26Oct06 - Minister for Dawn Raids visits Scotland

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.
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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

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

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

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

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

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.

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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

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

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

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!

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

"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!

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

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.

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