. Train leaves at 10.00am and arrives in Edinburgh at 11.00am - please come early.

We will meet outside the Scottish Parliament at 11.30 in time for the First Minister's Question Time when First Minister Jack McConnell will be present. A meeting inside the Parliament with MSPs is being organised - if you wish to take part in this meeting the Unity Centre needs to know your name and address by Saturday 24th June. Tell your friends, family and neighbours! Leaflets about the protest are in the Unity Centre - come and take some to give out.

Unity Centre

30 Ibrox Street

Glasgow G52 1AQ
0141 427 7992
theunitycentre@btconnect.com

27 May 2006: Asylum protest in Glasgow

2006-05-31T23:42:00.000-11:00

Report by Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!
Over 100 asylum seekers and their supporters gathered today in the city centre of Glasgow to highlight the ongoing racist attacks which are being carried out by the Labour government, demanding the right to work and an immediate end to dawn raids.

The noisy and spirited demonstration attracted much support from the people of Glasgow and demonstrated that the asylum seeker community is fighting back, no longer prepared to sit idly by as the government continues to attack their rights and living standards.

Speakers from protest organisers Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! made the link between the war abroad and the war at home: British imperialism is waging war against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan while engaging in a systematic campaign of terror against the asylum seeker community in Glasgow.

Speakers from Unity, the Scottish Union of Asylum-Seekers, stated that the community will continue to resist the attempts to criminalise asylum seekers and refugees. Members of Unity attended from Springburn, Sighthill, Toryglen and Pollokshaws and others from Kingsway, Maryhill and Gallowgate.

A representative from Tyneside Community Action for Refugees, who had travelled from Newcastle to be present at the event, spoke of the importance of organisation in the fight-back, and made the point that the resistance of asylum-seekers in Glasgow and Newcastle is part of a common struggle against dawn-raids and deportations.

Today’s protest occurred in a month of ongoing racist attacks led by the state; in Glasgow, evictions, dawn raids, detentions and deportations have all been carried out. Media coverage in recent weeks has been dominated by racist hysteria over the “foreign prisoners” scandal, which has been used to justify a general attack on the rights of asylum-seekers, refugees and immigrants.

Today’s event is further proof that asylum-seekers will not tolerate the racism of the British state and sections of the media. Today’s successful protest follows a several-hundred strong march of asylum-seekers and supporters through the streets of Glasgow on 8 April, when the demands of the community for the right to work and an end to all forms of criminalisation were clearly and visibly articulated for the first time. However, today’s event was not an end in itself but another important step towards the securing of all the asylum-seekers’ demands. These demands can only be achieved by building a movement of consistent protest, willing to mobilise on the streets.
Unity between all asylum-seekers and unity between asylum-seekers and the working-class must be a key part of this movement. Today’s demonstration clearly began to break-down the artificial barriers erected between the poor and oppressed in our society.

NO DAWN - RAIDS! RIGHT TO WORK FOR ALL!

Called by Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!
Supported by
Unity, the Scottish Union of Asylum-Seekers
Revolutionary Communist Group
Tyneside Community Action for Refugees
Glasgow No Borders Network

"We belong to Glasgow rally", 17th June

2006-05-18T11:52:00.000-11:00

Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees is calling the
"We Belong To Glasgow" Rally

at Brand Street, Ibrox, Glasgow on Saturday 17 June at 11am till 1.30pm

Protest against dawn raids; detention and Dungavel; deportations; destitution and for the right to work for asylum seekers.

Please come to for this rally and raise support for it in your trade union, workplace, political party, church, campaigning organisation or whatever networks you have contact with, or your family, friends and neighbours.

If you can, bring banners, placards, musical instruments, whistles, hooters and chanting and singing voices.

Let's make the Home Office and the Government hear our protest.

We Belong To Glasgow Rally
Brand Street, Ibrox, Glasgow
Saturday 17 June 2006
Gathering from 10.30 am
Rally from 11 am till
1.30 pm
Brand Street is near Cessnock Underground.
Click here for
a map: http://tinyurl.com/pzan2

Pastor Daly - Home Office backs down, 17th May

2006-05-17T22:29:00.000-11:00

17th May 2006
Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees put out an appeal to support the Daly family in their judicial review of the Home Office's decision not to grant them protection. (see below)

The great news today, 17th May, is that the Home Office at the last minute conceded that the case should be re-assesed, instead of the Court of Session reviewing the process that led to the refusal (perhaps they are worried at the prospect of their decision-making process being examined in this case?)

Here is the message from GCtWR:

Pastor Daly and family have won the right to have their case re-assessed WITHOUT going to judicial review.

The legal case for Pastor Daly and his family was going to judicial review in the High Court and was scheduled to be heard on Thursday the 18th and Friday the 19th of May 2006.

The Home Office has TODAY suddenly accepted that the case can be heard again. So there will be no need for a judicial review!!

Thanks to all who were going to attend on Thursday, hope this catches you in time!

Keep up the campaigning.

Margaret Woods
Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees
07870 286 632

And the initial call for support:

Pastor Daly and family Judicial Review,
Thursday 18th May 2006

Edinburgh High Court
High Street, Edinburgh
10am-4pm Thursday 18th and Friday 19th May

The legal case for Pastor Daly and his family will reach the judicial review stage in the High Court on Thursday the 18th and Friday the 19th of May 2006.

Pastor Daly's asylum case has become one of the best-known cases in Scotland because of the massive campaigning support the family has been given from the African Scottish community and also the people of Glasgow and Scotland more generally. His contribution to the life of the city in terms of helping refugees and others, particularly in his local area, Sighthill, has been enormous.

The children have spent more than 5 years in education in Scotland and all have done very well in their exams. Rachel is at college and could attend university if the government allowed it under the asylum laws.

Pastor Daly originally fled Angola because he refused to inform on members of his congregation to a brutal government. Twice in the last year and a half, Pastor and his family have been arrested and detained and twice the Home Office have been forced to release them. This was due to the legal work carried out by his lawyers and also because of the anger that spread across the city of Glasgow at the treatment of this family.

The family has widespread support from politicians of different parties, trade unionists, various churches and religious organisations and a huge number of ordinary people in the city.

Commenting on the case, Sandra White MSP said
"This family are a great asset to our community and of course should be allowed to stay in Scotland".

The case has now become one of the most important human rights cases in relation to government immigration policy in the whole of Britain.

Friends and supporters will accompany the Pastor and his family to the hearing, which is, of course, open to public and press.

Margaret Woods
Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees
078 7028 6632

Messages of support/solidarity can be sent to:
glascamref@hotmail.com

Campaign is supported by:
Lisalisi Scotland
Pentecostal Church of Redemption
Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees
Scotland Against Criminalising Communities - SACC
National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns - NCADC

Enquiries/further information:
Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees
C/o F.B.U., 52 St. Enoch's Square, Glasgow.
glascamref@hotmail.com

Background: Pastor Makielokele Nzelengi Daly

Film screening & talk: Friday 19th May, Glasgow

2006-05-16T22:56:00.000-11:00

"WELCOME" tells the story of three homeless refugees. "My life is frozen", says a Zimbabwean maths teacher who's been living "underground" since being evicted from his Red Road flat. "I'm existing, but it's not a life. I don't think Scottish people know we are being chucked on the street, or they would not allow it to happen."
http://www.camcorderguerillas.net/welcome%20_v2.htm

Using documentary, testimony, animation, original music and drama, Visit Dungavel: Monster of the Glen (25 mins), is a shocking, funny, informative and moving series of short films about detention - and, since this is a Camcorder Guerilla film - what to do about it!
http://www.camcorderguerillas.net/dungavel.htm

Home Secretary sacked - hooray!

2006-05-05T01:33:00.000-11:00

Home Secretary Sacked!

There should be dancing in the streets.

A message from the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC)
Charles Clarke - NCADC are not sorry to see you go. However not for your failure to deport foreign nationals as NCADC have always opposed the Double punishment of sentence followed by deportation. We are glad to see you go because of your . . . . .

Crass and Cumulative abuse of Asylum Seekers
Since your appointment as Home Secretary in December 2004 you have been responsible for:

The abuse of tens of thousands of asylum seekers who came to the UK seeking refuge. Upon arrival in the UK you dispersed them to remote corners of the UK far from their established community/ethnic groups (that is the ones you didn't immediately put into detention). Put them in to poor accommodation and gave them a miserable pittance to try and feed and clothe themselves. When and if you refused their claims for asylum you kicked them out of their accommodation and onto the streets with out a penny to their names.

Your utter disbelief of asylum seekers stories of torture and detention even when they broke down in front of your immigration officers or the courts.

Imposition of restrictions on the amount of legal aid they could obtain to plead their asylum claims. This resulted in many asylum seekers who appealed against a negative decision having to represent themselves, which is a recipe for failure. The Legal Services Commission is proposing to end the contracts of practitioners who fail to reach a 40 per cent success rate in immigration and asylum appeals - the Law Society predicts this move could deter advisers from taking on immigration work and exacerbate advice deserts.

Bringing in Section 9 of the Asylum & Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc) Act 2004 that gave you the power to withdraw support from families whose asylum application has been refused and who are not co-operating with efforts to remove them. Further, that you could separate the children of these families from their parents and take them into care. OK you never did it - you failed because local authority professionals refused to support you - but the intent was there.

Since September 2005, 5148 Iraqi's were kicked off Section 4 support into complete and utter destitution, just because they did not volunteer to go back to an extremely unstable situation in Iraq.
Bereket Yohannes, Manuel Bravo, Ramazan Kumluca killed themselves, driven to despair by your 'Inhumane and Unjust' immigration policies. You good-as branded them "bogus" yet how could that be when rather than be deported back to where they sought refuge from, and they took their own lives in detention centres.

Nusrat Raza and Babak Ahadi both died after setting themselves alight. Edmore Ngwenya drowned himself in a canal. Limbaya Ndinga hung herself. All were deeply depressed by your refusal to let them settle in the UK.

In October 2005, your "Fast-Track" asylum determination process in Harmondsworth Removal Centre refused 99.6% of cases, including those from Myanmar (Burma), Iran and DR Congo. Probably at the time the 3 worst countries in the world for human rights abuses.

In the detention centres you manage, you have failed to provide good medical care. A number of detainees lost their minds and ended up in psychiatric care after long detention, rough and unresponsive management and racist abuse.

Detention of refugees and asylum seekers rose by 24% under your tenure as Home Secretary. There were many, many hunger strikes across the detention estate all of which you ignored and, often as not, when asked if people were on hunger strike, you said they weren't.

Anne Owers, Chief Inspector of your Immigration removal/holding centres, whilst you were in office, issued a number of damning reports on conditions in these places of arbitrary confinement.

Numerous detainees have been assaulted by escorts/staff. Not one arrest has been made that we know of, even though some of the victims of these assaults have received compensation for injuries by escorts/staff. The police did however charge a number of detainees with assaults on guards and escorts.

Recent British Medical Association criticism of asylum detention's effect on mental health by doctors, dismissed with platitudes by you and your officials.

You brought in legislation that allows the Home Office to employ detainees in detention centres to work for less than the minimum wage.

Professor Al Aynsley-Green, The Children's Commissioner, condemned your practice of rounding up and detaining children. Did you stop the practice? No, you did not.

You terrified hundreds of families with your "dawn raids".

A deportation law too far, your last speech as Home Secretary was to propose new legislation that would mean the automatic deportation of any foreign national convicted of a criminal offence, was offensive in it self. You intended to punish foreign nationals for your own perceived shortcomings in not deporting 1,000 of them.

All in all, there is nothing good that can be said about your 16 months as Home Secretary, your departure from office should be good cause for dancing in the streets.

NCADC really are glad to see you go!

27/04/06: Dawn Raid on Sri Lankan family

2006-04-13T11:00:00.000-11:00

Why is the UK government terrorising Glasgow residents from Sri Lanka the day after Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, issues a statement of concern at the escalating violence in a war that has claimed at least 60,000 lives?

12 April 2006 – United Nations statement on Sri Lanka:
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued a statement today that the UN is very concerned at the escalating violence and loss of life in Sri Lanka.

13 April 2006 - Tony McNulty's bootboys smash down the door of a Sri Lankan family in Glasgow, dragging a mother and her children off to prison. They have committed no crime. Their homeland is ravaged by an escalating war, and they sought refuge in Britain.

Echoing the Secretary-General’s concerns, the UN Resident Co-ordinator in Sri Lanka – who is also the head of humanitarian operations – said the latest killings, which included the deaths of two aid workers, “potentially threaten humanitarian operations in the most vulnerable areas affected by the tsunami and the conflict.”

Violence has continued in Sri Lanka despite a ceasefire agreement of February 2002 aimed at ending two decades of fighting between the Government and separatist forces that has claimed some 60,000 lives.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=18134&Cr=sri&Cr1=lanka

Efforts to rebuild after the devastation of the tsunami have been severely hampered as the fighting increases. Sri Lankans and aid workers are being killed. Populations are on the move to escape the war.

Meanwhile, in Britain, refugees from the conflict are being targeted by Tamil rebels, extorting money to pay for their “final war” in Sri Lanka. An inspector with the Metropolitan police told Human Rights Watch: "We know that extortion is going on, but this is not a priority for the British government."
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/03/16/slanka13011.htm

So what is the priority for the British government? How is New Labour helping the victims of war-torn and tsunami-devastated country? By launching dawn raids on Sri Lankan families, dragging children off to prison in an effort to send them back to the chaos they were lucky enough to escape. These terror tactics have to stop.

Today, 13 April 2006, an Immigration snatch squad carried out a dawn raid on a Sri Lankan family in Pollokshaws in the south side of Glasgow. The family had been up til 1am preparing food and sweets for friends and neighbours, in celebration of the new year, the most important event in the Hindu and Sinhala calendar. The father and one son were not at home. The mother managed to get a call out for help, but as No Borders supporters arrived, the van was leaving with her and the children handcuffed inside. Another van waited outside the tower block, snatch squad in the flat awating the fathers return. That van left on a tow truck, unable to drive off with all it's tyres deflated, but the damage was done: another raid, another family split up, more children imprisoned.

This should not be happening. These attacks on our communities must be stopped.

Join the resistance – stop the dawn raids, end detention, no more deportations.
No Borders Glasgow - committed to practical solidarity, mutual aid and direct action.

Unity Demo 08/04/06

2006-04-12T23:36:00.000-11:00

Unity March & Rally Glasgow April 8 2006

Around 300 asylum seekers, refugees, sans-papiers and their supporters marched across Glasgow this afternoon, April 8th, calling for the right to work and an end to detention and deportation. As part of the international day of action against detention, they went from the Home Office Reporting Centre in Ibrox to a rally in the Carnival Arts Centre in town.

This was the first big demo by Unity: the Scottish Asylum Seekers Union. Over the last few months there have been mass meetings of asylum seekers in several different parts of Glasgow and local committees have been elected to campaign for better treatment. At the Unity rally after the march asylum seekers queued up to join the union and were encouraged by the speakers - including speakers from Unity, Jock Morris Chair of Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees, Mohammed Asif, Tommy Sheridan MSP - to organise meetings where they lived to form more local committees.

Though it was a long way, the rain stayed off and the march appeared to gather momentum and energy as it went along. An international crowd with large numbers of women and children chanting, "We belong to Glasgow", "No Dawn Raids" and "No Borders, no nations, stop deportations". I thought I knew the word "ullulation" before but before passing into Tradeston under the M8, I didn't really. Paisley Road hasn't seen anything like it, judging from the surprise on the face of the smokers outside the pubs.

Once in town, the march paused outside Trades Hall, waiting to enter. Despite the management going back on their late decision to exclude the "rabble," there was no-one there to open the doors on arrival. The police's decision to force a premature start from Brand Street thus backfired on them as people spent 20 minutes on the busy street getting their message across before deciding to go to the Carnival Arts Centre (many thanks to the folks at Carnival Arts for helping with this last minute booking).

Inside the packed venue there was juice for the kids and speeches from the diverse strands of the march organisation. Representatives of asylum seeker committees in the Red Road, Pollokshaws and elsewhere spoke passionately of the need to stand together so that their voices could be heard. "We don't want income support, we want to work." They thanked the solidarity shown to them by Glasgow people and some even sang the praises of its weather (as diverse as its citizens).

Glasgow has seen marches with more people but this was something more than that. Rather than just walking, this was people finding their voices and the confidence to speak out against the injustice and indignity our immigration system heaps upon them. In Glasgow they are rejecting the isolation and fear imposed by the Home Office and starting to Unite.

many thanks once again to Gareth Harper for photos - www.photoecosse.net

Join the protest - Glasgow, 8th April

2006-04-01T11:18:00.000-11:00

UNITE!
Saturday 8th April, Glasgow
All asylum seekers and friends - Join the protest!

End dawn raids
No more detentions
For the right to work

Organised by UNITY - the Scottish Union of Asylum Seekers, and No Borders Glasgow .

11.30: Meet outside the Home Office, Brand Street (near Cessnock underground)
12.30: March to George Square
2.00: Indoor rally with food & refreshments in the Trades Hall (Glassford Street)

Please help us make this demonstration the biggest demonstration in Scotland by asylum seekers ever. The more we are, the louder our voice. We Belong To Glasgow!

29/03/06 Direct action stops eviction!

2006-03-29T12:34:00.000-11:00

Supporters rushed to the aid of Mr Bajaj and his family this morning, as Glasgow City Council tried again to evict the elderly disabled man and his family from their home in Cardonald, on the south side of the city.

The first time the council tried to put this family out onto the streets, a judge ruled against them in possession proceedings. That was overturned on appeal, and the council's Glasgow Asylum Seeker Support (sic) Project (GASSP) tried again last week. No Borders Glasgow put out a call for help, and the Director of Social Work was inundated with emails, faxes and phone calls. He instructed the GASSP team to postpone the eviction, pending a Community Care Assessment (CCA). The CCA was carried out, but Mr Bajaj was told there was no need to wait for a medical report from his doctor, as the council wouldn't be supporting him anyway, so the eviction was re-scheduled for today. Mr Bajaj has congenital kypho-scoliosis, an acute curvature of the spine. He has limited mobility and difficulty breathing. But he should be okay, according to the Council, sleeping on a good Glasgow pavement.

Supporters and solicitors tried to get the council to put a stop to the eviction until Mr Bajaj's care needs are fully explored, and, just as importantly, to fight for his human rights to remain in the relative safety of the UK with his wife, his sons and daughter (who, unlike Mr Bajaj, are not all facing deportation). But the council was not for turning, despite the clause in the legislation that states they MUST support any person if not to would be a breach of their human rights.

So, when needs must, direct action is used. Around 20 supporters barred entry to the Sheriff's Officers, explaining that Mr Bajaj was too ill to get out of bed. Eventually a doctor arrived on the scene, and declared Mr Bajaj too sick to be evicted. A call came through from the council, putting off the eviction again.

Mr Bajaj's son has asked No Borders Glasgow to thank everyone who helped - Rosie Kane, MSP, who was with the family throughout their ordeal this morning, Tommy Sheridan MSP, whose quick intervention, added to the piles of emails and faxes from the public apparently stopped last week's eviction, and all the other supporters who turned up in solidarity, or contacted the council and the Home Office on the family's behalf. The struggle for the Bajaj family's human rights has only just begun. Please keep on helping, please spread the word.

Please help keep the Bajaj family together and in the UK. Click here for the orginal call-out which gives details on how to write to the immigration minister for the right to stay in Britain, and to the Director of Social Work for Mr Bajaj to receive the care and support he needs in Glasgow.

27/03/06: McNulty not welcome here

2006-03-29T11:39:00.000-11:00

Government Minister for Dawn Raids, Tony McNulty, visited Glasgow today, 27th March, to announce that his response to unrest in Scotland over his jackboots approach to refugee families is to appoint a regional Immigration Director and to impose on Scotland a new UK Immigration arrest force to take over from Police, who are unhappy at their role in traumatising children in dawn raids.

McNulty was treated to the welcome he deserves, when hundreds of Glaswegians, most of whom were refugees seeking asylum, followed him around the city, heckled him at his early morning press conference at a posh hotel, blockaded him in his car at the City Chambers, and shouted loud and clear: if you're not here to announce that us new Glaswegians are free to stay in Scotland, then YOU can go back to where you came from. Islington, probably.

McNulty also announced that a “lead professional” from social services or education will be a liaison point in the forcible removal of children born and brought up in Scotland to war-zones like Iraq or Afghanistan. That must be very comforting for the thousands of people living in constant fear of the dawn raid. A new Immigration Stasi, but with a cuddly lead professional on hand to, well, just to be on hand.

Such are the concessions won by Jack McConnell from his bosses at Westminster. Thanks Jack. Well done, wee man.

But perhaps a lead professional from Glasgow City Council’s social work department could explain why the same social worker who told disabled refugee Mr Kartar Singh Bajaj, of Cardonald, Glasgow, to go home to Afghanistan last time he interviewed him, was the very same social worker sent to assess his care needs again last week? And perhaps a lead professional could explain why the eviction that was postponed by the Director of Social Work is to be carried out by Sheriff’s Officers on Wednesday, while Mr Bajaj still awaits his medical report to go with the Community Care Assessment? And perhaps a lead professional could explain how the denial of shelter to a disabled elderly man who speaks little English does not amount to a breach of his rights under the European Convention of Human Rights?

Supporters of the family are desperately trying, once again, to prevent the council from evicting this vulnerable man and his family. We remind the council that they have the legal duty to provide housing and support to any person, regardless of their immigration status, if withholding such support would be breach that person’s human rights.

Glasgow: the Caring City? Aye, right. It’s about time the council stopped doing McNulty’s dirty work, and stopped turning their over-worked social workers into immigration police. Let Mr Bajaj stay in his home, and let him and his two sons stay in the country to work and to rebuild their lives. To put this family onto the streets or send them back to Afghanistan would be a human rights scandal.

McNulty made it quite clear that the dawn raids, the destitution, the detentions, and the deportations are to continue. The people of Scotland, the Glasgow No Border Network, The Campaign to Welcome Refugees and Unity, the Union of Asylum Seekers in Scotland, are stating louder each time: we will stand together against your racist migration controls. In unity is strength. No one is illegal.

McNulty meets the Scottish Induction Service.

And then dispersed to a civic reception at the City Chambers...

McNulty's had enough, and signs up for voluntary return.

Many thanks to Gareth for all photos. See http://www.photoecosse.net/

27March06 - Meet McNulty

2006-03-26T01:22:00.000-11:00

Immigration Minister Tony McNulty is coming to Glasgow on Monday 27 March.

No Borders Glasgow, Unity, the Scottish Union of Asylum Seekers, and Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees are planning a reception party, and everyone is invited.

First up is McNulty's 8:30am press conference at the Radisson Hotel on Argyll Street, near Central Station.

McNulty will then be at the City Chambers to meet with Glasgow City Council’s Chief Executive, the new private landlords (including the Angel Group, under investigation for defrauding the Home Office during their last contract in England, and renowned for housing asylum seekers in sub-standard accommodation) at 10.30am.

Between 11am and 2pm, assorted fat cats and high heid yins will be treated to a Civic Reception in the City Chambers. Protestors will be meeting at Radissons at 8:30, then on to George Square from 9:30am to meet and greet McNulty and his cronies. Come and join us. If you can’t get time off work, come in tour lunch hour – we’ll be there til at least 2pm.

Dawn raids and abductions from Brand Street Immigration Reporting Centre have been stepped up in recent weeks. Detentions and deportations are on the rise. Now McNulty is coming to Glasgow to announce the new “target contracts” for housing asylum seekers.

Private landlord companies are to make millions from misery. The targets include evicting asylum seekers as soon as possible once their claim has been rejected by the “New Asylum Model” system, which will once again make it harder to get protection in this country. Come and join us on Monday to let McNulty and the fat cats know that the people of Glasgow say refugees are welcome here – McNulty is not.

16 March: Stop the eviction! - +Update+

2006-03-15T01:34:00.000-11:00

Urgent call for help in Glasgow, Thursday 16th March
STOP THIS EVICTION – THE BAJAJ FAMILY MUST STAY!

Within hours of launching this appeal, dozens of emails and faxes were sent to the Immigration Minister and to the Director of Social Work at Glasgow City Council. Thanks to the efforts of supporters, the eviction has been called off - for now. A victory! the Bajaj family would like to thank everybody who has helped them. They were amazed at the support, and at the result.
But the campaign continues...

The Bajaj family campaign to stay in Scotland has only just begun. Please continue to email, fax and write to Tony McNulty (details below). We cannot allow the government to split up this family and send a vulnerable elderly couple back to Bush and Blair's warzone in Afghanistan. And please be ready to defend the family the next time the Sheriff's Officers come. That may be only 7 days from now. The campaign will be launched outside the family hone in Cardonald with a press call at 9am, Thursday 16th March.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Original call-out:

Urgent call for help in Glasgow, Thursday 16th March
STOP THIS EVICTION – THE BAJAJ FAMILY MUST STAY!

Please come to stop the Sheriff’s Officers tomorrow, and support the Bajaj family to stay in Scotland.

On Thursday 16th March, 61 year old Afghan Sikh Mr Kartar Singh Bajaj, his 55 year old wife and two sons (aged 25 and 21) are due to be evicted from their flat in Cardonald, on the south side of Glasgow. Barred from working, housing, and state benefits - despite Mr Bajaj’s support needs as a disabled person - they are to be made homeless and completely destitute.

After four years in Glasgow, the Bajaj family has nowhere left to turn. They need your help to stay in their flat and to appeal for leave to remain in the UK.

Previous possession proceedings by the Council were dismissed in Court due to Mr Bajaj’s obvious support needs, but the council has appealed and seems determined to evict. Mr Bajaj has congenital kypho-scoliosis, an acute curvature of the spine. He has limited mobility and difficulty breathing. A Community Care Assessment was carried out in 2004, but has been withheld from Mr Bajaj. His lawyer has arranged for a new assessment, but it looks like the family will evicted before this can be carried out, despite the Council’s powers to postpone the eviction. So much for “Glasgow the Caring City”.

The Bajaj family still fears persecution in lawless Afghanistan, which they fled in 2001, after Mr Bajaj’s eldest son was driven from his business and then murdered by the Taliban. The Home Office has refused protection, arguing that Afghanistan is now safe for Sikhs to return, despite a recent announcement of an extra 6000 British troops being deployed as the situation in that country continues to deteriorate with increasing violence.

One of Mr Bajaj’s son’s was deported in December. They lost contact in early January, and now have no idea where he is, if he is safe or still alive. Mr Bajaj’s daughter was granted Exceptional Leave to Remain and now lives in London. His eldest surviving son is pursuing his own asylum appeal. While Afghanistan is unsafe the family cannot and will not sign their own removal papers and leave their children behind. This means they cannot apply for basic Section 4 “Hard Case” support from the Home Office.

Glasgow City Council has the power to stop this eviction, provide support to Mr Bajaj, and keep the family together while an asylum appeal is pursued. The Home Secretary has the power to grant the family Humanitarian Protection to stay together in the UK.

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP?

Stop the eviction.
There is an urgent need to keep this family off the streets. Please come and support the family throughout Thursday either coming to help delay the eviction if possible or to act as witnesses to the eviction. Address and directions below.

Appeal to the Council.
Please write to Glasgow City Council, to ask them to urgently carry out a Community Care Assessment and provide the support that Mr Bajaj needs, and to keep the family housed together while they appeal for Humanitarian Protection to stay in the country.
Write to:
David Comely
Director of Social Work
Nye Bevan House
20 India Street
Glasgow G2 4PF
email: David.Comley@sw.glasgow.gov.uk

Appeal to the Government.
Write/fax or email the Minister for Immigration and Asylum, Tony McNulty. Quote the Home Office Reference Number: B1107557
Ask the Minister to look urgently at this case, and to grant protection to the family.
Write to:
Tony McNulty, Immigration Minister
Home Office
3rd Floor, Peel Building
2 Marsham Street
London, SW1P 4DF

Fax: 020 7219 2417 from outside the UK + 44 20 7219 2417
Email: mcnultyt@parliament.uk

Please copy letters, faxes and emails to:
Bajaj Campaign
The Unity Centre
31 Ibrox Street
Glasgow G51 1SN

Email: noborders-glasgow@riseup.net

Mr Bajaj lives in Queensland Court, Cardonald. The nearest railway station
(from Central Station) is Cardonald and the court is only a short walk from
the station. Map:
www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?lat=55.852&lon=-4.343&scale=5000&icon=x

Please come along to spend an hour or longer if you can. We will be meeting
at the entrance of 5 Queensland Court from about 9am.

11/03/06: Brand St protest and Unity Centre opens

2006-03-12T23:39:00.000-11:00

About 150 asylum seekers and sans-papiers* from the Red Road area of Glasgow joined the regular Saturday picket at the Immigration Reporting and Enforcement Centre in Ibrox. The demonstration was to protest at weekly signings, against deportations and for the right to work. It was called by the Red Road branch of Unity, the new union for asylum seekers and
sans-papiers in Scotland.

Saturday also saw the opening of the Unity Centre, in a vacant shop at 31 Ibrox Street, 50 yards from the Immigration Reporting Centre. The Unity Centre has been set up jointly by Unity and Glasgow No Border Network, and will function as an advice and information shop and a campaigning centre, fighting for the right to stay, the right to work, the right to live, for all asylum seekers and sans-papiers in Scotland.

*sans-papiers: people without immigration papers and those refused asylum.

UNITY calls demo at Brand St - 11 March

2006-03-09T05:10:00.000-11:00

Glasgow: Demonstration for asylum rights

Saturday 11th March, 11am
Immigration Reporting Centre
Brand Street, Ibrox

UNITY: the Scottish Union of Asylum Seekers

Are you an asylum seeker?
Do you want your human rights?
Do you want to be treated with dignity?
Do you want the right to work?
Do you want the right to have education and training?
Do you want an end to weekly signing?

ALL ASYLUM SEEKERS & FRIENDS COME TO
Protest outside the Home Office Immigration Centre at Brand Street

Saturday 11th March
11.00am – 1.00pm
Brand Street Immigration Centre
(Near Cessnock Underground)

Organised by
UNITY: the Scottish Union of Asylum Seekers
&
Glasgow No Borders Network
- - - - - - - - -
No more dawn raids - No more detention

24 Feb 06: Why NCADC needs to stay

2006-02-26T11:42:00.000-11:00

National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns facing closure.

Peter Gitau Gichura, is right now walking the streets of London after being released from Harmondsworth just 45 minutes ago. Well done to 'Payday' and all who faxed/emailed McNulty on Wednesday and Thursday. "I want to thank all my friends and supporters and particularly those who campaigned on my behalf -- Payday, numerous organisations and individuals -- without whom I would have been deported to persecution, worsening disability and most likely death." Peter Gitau Gichura
http://www.ncadc.org.uk/newszin67/peter.html

Hussein Kasujja, who spent 15 months in Harmondsworth Removal Centre in 1998/99 and started his campaign to stay in the UK in 1990, has finally after 15 years campaigning been given leave to remain in the UK, he to is walking the streets of London today.
Hussein Kasujja's campaign for the right to stay:
http://www.ncadc.org.uk/archives/filed%20newszines/oldnewszines/newszine35/hussein.html

+++++++++++++++++++++
Getting rid of the last resort
By Harmit Athwal, Institute of Race Relations
At the beginning of February, the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC) announced a desperate cash crisis and imminent closure - very, very bad news for those desperate asylum seekers who rely on the organisation for support and guidance.

NCADC is unique, in that it is the only national organisation with a 'mandate' to campaign against deportations and empower those facing deportations to establish campaigns for the right to stay. The NCADC has, for the past ten years, provided a back-bone of support fofor all anti-deportation campaigns across the UK, linking campaigns together, helping to foster 'communities of resistance'. It also provides a huge amount of information (to other campaigners, activists, solicitors, doctors, journalists and parliamentarians) on the daily struggles faced by asylum seekers, both in detention and in the community.

The problems faced by NCADC and its users comes at a time when legal aid for asylum seekers fighting asylum cases has been restricted and many asylum seekers are left to represent themselves. Furthermore, access to competent legal advice is even harder as law firms pull out of asylum and immigration work as a result of new qualification requirements for immigration practitioners. NCADC is often a last resort for desperate asylum seekers.

For the last six years, the NCADC has been funded by the Community Fund (now the Big Lottery Fund) but this funding has now come to an end. The organisation is in a dire position with many of its funding avenues blocked. NCADC is not constituted as a charity (which would preclude campaigning) and as such cannot apply to the charitable trusts that charities might approach for support.

And its fraught history of funding has no doubt scared off potential funders. In 2002, the Community Fund suspended NCADC's grant and ordered an investigation into the organisation's 'political activities' after it was vilified in the Daily Mail. Generous donations from individuals and other supporters carried the organisation through until the Community Fund monies were unfrozen. But following the Daily Mail attack and the resumption of the Lottery Fund money, NCADC has been placed in a position where its activities have been minutely scrutinised. And in today's harsh political climate, it becomes harder and harder for anyone in this sector to distinguish between bona fide charitable welfare work and political campaigning.

Now NCADC has its freedom to fight as politically as it wants but it is the asylum seekers who go to NCADC for help and advice, that will now pay the price - its demise.

To read the full article and a series of comments of support, go to http://www.irr.org.uk/2006/february/ha000025.html

Download a standing order form (http://www.irr.org.uk/pdf/NCADCstandingorder.doc ) (word file, 32kb)
Download a donation form (http://www.irr.org.uk/pdf/NCADCdonation.doc ) (word file, 32kb)

10/02/06: First dawn raid of 2006: Join the picket

2006-02-10T01:45:00.000-11:00

Akyol Family 'Snatched' on Wednesday 8th February

Refugees 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.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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 Refugees
Please contact: 07870 286632
Margaret Woods
Campaign Trade Union Organiser
Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees
glascamref@hotmail.com

Time for direct action against dawn raids

2006-01-24T12:34:00.000-11:00

Through solidarity, mutual aid and direct action we CAN stop the dawn raids!

Working with asylum seekers from across the city, No Borders Glasgow is looking at practical ways of making the dawn raids in Glasgow more difficult and more costly for the Home Office to carry out.

The New Year has seen continuing protests and direct action at the Brand Street Immigration Centre (please come along to the Saturday morning vigils). The next step is to mount early morning 'watches' for Immigration Office dawn raid teams. These snatch squads operate under cover of darkness. Together we can shine a light on the reality of "administrative removals", and make it as difficult as possible for them to abduct families.

We're organising a rota for watches now. If you can spare a few hours early in the morning for one or two mornings a week watching out for dawn raids so that the alarm can be sounded - please contact us.

noborders-glasgow@riseup.net
or leave a message on 0141 423 9055

24/01/06: Every home a potential detention centre

2006-01-23T22:50:00.000-11:00

NCADC News Service

The National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC) has received a number of calls in the last two weeks from people who went to Lunar House in Croydon to claim asylum. They told us that they have been *'Tagged' fitted with an electronic monitoring device around their ankle. A monitoring unit has been installed in the accommodation address where they 'must' reside. When they are required to be at home, the tag will send a signal to a monitoring unit and the monitoring unit sends a signal to the monitoring control centre. Those 'tagged' have also been required to comply with reporting restrictions, that is weekly/monthly visits to their nearest immigration reporting/enforcement centre.

We have checked around and '*Tagging' Electronic Monitoring of new asylum seekers has arrived in the UK. A reversal of Home Office policy means that no one will be able to *refuse to be tagged if the Home Office requires it, a refusal is certain to result in detention.

Contact Management (CM): This is the Home Office term for controlling an asylum seeker from the moment they notify the Home Office of their arrival in the UK, till acceptance or rejection of their claim. Tagging is part & parcel of CM and the Tag will remain on the person for the duration of the claim.

All eleven reporting/enforcement centres in the UK now have a person called the 'Electronic Monitoring Champion' (Wonder horses) who will be responsible for overseeing 'Tagging'. NCADC has contacted a number of centres to try and obtain written material on Electronic Monitoring; on each occasion we drew a blank. We spoke to some of the 'wonder horses'; they were clueless as to what their job entailed. These posts seem to be a very recent creation by the Home Office and no training as yet that we know of has been given to the staff.

NCADC would like to make it clear that we are totally opposed to 'Tagging', this '*stigmata' is an unacceptable invasion of an asylum seekers person. Further, where the monitoring device is installed in a house/flat/hostel, it turns that person's home - a place of privacy and safety, into a detention centre.

John O for NCADC

Background: Section 36 of the Immigration and Asylum (treatment of claimants etc) Act 2004 allows for the electronic monitoring (Tagging) of those liable to be detained under the Immigration Acts. This includes asylum seekers, illegal entrants, those found working in breach of their conditions of stay, overstayers, people subject to further examination at a port of entry, and those refused leave to enter.

Consent of an individual to be tagged was not a statutory requirement of the Act but consent was introduced as a matter of policy outside the rules. However, in November of last year Tony McNulty rescinded this concession and changed the policy to allow the Immigration Service to draw up 'contact management' plans without first seeking the consent of the individual. This means that an asylum seeker on applying for asylum will be told he will be tagged, if an individual refuses to be 'Tagged' they will be detained. The same applies to anyone else in breach of immigration rules; accept tagging or be detained.

People in detention can apply for 'Tagging' to their Immigration Case Officer, however there is no information packs available to detainees as to how they would apply and the conditions of the 'Tagging'.

Links:
Fact Sheet: Electronic Monitoring - Tagging

Immigration: Electronic Monitoring
Allow the Immigration Service to draw up contact management plans without first seeking the consent of the individual.

Contact Management (CM) is the means by which the Immigration Service (IS) maintains contact with asylum seekers & other applicants throughout the application process.

*Stigmata: a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance

The IOM: Managing the borders of Fortress Europe

2006-01-13T03:17:00.000-11:00

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) opens a Glasgow office in the week that the Home Office launches an IOM-run scheme to "incentivise" asylum claimants and people refused asylum to leave the country.

"Giving people "incentives" does not make them safe. We know that in some countries, failed asylum seekers are put in prison on return and can only secure their release if they pay a bribe. We could now be exposing them to the possibility of further extortion if there is a perception that they have money". Kath Sainsbury, National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns

From NCADC news service:
54,000 asylum claimants/failed asylum seekers received a letter on January 1st 2006 offering them £3,000 a piece to leave the UK. The offer to all those claiming asylum before 31st December 2005 will last for 6 months and is conditional that they withdraw their asylum claims or if they have appealed against refusal, withdraw the appeal. The Home Office says the money - "increased reintegration assistance" - is to help them resettle in their country of origin and have even coined a word for the exercise - "Incentivising" - though cynics may have a different interpretation and see "Incentivising" as a "cheap bribe".

NCADC feel this offer is misguided and dangerous. Asylum seekers from such places as DR Congo, Somalia, Uganda etc. living in hardship and destitution in the UK at the moment may see this "incentive" as an immediate way out of their suffering.

Kath Sainsbury of NCADCs North East and Scotland office said:
"The people who have already received the letters and contacted NCADC are worried that they are being forced to return. When the scheme is explained to them, they have said that they cannot return because their lives are at risk.
"If people genuinely wish to return to a country that has stabilized and holds no danger, then providing they are not coerced into returning, it is entirely appropriate that we should help them to rebuild their lives, but I have serious concerns about this scheme.

The term 'voluntary' becomes meaningless if people are returning to danger."
http://www.ncadc.org.uk/newszine66/bribe.htm
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In Glasgow
The IOM opened their new Glasgow office at the Centrum Building, 38 Queen Street, this week [map] . This follows an advertising campaign for their "voluntary" returns programme on buses serving areas where asylum seekers are housed, and comes at a time when increasing numbers of asylum seekers in the city are being refused and evicted from their homes into utter destitution.

No Borders Glasgow would advise anyone considering taking up this offer to think twice about contacting the IOM. Unless you are absolutely sure you want to withdraw your asylum application and any hope of staying in the UK, it may be very risky to identify yourself as someone who is prepared to return home. Should you change your mind after being interviewed, it may be held against you in an asylum appeal. If you have already been refused asylum and enquire about voluntary return, you may be targeted for forced removal if you change your mind.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Whats wrong the IOM?
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) is a multi-national inter-governmental organisation, founded in 1951. It’s aim is to aid nation states in the management and exploitation of global migration. Their basic policy is not concerned with the well being of people but the well being of economies. They have been criticised by human rights, refugee and aid agencies across the globe for undermining genuine humanitarian work, and worse. Amnesty International has criticised the role of the IOM as an "alternative agency for states where they prefer to avoid their human rights obligations" For more info on the IOM, click here

First Brand Street blockade of 2006

2006-01-13T03:12:00.000-11:00

The Brand Street Immigration Centre gates were blocked again on the morning of 12th January.

No Borders activists locked the gates at around 5am, well before dawn, and the chains remained in place for over four hours until being cut by police shortly after 9am. Meanwhile, the Home Office snatch squad vans were sealed inside the compound ensuring that no dawn raids could take place.

The action preceded the arrival of a candlelit vigil planned and attended by other asylum-seeker support groups who were there to protest against the injustice of British immigration policy and the inhumane treatment of asylum-seeking families in Glasgow.

This blockade and vigil follows others that have taken place during the holiday period. The weekly vigils on Saturday mornings are attracting an ever-growing attendance as awareness of the horrors of unjust immigration procedures spreads throughout different communities in the city.

Happy New Year, Brand St - 4th Jan 06

2006-01-04T10:54:00.000-11:00

The Home Office building at Brand Street in Ibrox re-opened this morning, 4th January, after the New Year Holidays. Activists from No Borders Glasgow were also there, picketing from 7 till 10:30am.

From the movement of the Securicor vans it's believed that one person has been picked up to be detained. No Borders are calling for people to respond by coming along to Brand Street tomorrow morning: Thursday 5th January, 7:00AM.

Staff started arriving as usual around 8AM, slipping on the pavement and shivering in the fog. At around this time two Securicor vans arrived at Brand Street. Sometime later, one of them left with two fluorescent jacketed staff in the front and no-one in the back. The sun was up by then, so this wasn't quite a dawn raid. The van returned a short time later with the same drivers and someone in the back. It went in the gate and reversed right up to the Immigration Office's back door. One person, whom nothing is currently known of, was taken inside.

As nothing is yet known of this individual or their case it is / will be hard to find out details of where they have been taken or why. However it's believed, based on previous experience and observed practice, that the only explanation for the van's journey was that it was picking up an asylum seeker and taking that person to Brand Street for "processing" prior to their being taken away to be detained, possibly prior to their removal from this country. Perhaps they feel it will be easier to get away with deporting isolated individuals rather than families with children.

Based on these facts, No Borders Glasgow has called for people to respond to the Home Office's action by protesting at the Brand Street offices tomorrow from 7AM. Furthermore, so that no disappearance goes unmarked, every time that a removal takes place we call on people to respond the same way the next morning.

Brand Street Blockades: 14, 15, 16 December 05

2005-12-14T23:21:00.000-11:00

For three days running, no Immigration Service snatch squads have been able to leave the Scottish Enforcement Unit at Brand Street to carry out dawn raids. The gates have been chained and blockaded from 5am til after dawn.

These blockades are part of an escalating campaign of protest and direct action to resist migration controls and defend our communities.

The Home Office building at "Festival Court" on Brand Street in Ibrox is the place where asylum seekers are forced to sign on weekly with their family to receive a pitiful living allowance. Each time they enter the building and meet with officials (no legal or other support to ensure fair treatment is allowed to be present) they don't know whether they will be coming out the front door or the back door. If it's the front they have to make the same journey next week and the week after that and every week until they are allowed to stay in the country or until they exit by the back door.

If they go out the back door it's into an unmarked blue van on a journey to Dungavel or Yarl's Wood in Bedfordshire, then back on to the tender mercies of the state they fled from. Or anywhere they stopped in before reaching Britain. It doesn't matter to the Home Office.

Outrage over cases like that of the Vucaj family and countless others who haven't made the news has spread across Scottish society, reflected in an extraordinary alliance of protesters. Around 30 Anarchists, Christians, Communists, Clowns, liberals, Muslims, pagans, refugee support workers, socialists and people of no particular allegiance have been descending on Brand St at 5am with the aim of preventing a dawn raid for one day at least.

On Wednesday 14th, they found a number of police stood in the road preventing access to the gates and an informal candlelit vigil was held outside. Placards proclaiming "Jesus Christ was an Asylum Seeker" and "Scar on Scotland's Conscience" contrasted with the Orwellian "Building a Safe, Just and Tolerant Society" of the Home Office.

After an hour of quiet vigil-ing some especially keen child-snatchers began arriving for work. Moved from the road, protesters wondered aloud at the spectacle of police ("building safer communities") facilitating the abduction and terrorising of children. After a while, a distraction of clowns arrived and the mood lightened a little. They declared themselves to be from Elsewhere and attempted to turn themselves in for deportation to any country more sane than this one. Around 8.30 the protesters left, satisfied that no raids would or could take place that day but determined to continue and grow resistance to this inhuman practice.

The following morning, Thursday 15th, they were back. This time No Borders blockaders snuck behind sleepy cops and locked the gates with a massive chain, making the blockade more effective. Again, the blockade was joined by a candlelit vigil until a reasonable hour.

And then, just for good measure, it seems that some activists decided to go for the hat-trick, and the gates were chained once more in the wee small hours of Friday 16th. A message to the Home Office: This is serious. We are not going away.

Judging by the unprecedented alliances this campaign is generating, it's very unlikely that those responsible (or pretending no responsibility) will be having a Merry Xmas or a Happy New Year. And quite right too.

If you want to get involved in defending our communities and supporting refugees and migrants, there are many ways you can help. Not all of them involve confrontation or chains and padlocks. Some, though not all, involve early starts. To find out more, send an email to No Borders Glasgow at:
noborders-glasgow@riseup.net

The next mass protest at Brand Street takes place this Saturday (17th December) at 10am, complementing the weekly vigil there. The venue is easily reached by the Underground or any bus via Paisley Road West.

Mass protest at Brand St: Sat 17 Dec

2005-12-06T11:35:00.000-11:00

Saturday 17 December,
from 10am
Protest at Brand Street:
Surround the centre of "administrative removals"

Saturday 17th December will see the latest, and probably biggest protest at the gates of the immigration reporting centre at Brand Street, Govan.

On Saturday 3rd December a securicor van forced it's way through the weekly peaceful vigil at the gates. Inside was Pastor Makielokele Nzelengi Daly* and his family, detained again. The Daly family was incarcerated at Yarls Wood, but once again a campaign sprung into action and the family was released.

Saturday 10th December saw a larger vigil than usual, about 20 people turned up to make sure no families were abducted without resistance. Banners and placards were hung around the gates. No vans left the building that day.

On the 17th, people are coming from far and wide to call for an end to dawn raids, an end to disappearances from Brand Street, and an end to all "administrative removals". Come and join the protest. Keep up the pressure.
- - - - - - - -
*For a report on the Daly family's legal fight, see: http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/52277.html
The Daly family were detained almost exactly a year ago, but a massive grassroots campaign succeeded in gaining their release on bail. For background to the family's struggle to remain in their community, see: NCADC

21/11/05: Brand St locked down - 3 detained

2005-11-21T02:30:00.000-11:00

Once again the Home Office Immigration offices in Glasgow have been closed down by protesters. At around 4:45am, 40 people gathered outside the building and padlocked two of the gates. The protest ended at 11am with 3 protestors detained by Police.

11:30am 21 Nov 05
Three protestors, including Tommy Sheridan MSP for the Scottish Socialist Party, have been arrested/detained following an action at the Immigration reporting Centre at Brand Street, Govan, in Glasgow. Those arrested/detained have been taken to Helen Street police station, and protestors are heading that way too.

Today’s action follows the recent occupation of the centre, and a series of demonstrations and pickets, including a picket on Saturday, called by No Borders Glasgow (see below for report) part of a national day of action against deportations of children and students.

It is thought that at least one dawn raid has been prevented today. Brand Street is the base for the Immigration snatch squads who leave, in unmarked dark blue vans with blacked-out windows, to carry out their raids on families and individuals living in Glasgow. At 5:30am a team arrived for duty, but were prevented from entering the centre. Security cut through one of the chains at about 10am, allowing access, but as at 10:45 are still not letting in any staff, or asylum seekers who have turned up to sign on.

Today’s dawn raid by protestors is the latest in the campaign against the inhumane practices of the UK immigration and asylum policy which are terrorising Glasgow communities. Brand Street, at the Orwellian-named Festival Court, is the Home Office hub in Scotland where families (there are very few single asylum seekers in Glasgow at present) have to sign on every week, as part of a system of control and intimidation.

Some people turn up to sign on, and are never seen again, joining the ranks of disappeared, spirited away to immigrant detention centres like Dungavel, then deported back to war zones, oppressive regimes, or abject poverty. Others have to endure the bullying of Immigration Officers who every week threaten imprisonment of asylum seekers and their children if they do not agree to try and return to their home countries.

On Saturday (19th November) around 100 people from across Glasgow and across the world, joined the regular picket of the Reporting Centre, in solidarity with the lone protestor who has been standing at the gates every Saturday between 10am- 12 noon for the past 6 weeks. His one-man picket has become the target of increasing racist abuse and intimidation from Group 4 Security Guards (and the builders of Campbell Construction on the building site opposite).

It was freezing cold at 10am when the first protestors arrived, and it didn’t get any warmer. The friendly police came by and moved the early arrivals down the road from the main gates, but as more people turned up, the picket moved back to the gates. The stated reason for the police request to move away was that the many children on the picket might be in danger of cars on the road. There was danger from vehicles alright – from Immigration snatch squad vans. At about 11:30 the main gates were suddenly thrown open and an unmarked car left at high speed, followed by two sinister looking vans, dark blue, unmarked, with opaque windows. Some of the people on the picket have seen the inside of those vans. The vehicles were travelling too fast for anyone to do anything about them (and too fast for safety on a small street crowded with protesting families and their children). But people promised that no vans will leave that centre during future pickets.

The solidarity picket was part of a national day of action, with demonstrations in central Manchester and London. In Children in Need week, the demonstrations called for an end to deportations of children and students. At Brand Street, young people from Drumchapel Secondary school spoke of their campaigns against the deportations of their friends, most recently for 13 year old Saida Vucaj and her family.

Last week, the “Glasgow Girls” as they have been dubbed by the media, won the Scottish Campaign of the Year Award at the annual Scottish politician of the year ceremony in Edinburgh (other nominations included the make Poverty History campaign). At the ceremony, the girls warned that they don’t see the award as a pat on the head and a time to rest, but that they would keep up the fight for the right of all young people to stay in Scotland, and against all deportations. In front of the gathered media, they also eyeballed Jack McConnell and demanded to know just what had happened to the “protocol” he promised between social services, education services and the Immigration police. A clearly embarrassed First Minister could only waffle about ongoing talks with his bosses down south.

Saturday’s picket was a success. Those working in the centre know that the campaign against what goes on in there is growing. People on the picket talked about keeping up the pressure, picketing the place every Saturday between 10am and 12 noon, bringing music and drums and food and hot drinks to keep up spirits. And people also left muttering about the vans that left while we stood by, and what kind of direct action could stop them. And some folk returned today, in the wee small hours, and for another day no vans left to carry out their dawn raids.

Sat 19 Nov: Picket Brand St, Glasgow

2005-11-16T02:47:00.000-11:00

Saturday 19th November: National Day of Action against deportation of children

This Saturday is a national day of action against deportations of children and young people, with demonstrations in London and Manchester, and a picket of the Immigration Reporting Centre in Glasgow

http://www.standup4children.org

National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns

Glasgow: Picket Brand Street, Saturday 19 Nov, 10am – 12 noon
Brand Street in Govan is one of the centres from which families are disappeared. People go in to sign on, and some leave handcuffed in a van, taken to one of Britain's immigrant prisons like Dungavel, before being deported.

Support requested
Come along to Brand Street this Saturday to support the regular picket, to show solidarity with the many asylum seekers who are forced to sign on at the reporting Centre every week, with the demonstrations in Manchester and London, and with all people in Britain living in fear of deportation. This small weekly picket has seen increased intimidation from security guards and police in recent weeks, and support has been requested.

Please lend your support for a couple of hours this Saturday, between 10am – 12 noon.

Stop deportations
Between 1 April and 30 September 2005, the Immigration Service carried out 112 dawn raids in Glasgow. That’s more than 4 every week. And it doesn’t include those disappeared from Brand Street. Resistance is building.

Keep up the pressure, come to the picket, spread the word.

For more information, contact noborders-glasgow@riseup.net

Directions to Brand St (nearest underground, Cessnock): http://snipurl.com/brand_street_map

16/11/05: Zimbabwean women on hunger strike

2005-11-15T23:59:00.000-11:00

Zimbabwean Women on Hunger Strike in Yarl's Wood Removal Centre

"This strike is the only thing we can do. It's better to die than to go back and be detained. I can't go back there because I am a lesbian and I am not allowed there by the government - they call us 'pigs' and 'dogs' - and those with political cases can't go back because they would be imprisoned and tortured or killed. I have proved I am from Zimbabwe, but I am still being held here when I should be released." Thando Dube

Five Zimbabwean women have been on hunger strike for 16 days in Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre protesting their threatened deportation to South Africa a country that they are not nationals of.

52 Deaths at Lindela Repatriation Camp this year

Please help these women. Do not let them be deported, do not let them die. The women face grave danger if they are deported to South Africa. Recent evidence found that Zimbabweans removed to South Africa were detained in the Lindela repatriation camp, notorious for its poor conditions, before being sent to Zimbabwe. South Africa Home Affairs Director-General Jeffrey Maqetuka on October the 28th of this year said: "Since the beginning of the year, at least nine people died in the holding facility and 43 others in the nearby Leratong hospital after referral."

For more information see www.ncadc.org.uk

What you can do to help
Legal Action for Women are campaigning for the women to be released from detention. You can fax/write to the Minister for Immigration Tony McNulty requesting the release/temporary admission of the 5 women.

Fax No: 020 7035 4745 from outside the UK + 20 7035 4745

Write to:
Tony McNulty
Immigration Minister
Home Office
3rd Floor, Peel Building
2 Marsham Street
London SW1P 4DF

Please notify LAW of any faxes/letters sent:
law@crossroadswomen.net

Legal Action for Women
Crossroads Women's Centre
PO Box 287
London, NW6 5QU
Tel: 020 7482 2496 Fax: 020 7209 4761
law@crossroadswomen.net

'I would rather die than be sent home'
http://www.ncadc.org.uk/newszine%2064/i%20would%20rather%20die.htm
"Home Office accused of ignoring Zimbabwe deportation ban"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,1599326,00.html

14 Nov 05 - Ahmed family - another abduction

2005-11-14T22:10:00.000-11:00

Another family has been abducted from their Glasgow home and deported, this time leaving behind a 16 year old boy who was away from home at the time.

The Ahmed family from Royston were taken from their home on Friday, and were forced onto a plane and deported to Pakistan last night, Sunday 13th November. Farhad Ahmed, 16, is believed to be still unaware that his mother, sister and older brother have been deported.Positive Action In Housing reported today:
At 9.21 pm, Farhat Ahmed called her neighbour Farina from the airport to say that her son Faheem, 19, had been beaten by security guards for refusing to board the plane without his younger brother. According to Farhat, the security guards then threw Faheem into a side-room and began beating him and pushing him by the neck into the floor in full view of his mother and sister, telling him he was going back ‘no matter what’.

Farhat Ahmed begged them not to beat her son and to deport her with her daughter but let her son at least stay behind to find her other son, and then they could deport the brothers together. A woman officer was screaming repeatedly at Farhat in her face to ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ and that if she did not tell him to go quietly they would make sure he went to jail “forever” and “you'll never see him again”.
.......................................................................................

Where's McConnell's "protocol"?
"From public bodies to children's organisations to school friends, there is recognition that these scandalous immigration practices are causing trauma and distress, and blatantly disregard children's rights. When Scottish society expresses such profound concern, it is right to expect the Scottish Parliament to do likewise." Jack McConnell, First Minister, 23 September 2005

Wee Jack claimed back in September that he would establish a protocol between Imigration and Social and Education Services, to bring some kind of protection for children and families. Speaking at First Minister's Question Time, Jack McConnell defended deportations ordered from Westminster, but added:
“…it is also very important given our child welfare responsibilities and education responsibilities here in Scotland that such a system is handled appropriately. That's why we want to have a protocol for the Home Office that involves Scottish education and social services in advance of decisions on the implementation of any orders for removal."

Nearly two months later, no protocol to protect the children, and the Immigration snatch squads continue to terrorise our communities. McConnell hides behind the old "immigration is a Westminster reserved issue" excuse, but when it comes to matters that he has responsibility for as First Minister - children's welfare, education, housing, communities - he has no excuses: he is failing to act to protect those communities and the children and families and everyone in Scotland who is rightly outraged by these attacks.

It's about time the people of Scotland let McConnell and his cronies and his bosses in Westminster know exactly how we feel about their racist policies and their violent attacks on our communities. And since McConnell has proved yet again his impotence, it's about time we took matters into our own hands to put a stop to these abductions. It's not that difficult. During the Poll Tax rebellion we stopped the Bailiffs and eventually forced the government to ditch the tax, through a mass campaign of direct action. We can do it again. We can stop deportations.
..........................................................................
Some info on the Ahmed family from NCADC
......................................................................................................
From Positive Action in Housing, 11 November 2005
Please find below urgent action points regarding the treatment of the Ahmed Family who were removed in a dawn raid from their Royston flat on Friday 11 November 2005. In particular, please note the following testimonies reported to us – calculated, barbaric inhumanity being carried out on Scottish soil under the guise of a ‘reserved asylum policy’.

These points may help you write a letter yourself, letting MConnell know what you think.

16 year old Fahad Ahmed was not in flat at time of raid and unaware that his family is gone from the flat or that his family is deported to Pakistan.

Despite family’s pleas immigration officers refused to let the family trace their brother and be deported together.

Dawn raid carried out without warning causing the family fear and alarm.

13 year old Zoha dragged from her bed mid-sleep alongside her mother and brother, less than two hours after the family closed their fast as part of Muslim tradition.

Mrs Farhat Ahmed and son Faheem, 19, forced to use the toilet in full view of immigration officers.

Family endured a 17 hour gruelling journey in a caged van from 7 am Friday 11 November to 1 am Saturday 12 November. Worried neighbours, friends and even the lawyer not aware of the family’s whereabouts until the next day when the family contacted them via phone card from Tinsley house removal centre.

Mrs Ahmed calls neighbour from airport to look after her 16 year old son because immigration is refusing to let her trace him.

19 year old Faheem beaten be security guards for refusing to board the plane without his brother.

Mrs Ahmed told to ‘shut up’ by screaming female security guards when she begged security guards not to beat her 19 year old son but to let him remain behind to trace the 16 year old brother first.

URGENT ACTION ALERT
We urge you to:
1. Write to the First minister, sending copies to robina@paih.org calling for an end to the raids on innocent families as well as the criminalisation of asylum seekers at Brand street immigration office.

2. Write to your MP/MEP/MSP and ask them what they are doing to speak out against the inhumanities of UK asylum policy on Scottish soil.

3. Sign the online petition (using internet explorer browser) at
http://www.petitiononline.com/amn2005/petition-sign.html and add your comment.

Update: Friday 11 Nov 05

2005-11-11T21:45:00.000-11:00

Friday 11 Nov 05
Weekly update from No Borders Glasgow.
to subscribe to No Borders Glasgow email announcements, go to:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/noborders-glasgow

Join the web forum for information exchange, discussion and local, national and international No Borders news at
http://glasgow_noborders.clearerchannel.org/forum

…………………………………………………………
NEWS
…………………………………………………………

1. Immigration Minister bars official from meeting between protestors
Following the occupation of the Immigration Reporting Centre in Govan last week, Immigration Minister Tony McNulty barred a senior officer in Scotland from meeting delegates from the occupation. It is extremely doubtful that anything would have come out of the meeting anyway, but McNulty’s intervention perhaps reveals growing worries in Westminster about the campaign against dawn raids in Scotland.
More: http://snipurl.com/temperate_mcnulty

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2. Grassroots resistance in Glasgow
Meanwhile, local people refuse McNulty’s advice to show self restraint and use temperate language, organising action-planning meetings to resist deportation snatch squads. Phone trees are being set up in Glasgow to raise the alarm when dawn raids are happening, to get as many people as possible to the location in solidarity. Details of local meetings where you can sign up to a phone tree will be posted soon on the weblog.

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3. Kupeli family released on Bail
On Wednesday 9th November the Kupeli family from the Gorbals were released on bail from Yarls Wood detention centre, and are living with friends in London. However, according to Positive Action in Housing, it seems unlikely they will be returning to their home in Glasgow.
Suna Kupeli, 9, said:
"I'm not very happy, I want to go back to school with my friends in Blackfriars. I miss them and my teachers and my mum wants to visit my baby sister. She's in Linn Cemetery and we go there every week with flowers".
background on Kupeli abduction http://snipurl.com/kupeli_story
Positive Action in Housing http://www.paih.org
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4. Visit Dungavel...Monster of the Glen
New Camcorder Guerillas film was premiered at Glasgow Film Theatre on Saturday 5th November. A packed house (over 200 people) watched the funny, sad, moving, angry, inspiring movie, with discussion after calling for action to stop dawn raids, prevent deportations and end detention. If you haven’t got one, get a copy of the DVD and show it to everyone you know, or give it to strangers in the street if you don’t know anyone.
http://www.camcorderguerillas.net

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5. France: State of emergency, deportations…
"Those who sow misery will reap anger"
Effectively, martial law has been declared in France, in reaction to the uprisings of dispossessed youth. Interior Minister Sarkozy fans the flames by describing rioters as scum, declares a state of emergency and has now declared that all “foreigners” arrested during the uprising are to be deported.

Statement opposing the state of emergency: http://www.statewatch.org/news/2005/nov/02france-emergency.htm
Statement by the immigrant movement MIB on the situation in France: http://www.statewatch.org/news/2005/nov/02france-emergency-2.htm
Reports at: http://www.indymedia.org.uk

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6. Netherlands: Fire at deportation centre kills 11. State attacks solidarity actions.
On the 27th of October, a fire broke out in the deportation centre at Schiphol near Amsterdam, Netherlands. 11 people died there as a result. On the same day, a wake was held for the victims, and in many cities solidarity actions were instigated. In Amsterdam this was done by means of a banner action. Since the 1st of November, banners have been hung from a score of houses. Then the police attacked.
http://www.indymedia.org/en/2005/11/827311.shtml

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UPCOMING EVENTS
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Saturday 26th November
“No Place for Racism” STUC’s annual St Andrew’s Day March & Celebration March against Racism and Fascism assembles 10.30am Blythswood Square, Glasgow to a St Andrew’s Day Celebration at the Trades Hall, Glassford Street, 12noon - 3.30pm. Children’s games and activities, music and art exhibitions, food, hot and cold drinks, licensed bar, solidarity and craft stalls, entertainment for all. Supported by the STUC and Glasgow Anti Racist Alliance.
For further information contact Helen Carson @ STUC tel: 0141 337 8100, email hcarson@stuc.org.uk website: www.stuc.org.uk

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Tuesday 29th November
Benefit gig
Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees and The Arches presents Mogwai and The Hugh Reed Explosion 2005 .Tickets £10.00 in advance Available from the Arches ticket office and website.

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Saturday / Sunday 17th + 18th December
International “days of action, days of outrage, days of rights for sans papiers”
Called by No One Is Illegal. 18th Dec. the launch of the International Convention of the Protection of All Migrant Workers and Their Families (New York 1990). The Mediterranean Social Forum has called a day of action. Local campaigns could look at events that reach out to trades unions. Tell us what events your group is organising.
Contact - Email: info@noii.org.uk / www.noii.org.uk . No One Is Illegal, Bolton Socialist Club, 16 Wood Street, Bolton, BL1 1DY.

Temperate McNulty and grassroots resistance

2005-11-09T01:33:00.000-11:00

“Temperate” Tony McNulty bars officials from speaking.
Grassroots resistance grows in Glasgow.

Assistant Director of the UK Immigration Service, Rolf Toolin, agreed to meet this Monday with delegates from last week’s occupation of the Reporting Centre at Brand Street, Glasgow, to hear concerns at the criminalisation of people forced to sign on at the centre every week, and of communities living in fear of dawn raids.

However, at the last minute, Immigration Minister Tony McNulty pulled the plug, banning Toolin from meeting the delegation which included MSPs Tommy Sheridan and Sandra White, representatives of the Church of Scotland and Robina Qureshi of Positive Action in Housing.

This latest order from down south follows McNulty’s recent condemnation of the growing anger in Scotland at the increase of violent deportations and the damage they are doing to our communities. It seems that Westminster is anxious to ensure that officials in Scotland do not listen to people’s concerns, and certainly do not speak about it.

The Children’s Commissioner, Kathleen Marshall has been listening to the children of communities like Knightswood in Glasgow, where dawn raids on “wee quiet families” are common. She said these deportations were “completely inhumane, I think we’re terrorising these children and families”, and has called for a public outcry in Scotland.

This has been echoed by Scottish Communities Minister, Malcolm Chisholm, who described the Vucaj family’s treatment as "totally unnecessary, heavy-handed and over the top". First Minister, wee Jack McConnell, even mumbled something about a protocol involving informing social workers that weans are getting their door kicked down before first light and carted off to prison.

“Intemperate Language”
On the BBC Politics Show, McNulty responded to criticism of dawn raids in classic New Labour doublespeak. He denied that they happen, but vowed they will continue, and condemned anyone who raises concerns. The denial was to do with timing and clothing: "We are not knocking down doors at four in the morning with people suited and booted in riot gear”, he said, adding that most of the removals took place between 0530 and 0700 BST, and that officials wore stab-vests and restrained people when they needed to. And he criticised the “intemperate language” of people like the Children’s Commissioner.

The day before that interview, before the sun rose at 7:46 am, Sinan and Songul Kupeli, Glasgow residents of five years, were dragged from their beds and handcuffed in front of their daughters Suna, aged 9, and Yagmur, aged 6. The family were bundled into a van and driven overnight to Yarls Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire. Suna and Yagmur will never see their schoolmates at Blackfriars Primary School again. Songul will never again tend the grave of her baby daughter, born and died in Glasgow. And we are told to exercise self-restraint.

Haud me back…
My dictionary defines intemperate is being the opposite of temperate, which is an adjective meaning “exercising moderation and self-restraint”. It comes from the verb, temper, which means to harden or strengthen. An example is “to strengthen through experience or hardship; toughen: soldiers had been tempered by combat”.

So I suppose what McNulty is saying is that we should be used to this by now, we should be tempered, toughened, by these continual attacks on our communities, and that we should restrain ourselves (lest we need to be restrained by his officers?)

Well, it doesn’t quite work that way. The more the people of Scotland hear about families like the Vucaj and Kupeli families being torn from their homes and communities in such violent abductions, the more intemperate our language will become, and the more we will unite to resist the racist attacks of the Labour Government. People don’t become immune to this. The more it happens, the angrier people get. Does McNulty understand that, I wonder? Surely a top New Labour politician can’t be that thick?

And as for self restraint? As we say in Glasgow, haud me back… Local action groups are springing up all over Glasgow. Glaswegians old and new are coming together to organise to resist deportations. In the next month, action planning meetings are scheduled for the Gorbals, Knightswood and Sighthill. These meetings are for planning action, by the way, not just listening to speeches. Check www.openborders.org.uk for details of these and other action meetings as they are confirmed.
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Links:
reports on cancelled meeting with immigration high heid yin:
Scottish Housing News: http://www.scottishhousingnews.com/dailynews.asp#H46098
BBC report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4415966.stm
For info on Temperate McNulty and his voting record (strongly for war in Iraq, strongly for “anti-terrorism” laws, strongly for ID cards, etc etc) see:
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/tony_mcnulty/harrow_east

4/11/05: No Borders Glasgow Update

2005-11-04T02:50:00.000-11:00

No Borders Glasgow update Friday 4 Nov 05

Occupation.
The campaign against dawn raid abductions of Glasgow families continues to grow. On Wednesday the Immigration Reporting Centre in Govan was locked-down and occupied, preventing, at least for one day, any families being disappeared from Brand Street.
click for Link
click for BBC report
photo:gareth harper - http://www.photecosse.net/

“Authoritarian scumbag” resigns.
Meanwhile, authoritarian scumbag David Blunkett – former Home Secretary responsible for implementing the most racist asylum policies ever in the UK – resigned for the second time in 12 months, after being caught abusing his position of power for personal gain. Again.
click for link: “Shed no tears for Blunkett” - an article by Mark Barnsley from December 2004, last time Blunkett resigned.

Gorbals public meeting.
On Thursday evening a meeting was held in the Gorbals in support of the Kupeli family, snatched at dawn on October 14^th, currently in detention facing deportation. Around 250 people packed the St Francis Centre to hear speeches from activists and politicians, and testimony from the very many refugee families there, who discussed tactics for physically preventing future dawn raids.
The meeting called for:
* The return of the Kupeli and Vucaj families to Glasgow;
* An immediate halt to Home Office raids on Scottish asylum families
* An amnesty for all Scottish asylum families resident here for over a year.
click for Link

Destitution.
Earlier on Thursday the highest court in the land declared Section 55 of the 2002 Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act amounted to inhumane and degrading treatment, and as such was a breach of human rights under law. Section 55, brought in by David Blunkett (remember him?) left tens of thousands of people homeless and destitute as they had not claimed for asylum the minute they entered the country. The Law Lords have thrown out the government appeal.
(NB This does not affect people refused asylum who are unable or unwilling to leave the country. They remain destitute with no entitlement to housing, work or benefits)
click for link: Refugee Council:
click for link: Liberty

Dungavel film, 5^th November
“Visit Dungavel…Monster of the Glen”, a new film from Camcorder Guerillas, will be premiered on Saturday 5^th November, 2pm, at the Glasgow Film Theatre, Rose Street. Entry is free, and DVDs will be available to take home to show your friends, family, workmates etc. The film will be followed by an open discussion.
click for Link

Manchester Solidarity appeal
Samina Altaf, a disabled woman in Manchester facing deportation, has asked for help. Samina and her two children , Aqsa, and Sumama, fled Pakistan after domestic abuse. All three suffer from severe rickets and are receiving medical support in this country. Nonetheless the Home Office want to deport the family.

Samina does not beg to stay here. Instead she demands her right to remain. She will not be blackmailed into leaving the country by threats of eviction from her home. She does not appeal for support because of her condition. Rather she asks for solidarity because she is fighting back against the racism of immigration controls.

Please take the time to write a short letter in support of her case. Write to Samina’s MP – Hazel Blear, House of Commons, London SW1. Quote reference A1233290 and Ask your letter be sent on to the Home Secretary. Click for link for more info on case and how you can help.

Meanwhile at the border…
Jumping the walls that separate Morocco from the colonial enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla has long been a way to enter Europe from Africa. Security forces have begun firing upon migrants attempting to cross. In response, the European Caravan against the Fence of Death will protest at Ceuta, the southernmost border of Fortress Europe (on the African continent), on the 4th, 5th and 6th of November.
click for link indymedia:
click fo link indymedia estrecho (lots more info, various languages)

to subscribe to the No Borders Glasgow email list, go to:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/noborders-glasgow

Camcorder Guerillas Film

2005-11-03T23:13:00.000-11:00

Visit Dungavel...
Monster of the Glen
Imagine escaping persecution in your own country, only to be locked up without trial in Dungavel. According to Amnesty International, the UK detains an estimated 25,000 asylum seekers every year: men, women and children. Camcorder Guerillas believes that asylum is a right, not a crime.

Using documentary, testimony, animation, original music and drama, Visit Dungavel: Monster of the Glen (25 mins), is a shocking, funny, informative and moving series of short films about detention - and, since this is a Camcorder Guerilla film - what to do about it!

Featuring guest appearances by screen stars Gary Lewis (Yes, Ae Fond Kiss, Billy Elliot) and Cora Bisset (High Times, Rebus), and guest directing by BAFTA-winning actor/director Alison Peebles (Afterlife, Sex Traffic, Taggart) this film lifts the lid on Dungavel, detention and deportation.

Using documentary, testimony, animation, original music and drama, Visit Dungavel: Monster of the Glen (25 mins), is a shocking, funny, informative and moving series of short films about detention - and, since this is a Camcorder Guerilla film - what to do about it!

The DVD is split into 9 shorts which can be viewed/used on their own:

The Removed (2:46 mins)
How does it feel when the snacth squad comes to your door?

Dungavelland (0:30 mins)
Enter the world of Dungavel and find out how the turreted castle came to be a prison for asylum seekers

Born in Dungavel (2:00 mins)
Meet the Scottish Conservative politician who was born in Dungavel

Even Children? (4:00 mins)
The UK locks up over 25,000 asylum seekers every year. Men, women, and, yes, even children.

Suicide Watch (3:40 mins)
Many asylum seekers have been left utterly desperate. Why aren't we listening?

Escape (1:30 mins)
So how do you get out of Dungavel, Scotland's only detention centre? Meet someone who has.

Sums for beginners (3:50 mins)
How much are you paying to keep men women and children behind barbed wire? And who makes the profit?

Get on the plane (1:40)
Scotland: a thousand welcomes, a thousand farewells - this is how we send asylum seekers home.

Things to do in Scotland (1:15 mins)
Take action now! Famous Scots, past and present, show you how it's done.

Camcorder Guerilla dungavel short 'The Removed' is now on-line to view on the SuperShorts website at http://supershorts.org.uk/view.html?id=509

Camcorder Guerillas is a Glasgow-based voluntary collective of independent, radical filmmakers, activists and artists. The collective make and showcase films and documentaries that raise awareness of the social justice issues facing our local communities.
http://www.camcorderguerillas.net

3/11/05 Public meeting, Gorbals

2005-11-03T04:55:00.000-11:00

Public Meeting, Thurs 3rd Nov, Gorbals - details below.
Dawn Raids continue in Glasgow. Resistance grows.
"I couldn't see my mum, only her crying in the other room. My dad was saying please don't put the handcuffs on my wife she is too ill and my mum is so crying because they put handcuffs on my mum and dad. I said I want my mum but the lady said no. They took me and my little sister separate from my mum and dad, my sister is only 6½ and she's in primary two, and I holded her hand because she was shaking. I was crying as well. My mum and dad were in the van. They took us in another one."

Suna Kupeli, Aged 9, removed in a home office dawn raid on 14 October 2005 with her family from her community in high rise Gorbals and her school at Blackfriars Primary School, two days before Tony McNulty immigration minister denied this was inhumane or caused psychological terror.

Yet another Scottish asylum family has been disappeared in a Home Office Dawn Raid from their community in the Gorbals, where they have lived for the past five years.
more info on Kupeli family abduction
photo: demo in support of Vucaj family and against deportations, Oct 05
Gareth Harper www.photoecosse.net
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PUBLIC MEETING - 3RD NOVEMBER
6.45 pm - 8.00 pm, Thurs. 3 November 2005
St Francis Centre, 405 Cumberland Street
Gorbals, Glasgow G5 OSE
click for map
click for pdf flier

They belong to Glasgow
Stop Home Office raids on asylum families
Stop children being dragged from their beds at dawn

Come to a public meeting and call for:
O The return of the Kupeli and Vucaj families to Glasgow.
O An immediate halt to Home Office raids on Scottish asylum families and the communities they leave behind;
O An amnesty for all Scottish asylum families resident here for over a year.

Speakers: Aamer Anwar, Bridging the Gap, Jamie O'Neill,
John McAllion, Margaret Woods (GCWR), Mohammad Asif
Naveen, Paddy Hill, Peter Mullan, Robina Qureshi, Sandra
White MSP, Tommy Sheridan MSP, and other invited MSPs.

Plus see film footage of the Vucaj family in Northern Albania with an introduction by Peter Mullan, actor/writer/director setting out the compassionate and humanitarian grounds for their return

for pdf dossier of Vucaj campaign click here

2/11/05 Occupation of Home Office building

2005-11-01T23:33:00.000-11:00

Occupation at Home Office Reporting Centre, 02/11/05

Just after opening its doors this morning Wednesday 2nd November the Immigration Office in Brand Street, Ibrox, Glasgow was taken over by protestors and brought to a complete standstill in what is understood to be an all day occupation and effective shut down. It is understood that *Paddy Joe Hill, Tommy Sheridan MSP, church ministers and Sandra White MSP are amongst those occupying the building.

Brand Street immigration office is where asylum seekers go to report weekly with their children and where dawn raid victims are taken to be finger printed, photographed before being transferred to removal centres such as Yarl's Wood and Dungavel.

At the same time protesters were occupying the building. Another group of protesters went round to the back of the building where the entrance to the 'enforcement Unit' vehicle compound for the 'snatch squads' is and chained and padlocked the gates

Stop deporting children - actions

2005-10-25T00:26:00.000-11:00

19th Nov 05: Day of Action -
Stop Deporting Children and Students!
"My name is Daniel. I'm 15.
Me and my family face deportation to the Congo. There is a war there and my life would be finished. One of my mum's friends was deported and killed in a prison in Congo.

If we go back, we might also end up in prison, so please help us. I am scared that I would be forced to become a soldier. I don't want to be a child soldier. I want to be a football player. I play for a local team - when I'm older, I want to play for England" - Daniel Sukula.

Stop All Deportations ! Scrap Section 9!

click for more info and details of demos in Manchester and London:

2005-10-21T23:34:00.000-11:00

29 October: European day of action

Call for a coordinated day of action against the brutality at European borders
21.Oct.05 - The collective attempts by more than four thousand migrants to cross the borders between Africa and Europe have shown the brutality of the European border regime. In the last two weeks ten people were shot dead by border police. Since then, Moroccan authorities have rounded up and "deported" more than 2,500 people, and abandoned them without food and water in the Sahara Desert. More than 36 people have died there so far.

The news of the past two weeks shows only a small part of the brutality at Europe’s borders, where hundreds of migrants drown every year crossing the Straights of Gibraltar, suffocate in trucks, or are blown up by landmines in the fields between Greece and Turkey.

The reaction of the Spanish Government and the European Commission is military reinforcement of the borders and externalising the “management” of migrants. European colonialism and economic policies created the situations that are forcing people to flee.

Now, being pushed by the German government and others, refugees are being made invisible to Europe; caught way before the borders and held in “transit” prisons far away. Third countries, such as Morocco are made to handle the situation in exchange for economic aid. The EU has given 40 million Euro to Morocco to build up border defences. The Moroccan government uses these deals to systematically violate human rights, torturing, deporting and murdering migrants.

Across Europe groups are organising acts to reject this brutality at the borders. We are calling for a coordinated day of action on 29th October 2005.

No more deaths at the Border.No one is Illegal.

European No Border Network:
www.noborder.org

20/10/05 Public meeting: Vucaj family

2005-10-20T01:34:00.000-11:00

VUCAJ FAMILY Public Meeting 20 Oct
6.45 PM Thursday 20 October 2005

STUC BUILDING, 333 Woodlands Road, Glasgow G3

Film footage of the Vucaj children in Northern Albania.
Speakers include: Peter Mullan, Robina Qureshi. Contributions from politicians, supporters and friends of the Vucaj family. To be followed by audience questions.

Peter Mullan, Glasgow’s award winning actor and director, will lead the launch of a new campaign designed to return the recently deported Vucaj family back to Glasgow and Scotland.

Called “They belong to Glasgow”, Mullan will introduce a film and speak about his recent trip to Albania to meet the Vucaj family. Footage of the trip and an interview with 13 year old Saida Vucaj will be shown and Peter will be joined by politicians from across the political spectrum and young friends of Saida, Elvis and Nimet from Drumchapel, Glasgow. The campaign objective is the safe return of the Vucaj family by any legal means possible

“These children have lived in Glasgow for five years. Saida was only seven when she arrived. She is now 13 and her and her two brothers, Elvis (18) and Nimet (16) consider themselves Glaswegian and Scottish. We are determined to organise their safe return to our city where they were welcomed and educated. I plead to First Minister Jack McConnell and Scotland’s Parliament to help them to return. This is their home, not Albania. Saida, in particular, is in danger. Child trafficking for prostitution is rife in Northern Albania where they have been returned to. We need them back now before it’s too late.”
- Robina Qureshi, Positive Action in Housing

“Saida, Nimet and Elvis Vucaj belong to Glasgow. They think like Glaswegians, they talk like Glaswegians. They have been forcibly kidnapped from us and transplanted into a country that can best be described as pre-industrial. Their new home is an empty hovel on a Northern Albanian mountain that was ransacked in their absence and is the direct line of a major sex trafficking route leaving them unspeakably vulnerable. These young Glaswegian kids have been taken from us and abandoned to a life of unimaginable despair. One of the few men who remain of the village stepped forwards to the kids when we were with them and asked what they were doing there. The kids said they didn’t know - they were Scottish. He opened up a weird toothless smile and said “You must go. Stay here and you die”. All we ask is that these children are brought back to the only home that they know, Glasgow!”
- Peter Mullan

more info at html://www.paih.org

14/10/05 Kupeli family abducted

2005-10-14T23:25:00.000-11:00

14 Oct 05: Kupeli Family - another dawn raid in Glasgow

On Monday 14, October 2005, a 12 strong immigration snatch squad carried out a dawn raid in Norfolk Court, Gorbals, the home of the Kupeli family - Mr Sinan Kupeli (38), wife Songul (37) and daughters Suna (9) and Yagmur (6½) - from their home and community in the Gorbals, where they have lived for the past 5 years.

Immigration officers forced Mr & Mrs Kupeli into the living room, handcuffed Mr Kupeli, and dragged their sleeping children from their beds. Mrs Kupeli is still grieving for her four month old baby Helin who is buried at Linn Cemetery, Glasgow. She begged immigration officers to let her mak e a final visit to her daughter's burial site. The officers refused and instead handcuffed her. Her daughters Suna and Yagmur were kept in their bedroom by other officers and could only hear their mother's cries. It was left to a tearful Suna to comfort her terrified 6½ year old sister. They said they wanted their mum and dad but the immigration officers said no.

The parents and children were then taken in separate vans to Brand Street immigration office. At 9 am, the family were taken to Yarls Wood Removal Centre, Bedfordshire for removal to Turkey. Blackfriars primary school pupils were shocked when they realised that the two sisters were not off sick but had disappeared overnight. Likewise the staff and volunteers at Bridging the Gap who provided constant support.

The Kupeli family's treatment echoes that of the Vucaj family when they were dragged from their beds at dawn on September 13, 2005. Despite the First Minister's assurances on September 23, dawn raids have not stopped. The criminalisation and dehumanisation of Scottish asylum families continues.

We are calling for an end to Scotland's shame and a restoration of dignity.

Whats wrong with the IOM?

2005-01-02T04:24:00.000-11:00

The IOM arranges the "voluntary" return of people to warzones, dictatorships and areas of famine. The opening of their Glasgow office and the "incentivising" scam coincides with a push by the city council to evict hundreds of people refused asylum from their homes prior to the handover of asylum accommodation to private companies in February. The stark choice they are faced with is: take your chances on the winter streets of Glasgow, or gamble on a dubious bribe from the IOM to return home.

In recent years the IOM has moved from managing the movement of economic migrants to assisting states to control forced migration, that is, keeping out or sending back people seeking political asylum, fleeing wars, persecution, famine. Unlike the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the IOM has no humanitarian remit, and it's move into controlling the movement of people seeking asylum has raised alarm amongst human rights, refugee and aid agencies. The UNHCR has condemned the return of people to war-torn countries such as Iraq and Somalia, but the IOM is only too willing ignore humanitarian concerns and do the dirty deeds of governments eager to appear tough on immigrants.

Amnesty International has criticised the role of the IOM as an "alternative agency for states where they prefer to avoid their human rights obligations", and in May 2003 they released a joint statement with Human Rights Watch, reported in Statewatch Bulletin:"Given that IOM does not have a protection mandate for its work with refugees and displaced persons, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch recommend that IOM should refrain from taking a lead role in situations which fall squarely under the protection mandate of other international organizations, such as UNHCR".

For more info on the IOM, the above report and references, and information on global migration control and resistance, see: http://www.noborder.org/iom/display.php?id=243 and for text of leaflet against IOM, see:http://wiki.makebordershistory.org/index.php/Arguments_Against_IOM

Click here for article from Forced Migration Review - "IOM: Trespassing on others' humanitarian space?"

IOM: Trespassing on others' humanitarian space

2005-01-01T02:05:00.000-11:00

IOM: trespassing on others’ humanitarian space?
compiled by Tim Morris, editor, Forced Migration Review, January 2005

“The International Organisation for Migration is playing an increasingly prominent role in the reception, assistance, and return not only of migrants, but also of asylum seekers, refugees and the forcibly displaced. Given that IOM does not have a protection mandate for its work with refugees and displaced persons, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch recommend that IOM should refrain from taking a lead role in situations which fall squarely under the protection mandate of other international organizations, such as UNHCR.”

“What is an IDP?” a staff member of the International Organisation for Migration was overheard asking at a training session in Darfur. Allowance must be made for the ignorance of recently-recruited staff but this was a query from a representative of the agency just tasked with overseeing the return of Internally Displaced Persons in Darfur. As IOM expands its role in conflict-affected states and diversifies its activities worldwide, many in the humanitarian community are echoing the question recently posed by the International Council for Voluntary Organisations (ICVA): “is IOM an agency that will do anything as long as there’s money with which to do it?”

Like UNHCR, IOM was established in 1951. Initially named the Inter-Governmental Committee on Migration in Europe, it was based on economic priorities, not humanitarian principles. Unlike UNHCR, which derives its mandate from international law and agreements, the ICME/IOM is a membership organisation, not an agency of the UN, and is not accountable to any democratically-elected body.

According to ICVA the manner in which a memorandum of understanding was drawn up to entrust IOM with overseeing IDP return in Darfur constitutes “a flagrant disregard for the collaborative approach” to the problem of internal displacement. The recently created Inter-Agency Internal Displacement Division was not consulted for advice before it was signed.

Many of IOM’s other operations are equally controversial:

The Jesuit Refugee Service has criticised IOM’s role in dealing with the 2.5 million Burmese migrant workers in Thailand. True to its mandate to ensure ‘orderly migration’, IOM has helped the Thai authorities set up a registration process which has led to the monthly deportation of 66,000 people. JRS notes that once they have crossed the border, IOM is unable to maintain contact with the returnees.

The Roma National Congress has expressed grave concerns about the IOM’s role in involuntary removals of Roma migrants.

On the island of Nauru and in Papua New Guinea, IOM is contracted by the Australian government – as part of its ‘Pacific Solution’ to discourage asylum seekers from making onshore applications – to run detention facilities.

During the 2003 Gulf War IOM, which facilitated the repatriation of long-term foreign residents who had fled from Iraq to Jordan, may have violated the principle of non-refoulement by giving nationals of Sudan and Somalia inadequate time to be made aware of their rights and to make an informed decision about returning to their home countries.

In Iraq it has been assigned responsibility for return of IDPs and establishment of property restitution mechanisms but seems to lack the means or expertise to do so.

Human Rights Watch has been monitoring IOM field operations since drawing attention in 1993 to IOM’s role in the asylum determination system imposed on Haitian asylum seekers by the USA. HRW notes that while IOM has recently adopted rights-based language it does not automatically observe international human rights and refugee protection norms.

“The IOM plays an increasingly prominent role in the return of migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, and IDPs to their countries of origin, to other countries that have agreed to accept them, or to other regions within their own countries. The organization claims that it returns migrants in safety and dignity and only on a voluntary basis. The IOM, however, has no mechanism – either internal or external – to evaluate whether decisions to return are, in fact, made under duress or under circumstances that are directly or indirectly coercive, or to assess that conditions in certain countries are safe enough to allow for returns."

For info on the IOM in Glasgow, click here.

Click here for full Forced Migration magazine pdf or here for article in MS word doc or here for Forced Migration review website