24 Feb 06: Why NCADC needs to stay

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

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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

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.

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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