'Tis The Season Of Good Will...

...Unless Of Course You Are A Migrant!

It seems fitting that in the week leading up to Xmas, and against the backdrop of the global financial downturn, that a number of so-called Christian countries should be putting up the "no more room at the inn" signs.

In Spain the recession is beginning to bite and unemployment is starting to rise. And of course the easiest and most populist option for the government is to target migrants. To this end they are proposing new legislation to limit immigration, that also allows police to hold sans-papiers for longer prior to expulsion and that will make it harder for foreign-born residents to bring relatives into the country.

Currently 10% of the Spanish population are legally entitled residents and a fair portion of these were once so-called 'illegal immigrants', cornerstones of the building industry boom in the late 90's and early '00's, together with the agricultural labourers that the Costa del Polythene depends upon, that were granted residency during the 2005 amnesty. These people have brought enormous wealth into the country but as times are getting hard they are going to be the first to suffer.

Further east, Italy has already seen widespread repression and attacks on the Roma and migrant populations (see the 1st & 5th October posts), with the Army being sent onto the streets following a state of emergency being announced in the South of the country.

In Greece during the on-going civil uprising (which, if the BNP are to believed, has been caused entirely by 'asylum seekers') there have been a series of savage attacks on migrants carried out by the police in concert with fascists from the Golden Dawn organisation. The police have also been carrying out mass arrests of migrants and an unknown number of these are currently remanded in custody, and can be held up to 18 months before they have to be tried or released. Many have also been tried in flagrante delicto [in a police or Magistrate's court] and convicted in the absence of adequate interpreting facilities.

Greece has a long history of deaths of migrants at the hands of the police, many of whom are Golden Dawn members and sympathisers. [See] Just a week before Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot, a 29-year old Pakistani named Mohammed Ashraf was killed by the riot-police in Athens as they dispersed a group of migrants waiting to apply for green cards.

The current picture is confused but atleast 50 migrants have received 18 month sentences (without the right to parole). There are also reports that there has been an increase in the number of migrants being rounded up and suffering forced illegal deportation.

The Southern hemisphere is also lacking in seasonal good cheer for migrants. In a rapid about turn, the Australian government have gone back on their decision to end the so-called "Pacific Solution" of using remote Pacific islands to house detained asylum seeker (see the 1st July post). Kevin Rudd's government, one of whose members labeled it a "stalag", have decided to open the £180M detention centre on Christmas Island, 1,000 miles from the Australian mainland.

Meanwhile, we have slightly better Xmas news here in Brighton. Kandazi and Harvey Sisya, 13 & 15 years old respectively, and their mother Gift Mubanga, have been bailed from Yarl's Wood IRC and will spend Christmas back in Hove, which had been their home since 2001 until they were detained on 28th November. Their attempted deportation back to Zambia on 16th December was stopped following a last-minute court injunction, a full judicial review of which is due to take place on 9th January. In the meantime the campaign for them to remain in the country started by Kandazi and Harvey's fellow pupils at Hove Park School continues. We wish them well.

Tories Claim UK Asylum Process Inhumane

In an interview on the BBC's Today programme Iain Duncan Smith has claimed that the government's asylum process is inhumane. "The British government is using forced destitution as a means of encouraging people to leave voluntarily. It is a failed policy," he said.

He was presenting a new report from the right-wing think tank Centre for Social Justice, which estimates that at least 26,000 so-called 'failed asylum seekers' are subsisting on Red Cross food parcels in the run-up to Christmas. The same report also claims that hostility at the start of process prevents the proper submission of asylum claims and compares the UK system to Sweden's, where 80% of 'failed asylum seekers' return voluntarily to their country of origin compared to only 20% for the UK.

Does this mean that the Tories are suddenly becoming the Party of Compassion? Needless to say at the heart of the report are claims about the major possible financial savings that a change in the asylum process could bring, as the cost of forcibly removing a 'failed' asylum seeker is £11,000 compared to just £1,100 for voluntary removals.

Interestingly, this comes on top of a recent landmark legal ruling that has paved the way for thousands of asylum seekers in the UK to be allowed to work. The High Court, in case brought on behalf of an Eritrean asylum seeker, whose application for entry to the UK was refused, has ruled that current laws preventing him from taking a job are incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. This ruling could also affect asylum seekers who are also currently destitute and in limbo as they are from countries including Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and Zimbabwe which are also considered too dangerous to return to.

Oakington IRC Condemned As Unsafe

The latest HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (HMCIP) report in to Oakington Immigration Reception Centre in Cambridgeshire, the government's flagship "fast-track" asylum centre, had "lost direction and purpose and is not performing well, especially in the areas of safety and respect". In fact, the relationships between the Global Solutions Ltd (GSL) security staff running the centre and the 328 detainees had deteriorated to the extent that they are significantly worse than at any other removal centre.

"Half the detainees, compared with a third last time [2005], said that they had felt unsafe. Only 60%, compared with 89% last time, and 94% in 2004, said that most staff treated them with respect. These are significant and troubling slippages." The use of force to control detainees had also increased at the centre from 53 incidents last year to 34 in the first six months of this year. The number of detainees put on segregation for breaching rules has also risen, from 328 times in the whole of 2007 to 220 in the first six months of this year.

The report also states the management and staff take so little interest in individual detainees that they were unaware of the fact that they had been holding one Chinese man for nearly two years. The Chinese authorities had said that the remote village he came from did not exist and it took 16 months before an immigration officer bothered to check on the internet and found it was genuine. "After 16 months, a member of the UK Border Agency team at Oakington established through the internet that the village did indeed exist and sent a copy of the map showing the village to the case owner. She also reported to the case owner that he appeared compliant and would like to return as soon as possible."

When the information was then passed on to the relevant case worker, the man was issued with a notice of non-compliance with the authorities and threatened with legal action and his monthly review also continued to claim that he had given false information about his address. On top of this "he had already served a short custodial sentence for having a false document and was now at risk of a further custodial sentence," the report said.

Interestingly, Global Solutions Ltd is the company that, in addition to already running Tinsley House, will be operating the latest addition to the Detention estate when Brook House at Gatwick Airport opens at the end of February or the beginning of March next year. We can only hope that the GSL staff make a better fist (if that's the right phrase) of their duty of care that the law imposes upon them. But given the number of complaints from staff about the way that management are forcing them to cut corners and disregard the welfare of the detainees in their custody (see "Outsourcing Abuse", the latest publication by Medical Justice) we somehow doubt it.

Plans For Joint Afghan Deportation Flight Ends in Diplomatic Row

Things have moved on since our last post in the attempts by the UK and French governments to carry out a joint deportation of Afghans back to Kabul under the 2003 Dublin Regulations. Despite widespread secrecy about the flight, details began to leak and a campaign of opposition to the flight began on both sides of the channel including pickets of the Coquelles detention centre where the French detainees were being held and of the French Tourist Board in London.

Flight PVT008 itself, the "London-Lille-Baku-Kabul" charter operated by Hamburg Airlines, was due to fly from Stansted today Tuesday 18th at 7pm with about 30 UK-held Afghans on board. At Lille it was planned to pick up the 62 French-held Afghans and from there to Azerbaijan, before flying on to the Afghan capital Kabul where the deportees will be released.

However, a press release from the wonderfully 1984-sounding French 'Ministry of Immigration, Intégration, National Identity and Solidarity Development' yesterday announced that Nicolas Sarkozy's government had cancelled a flight at the 11th hour, referring to 'a legal difficulty related to the flight'. This 'legal difficulty' turned out to be the fact that not only did the flight violate article 4 of the European Declaration on Human Rights, which forbids the "collective expulsion of foreigners", but that 11 of the Coquelles Afghans made an emergency appeal to the European Court of Human Rights on the afternoon of the 17th November asking it to prevent the deportation as the "present situation appears to present too elevated a risk of inhuman and degrading treatment" should they be returned. This request was facilitated by 2 of the French migrant support groups, Cimade (Comité Inter-Mouvements Auprès des Evacués) and Gisti (Groupe d'Information et de Soutien des Immigrés), that had been active in the campaign against the flight.

As the situation now stands, the joint British-French project that started with the Dublin accord and the closure of Sangatte, and that was due to be ratcheted up to a new level, lies in ruins amidst a diplomatic row. This can only be a good thing for the migrants left in France along the Channel coast trying to survive the coming winter whilst being hunted by the state and having anyone who dares to offer them support persecuted under the assisting 'illegal immigrants' legislation.

For further information see: the Statewatch and Telegraph stories

Anglo-French Deportations to Afghanistan

The first flight to result from a new Anglo-French pact to return refugees to the Afghan war zone is due to take place within the next few days. Despite the recent upsurge in fighting in the Afghan-Pakistan border region, the plans by Barak Obama to dramatically increase the US military presence there next year, together with the deaths of NGOs and even DHL workers in previously 'safe' Kabul, the British and French authorities have decided that now is the time to send a strong message to potential refugees from the war zone - "We will send you back to Afghanistan, irrespective of the conditions."

An unknown number of refugees currently held at Harmondsworth IRC will be flown to France, prior to joining 57 Afghans who were recently arrested in the Calais and Dunkirk region, currently being held in the Coquelles detention centre, on the special Paris-Bakou-Kabul charter flight. Thus the British and French governments will be completing the endless refugee carousel to a country listed, by Crisis Watch amongst others, as among the top "continuing conflicts that create refugees."

See: Indymedia background article

Titan IRC Plans Revealed

The UK Borders Agency have revealed the plans for the latest co-called Immigration Removal Centre at Bullingdon near Bicester, on ex-military land next to HMP Bullingdon according to the BBC. The land had previously been flagged as the site for one of a series of propsed 'immigrant accommodation centre', plans that were dropped in June 2005 following various planning appeals, a judicial review and a final Court of Appeal decision in its favour.

The new IRC is to be twice the size of the soon to be opened Brook House at Gatwick Airport and 4 times the size of Campsfield, the other IRC in Oxfordshire, holding 800. It will also be built to the same standard as the Category C prison it will stand next to. Bullingdon will be the next stage in the government's massive expansion of the immigration arm of the prison industrial complex by 1300-1500 places and stands alongside the planned new 2500 place titan prisons.

No Borders Brighton Film Night

ROMA IN ITALY (provisional title)

With an Introduction by the Director John Sinha
A New Film About The Living Conditions And Persecution Of The Roma People In Italy

UNDERGROUND LONDONERS

A Film About The Lives & Struggles Of Migrants Working In The London Underground

Tuesday 28th October 7.30pm
THE COWLEY CLUB
12 LONDON ROAD, BRIGHTON

We hope to also have some food available for those of you coming hot foot
from work and play.