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!