Friday 26 March 2010

Protest At WH Tours Over Involvement In Deportations

PRESS RELEASE, 25/03/2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


This Saturday, 27th March, anti-deportation activists will holding a peaceful protest from 11.30am-12.30pm outside the WH Tours office in Crawley about the company's involvement in the deportation of immigration detainees.(1)

WH Tours are regularly involved in transporting migrants from detention centres, such as Brook House and Tinsley House at nearby Gatwick, to airports to be forcibly deported.Deportees are regularly harmed by guards during deportations and once they have been returned to their "home" country they are regularly at risk of persecution, imprisonment, torture and even death. (2) The vast majority of deportations are to countries ravaged by wars and armed conflicts such as Afghanistan, Iraq, DR Congo, Nigeria, Jamaica and Sri Lanka.

Rosie Young, who will be at the protest on Saturday, says that by providing coaches to transport deportees to the airport, WH Tours are "complicit in human misery". Therefore, she continues, "we must protest until they cease all contracts with the UK Border Agency and G4S".

Campaigners are also calling for all schools, companies and individuals that use WH Tours to boycott them until they end their involvement in deportations.

More info: noborderslondon@riseup.net, 07535 319119.

Notes:

(1) WH Tours is based at The Kelvin Centre, Kelvin Way, Crawley RH10 9SF. See http://www.wandhgroup.co.uk/

(2) See for example: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/03/gay-iraqi-asylum-seeker. Also see this report about the abuse of migrants during deportation: http://www.medicaljustice.org.uk/content/view/411/88/

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