News digest 23 April 2010

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CONTENTS

1. CAMPAIGN UPDATES
2. PROTEST
3. MEDIA
4. ELECTION
5. BLOGS
6. LEGAL
7. EUROPE
8. NCADC COUNTRY INFO
9. RESEARCH
10. EVENTS

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1. CAMPAIGN ALERTS AND UPDATES

Anselme Noumbiwa: The Cameroon charter flight scheduled for 21 April was cancelled. Anselme has been given new removal directions for 28 April. Please help. Campaign page here and you also keep up to date with Anselme’s news by following him on Twitter.

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Bita Ghaedi was due to be removed to Iran on Tuesday 20th April 2010. The flight cancelled. Bita is still at risk of return to Iran. A massive international online support effort is mobilising to bring pressure to stop this deportation. See the campaign page for model letter to send to Home Secretary  and sign the online petition over 3000 signatures now.

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Kiana Firouz, an openly-gay actress from Iran is campaigning against the Home Office’s decision to refuse her asylum, this week, because she will face execution in her homeland. Source, Pink News . To offer your support, sign the petition here.

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Nadia Arzane – who is 14 weeks pregnant – is a Christian and a political activist from Iran. She and her husband Bashir were to be deported 23 April to Latvia, from where there is a great risk they will be sent back to Iran. At the airport, Nadia was in great distress, and the flight was cancelled. Please continue sending emails and faxes to support Nadia and Bashir
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Octavie Bei: thankfully the removal today, 23 April, has been stayed. Thank you to everyone who faxed and emailed the Home Office. Octavie is still in danger – new removal directions could be set any day. If you haven’t already done so, please contact the Home Office to support Octavie.
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Nigeria Charter flight cancelled
The deportation charter flight from Heathrow to Nigeria last Thursday was cancelled, due to the Iceland volcanic eruption. Among those saved was Vincent Onwubiko, 43, a disabled power-lifting champion.

See the website for other campaigns in need of help. http://www.ncadc.org.uk/campaigns

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2. PROTEST

Death at Oakington – Solidarity protest

On Sunday 17 April, protestors gathered outside Oakington Immigration Removal Centre calling for its closure following the death Eliud Nguli Nyenze. Reports from inside the detention centre suggest that the Kenyan man who died on 15 April was denied medical attention and that he died after an ambulance called by fellow detainees had been turned away from the centre by detention centre staff.

The show of solidarity was organised by Cambridge Migrant Solidarity and they are now pursuing answers. Cambridgeshire News.

Click here to send a  letter to your MP, demanding an investigation into the death.

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Frontex, Acpo and the policing of Fortress Europe

On 23rd March 2010, No Borders activists disrupted a high-profile conference about ‘policing the borders’ that brought together Frontex, the UK Border Agency and senior police officers from various UK police forces . In their shock and dismay, some of the highly esteemed delegates left behind their welcome packs as they rushed out of the conference hall one after the other. press release, report, video.

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UBS worker detained by UK borders agency
Demonstration – London, Friday 23 April

Lancaster Cleaning Services, a contractor for Union Bank of Switzerland, has once again colluded with the UKBA against cleaners. On this occasion Lancaster, having taken over the contract at UBS, has provided the Borders Agency with information on one of their workers who had just left their employment.  Acting on this information the worker’s home was raided and he is being held at an as yet unknown location.

Migrant workers are under attack – they need our solidarity.  On Friday 23rd April a demonstration will be held at UBS 100 Liverpool Street, London, from 5pm.  Make this the biggest protest yet. http://thecommune.wordpress.com

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3. MEDIA

Trapped waiting – Exposing the secret indefinite detention of migrants
Jerome Phelps , Red Pepper

This is Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre, the seemingly permanent location of Britain’s indefinite detainees. Unable to be deported, yet endlessly refused release, the detainees here watch planes take off and land at Heathrow airport through the thin strips of their cell windows, and they wait. As weeks turn into months and months turn into years, they wait.

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First person: ‘I was illegally deported from Britain’
Interview by Cheryl Gallagher, Independent, Saturday, 17 April 2010

Mary says: ‘The immigration escorts dragged us to the plane. They were pulling my hair and my braids fell out’

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Melilla: Europe’s dirty secret
Nick Davies, The Guardian, Saturday 17 April 2010

African migrants will do anything to get into the Spanish enclave of Melilla. And the authorities will do anything to keep them out. The message is: “Don’t be fooled by the wide avenues and beautiful fountains of this Spanish city. None of this is for you. Stay where you are, stay poor and, if you dare to try to come here, we’ll hurt you. Between August and October, there were at least 11 deaths at Melilla and Ceuta – most of them shot with live ammunition as they rushed the fence at night.

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Ombudsman slates performance of Border Agency
Frances Webber, IRR, 15 April 2010

The Parliamentary Ombudsman has found massive, agonising delays, a doubling of complaints and a catalogue of errors in case management at the UK Border Agency.

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Ugandan MP to be banned from UK if his gay death penalty bill succeeds
Allegra Stratton, Guardian, Monday, 19 April 2010

David Bahati wants to execute consenting same-sex couples, arguing it is a crime they choose to commit. The British government is concerned by a wave of anti-gay sentiment sweeping Africa that has also put pressure on homosexual people in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Nigeria.

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UKBA refuses to reply to MSP’s letter about an asylum seeker
Tim Pauling, The Press and Journal, Wednesday, 21 April 2010

Immigration is outwith jurisdiction, claims public body The UK Border Agency refused to answer an MSP’s letter about an asylum seeker, claiming that immigration is outside his jurisdiction, it has emerged. Home Secretary Alan Johnston had instructed that the agency should engage only with MPs in individual immigration cases.“The UK Border Agency currently receives in excess of 60,000 letters and 24,000 phone calls from MPs. Responding to these require significant resources from within the agency,” the letter said.
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Australia to reopen ‘gulag’ detention centre Bonnie Malkin
Telegraph, Monday, 19 April 2010

Kevin Rudd, the Australian prime minister, has ordered one of the most controversial detention centres in the country be reopened in an attempt to deal with the rising number of asylum seekers arriving in Australia. The Curtin detention centre in Western Australia was closed down in 2002 after one third of its 340 detainees were involved in riots, hunger strikes and self-harm.

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Los Angeles cardinal accuses Arizona of ‘Nazi and Communist’ immigration techniques
Nick Allen, Telegraph, Tuesday 20 April 2010

The head of the largest Catholic archdiocese in the United States has accused the state of Arizona of pursuing an anti-immigration policy that encourages “German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques.”
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Ignore the anti-immigrant hysteria, Britain is not full.
Philippe Legrain, New Statesman, 21 April 2010

Claims that Britain’s population will soon reach 70 million do not stand up to scrutiny. Is Britain full? In the 1930s the Daily Mail campaigned against letting in German Jews on the basis that it was; since then the UK has accommodated more than 10 million extra people. But what was once a far-right trope is rapidly becoming conventional wisdom on both left and right. Even the supposedly impartial BBC now takes it as fact, if Monday’s shockingly one-sided Panorama programme was anything to go by.

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Cutting immigration is not the answer
Don Flynn guardian.co.uk, 22 April 2010

Drastically curtailing migration to the UK is a superficial response to our rising population that ignores the economic issues, writes Don Flynn of the Migrant Rights Network, in response to more scaremongering from the eugenicist Andrew Green of Migration Watch UK.

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4. ELECTION

There are currently no MPs in the UK

Parliament has been dissolved in the lead up to the general election, so all MPs are now ‘prospective parliamentary candidates’. There are new rules about involving a prospective parliamentary candidate for help in an anti-deportation campaign. See the UKBA website

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David, face facts – no immigrants means no NHS
The Tory leader’s remarks on Thursday showed that little has changed in his party
Carole Cadwalladr, The Observer, Sunday 18 April 2010

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Election 2010: Silent on immigration? Hardly
Mehdi Hasan, guardian.co.uk, Sunday 18 April 2010

The myth that immigration goes undiscussed in British politics is shamefully propagated by the rightwing press. “We need to talk about immigration!” remains the plaintive cry, in which “talk about” is actually code for “crack down on”.

Labour has spent 13 long years kowtowing to the petty nationalism and undisguised xenophobia of both the Conservative opposition and its echo chamber in the rightwing press. The governing party’s 2010 election manifesto includes a section entitled “Crime and Immigration”. Note the deliberate and disgusting connection of those two words.

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Asylum Election Pledge rings hollow

Ahead of tonight’s second election debate on foreign affairs, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have pledged to “remember the importance of refugee protection”, by signing up to asylum election pledge drawn up by Liberty and the (Home Office funded) Refugee Council and Scottish Refugee Council.

A pledge that will ring hollow indeed for all those about to be handed over to the authorities in Iran, or dumped with no protection in Iraqi Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Nigeria…

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Immigration: what Cameron and Brown have taken from the far-right
Samira Shackle, New Statesman – 23 April 2010

Perhaps unsurprisingly, immigration was raised again at last night’s second televised debate. But the discussion failed to address the nuances of a very complicated subject.

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Sanctuary Pledge: Church Action on Poverty

Yesterday we featured an asylum pledge promoted by Liberty, Refugee Coouncil and Scottish Refugee. The five main parties have all signed up to it, agreeing to “remember the importance of refugee protection”. Yes, that includes the Labour Party and the Tory party who between them have made a mockery of the UN Refugee Convention over the last 20 years or so.

There is another pledge, promoted by Church Action on Poverty. “People seeking sanctuary in the UK experience some of the worst effects of poverty and inequality. The Sanctuary Pledge is a common-sense, positive intervention to build on a sometimes forgotten British value of sanctuary – or “welcoming the stranger”, for us Christians”.

At the Sanctuary Pledge webpage you can quickly use an online form to find out you who the candidates are in your constituency, provide a draft message for you to edit, and then email it for you.

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5. BLOGS

As The Dust Settles
No Borders Brighton
It has been instructive watching the way the media in the UK, and those who were actually caught up in the ‘chaos’, have reacted to the consequences of the suspension of air travel in Western Europe courtesy of Eyjafjallajokull, have reacted to the inability to travel as of where and when one expects and desires. After all this is one’s ‘right’ if one has the correct passport, the money and, above all, the expectation to be allowed to “pass freely without let or hindrance”.

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A sea change is needed on the detention
A sea change is needed on the detention of foreign nationals in the United Kingdom. Periods of detention have grown and grown in recent years. The Home Office never ask “should we detain this person”, they merely ask “can we detain this person”. read more at the Free Movement blog

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The fightback! Launch of new positive immigration messaging initiatives
MRN Blog, Ruth Grove-White, Monday 19 April 2010

How can we counter negative media and political messaging about immigration in the UK? Two new civil society initiatives launched last month may provide a welcome counterbalance to the critical perspectives of many mainstream pundits about immigration in the UK.

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Podcast: seeking asylum in the UK
Katrina Crew, RedCrossBlog, Monday, 19 April 2010

“Jennifer fled her family home in Cameroon in fear of her life. When she was 36 years old, she left behind her husband, daughter and two nephews who she’d adopted as her own after the death of her two sisters.Jennifer is still so afraid of the people in her past, that she doesn’t want to give her true name in this podcast.”

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6. LEGAL

Immigration Law Bulletin – Issue 179
Published on Monday, 19 April, 2010, by Garden Court Chambers

Three cases.
1. Charahili v. Turkey (no. 46605/07) and three other linked cases. Where ECtHR found that the proposed deportation of 3 recognised refugees would violate Article 3, and that detention violated Article 5. read more

2. SS (India) v SSHD [2010] EWCA Civ 388. Where deportation of a parent is being considered on grounds of a criminal conviction – whether proportionate to seperate child from parent or for the child to relocate. Read more

3. R (Ibrahim & anor) v SSHD [2010] EWHC 764 (Admin) Iraq,  “active war zone”, detention and deportation.  Read more

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7. EUROPE

Council of Europe concerned about the automatic return of children
Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, has expressed concerns on the practice of quickly returning children to new reception centres established in their country of origin.

In an article on the rights of unaccompanied migrant children published on Wednesday, the Commissioner stated: “Authorities in Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom are reported to be looking into the possibility of sending children back to such institutions in Afghanistan, Iraq or a couple of countries in Africa”.

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UNHCR High Commissioner concerned about raising xenophobia
During an interview with Reuters last week, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonió Guterres expressed his concerns about the raising xenophobia towards asylum seekers. ‘We are witnessing, unfortunately, the emergence of xenophobic feelings.’ ‘Populist forces make campaigns against foreigners and use foreigners as a scapegoat for (the) problems of a country in political campaigns,’ he added.

According to UNHCR’s statistics, the number of asylum seekers in the industrialized countries (including the 27 EU Member States) remained stable in 2009, and has even decreased in countries of Southern Europe, particularly in Italy. Guterres stated that many countries try to reduce the already thin ‘asylum space’: ‘the recent examples of people being sent back against their will, like (…) the push back of Eritreans from Italy, are good examples of an asylum space that is narrowing.’

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8. NCADC COUNTRY INFORMATION BLOG

Recent Posts at http://ncadcworld.wordpress.com

Somalia: Harsh War, Harsh Peace
DR Congo: army kills civilians
Zambia: refugees deported to DRC
Pakistan: UN agency condemns attack on refugee site
DR Congo: Sexual violence ‘becoming normal’ in Congo
Afghanistan: conflict forcing increasing numbers of Afghans to flee their homes
DR Congo: refugee crisis

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9. RESEARCH

Safe at Last? Children on the front line of UK Border Control.

Every week at British ports, vulnerable children are found crammed in the boots of cars, hidden in lorries and found hanging underneath trucks. Many have travelled for months, alone, under the control of abusive smugglers. They arrive exhausted, traumatised, hungry and often sick or injured. Many have not slept or eaten properly for days.

When they arrive, the children believe they are safe at last. Their treatment by the UK Border Agency undermines that belief.

An RMJ report into the problems faced by unaccompanied asylum seeking children on arrival in the UK. Read the report here.

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Human Rights Watch UPR Submission on the United States

Drawing on recent Human Rights Watch research, this submission highlights ten concerns regarding the United States’ compliance with its international human rights obligations,[*] namely: racial discrimination in anti-drug laws, failure to house domestic violence victims, discriminatory and dangerous treatment of child farmworkers, unfair immigration detention policies, children sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, failure to test rape evidence, solitary confinement of mentally ill prisoners, inadequate healthcare for detained immigrant women, arbitrary detention and unfair trials of terrorism suspects, and return of persons to torture. Read more

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10.EVENTS

IAS Country Information Courses

How Country Information Can Assist in Refugee Status Determination
Day Courses on Afghanistan, Iran and Sri Lanka:
London and Manchester

The course is designed for anyone who undertakes country of origin information research to support or decide asylum claims from Immigration and Asylum solicitors and barristers, refugee community organisations, UK Home Office decision makers to Immigration Judges.

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Oxford Sat 24 April
People’s Charter conference

Organised by the Oxford People’s Charter group, which was initiated by Oxford Trades Union Council. Includes workshop on organising with migrant workers.

East Oxford Community Centre,
Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1DD
10am-3.30pm (registration from 9.30am)

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Dinner Against Deportations
London, Saturday 24 April 2010

Delicious free food and updates from community campaigns against deportations.
Saturday, 24rd April,
1pm – 3pm
at the Ring Cross community centre
60 Lough Road, Islington, London, N7 8HZ
nearest tube: Caledonian Road

This month’s dinner is hosted by Campaign Against Immigration Controls (CAIC).

A social event to share stories, meet others and build links between all those campaigning for migrant rights. Come along and find out about: UBS Cleaners, Yarl’s Wood Solidarity, detainee support, international struggles and much more!

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Glasgow, Monday 26th April
Meeting to form a union of asylum seekers in Scotland

Alive & Kicking Centre
94 Red Road
7pm – 9pm

Open to all asylum seekers in Glasgow
To be a strong voice for all asylum seekers
To stand up for our rights

Come along and help build your organisation!

The UNITY Centre
0141 427 7992

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Sheffield, 28 April
Campaign to defend Djoly
6.30pm at Scotia Works, Leadmill Road, Sheffield S1 4SE.

On January 28th Bavwidi Mpanzu (or ‚Djoly‚ as his friends know him, a well-known community activist from the Democratic Republic of Congo) was arrested for working illegally. He was sent to Doncaster prison where he remains, waiting for sentencing at Sheffield Crown Court on Wednesday 12th May at 10am. Djoly and the campaign are asking for the biggest possible turn out at court on 12th May to show the support that he has in Sheffield.

Contact Africa Time for more information: Dama Safari: 07904222467 or Pascal Bongongo:07908321788 or James Kazadi: 07961761899

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London, Thursday, 29 April 2010
I Love Migrants Launch event

The launch of the JCWI project I Love Migrants will take place at the legendary Foundry club in Old Street, east London on Thursday, April 29. Free food and drinks for early arrivals from 7pm and there will also be live music and original photography.

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Sheffield, 12 May
Asylum Law and Justice meeting
the Arts Tower, University of Sheffield.
6:00pm

On April 13th there was a second meeting of a group to set up a free legal support service to people seeking asylum in South Yorkshire. There was support from practising and retired solicitors, law students and other legal experts. Many asylum seekers were present to explain exactly the type of service which is needed. Whether you have any legal training or not, come along and help do something practical to give people seeking asylum support.

Contact Gina for more information at ginaclayton@blueyonder.co.uk