Monthly Archives: September 2008

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Nottingham family detained after morning immigration raid: Urgent appeal

Selina Adda and children detained after a raid at their home in The Meadows

UPDATE: Removal stayed. Selina and her children were arriving home [/b]in Nottingham as of 4th Oct, after they were detained for removal to Ghana on Friday. A good neighbour drove to London to collect them as soon as they knew she was being released. Selina has seen that 940 supporters signed a petition in support of her and the children. Brian (aged 8) is very happy ‘to be out of the Dungeon’, and we are hoping that little Chelsea (5) will start eating again soon, because she wouldn’t eat in Yarl’s Wood (Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire). The campaign has learnt is that another family with young children ‘disappeared’ from the same school (St Patricks, in Wilford) over the summer holidays, and an older sister bringing a younger sibling to school mentioned that her family had beein in Yarlswood for three months last year. This is just one primary school… we need to keep the Campaign going for Selina, and we need to think about what else is going on in our midst.

Evening Post article:
http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/news/Mea…il/article.html

Selina Adda and her two children, Brian (aged 8) and Chelsea (aged 4) were detained after Immigration arrived at their home in The Meadows (Nottingham South) yesterday morning, just as they were getting ready to go to their school, St Patricks, in Wilford. Selina is from Ghana. She is now ill in Yarlswood, and her little girl is refusing to eat. Yesterday she just asked for orange juice, and Selina was explaining that there is none. Friends and supporters of Selina have put together a letter to the Immigration Minister, and a petition is up and running online
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/asf03oct/Selina and her children (The Adda Family: Home Office ref: A1290971) face removal to Ghana on Friday, BA 81 at 14.15 3rd October: LONDON HEATHROW–>ACCRA, GHANA (ACC). Use this model letter [attachment=16] to write to Liam Byrne.
Please send copies of what you have sent to the campaign address:
St Saviour’s Cottage, St Saviour’s Gardens, The Meadows, Nottingham, NG2 3HL
tel: 0115 9567686 email: selina_adda@live.com or to Nottingham & Notts Refugee Forum. Read more for full info and text of model letter. Complain to British Airways also (again, read more for phone/fax details).

This news comes as the Home Office has been forced to recognise that there are hundreds of claims by asylum-seekers of abuse and assault in detention centres and during removals, and start an investigation.
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No Borders ‘Self-educational’ at Sumac Centre – Friday 26th Sept 7.30pm & food by Small World Kitchen at 9pm

For the second of No Borders Nottingham ‘self-educationals’ (the first looked at immigration camps and border control in and around European Union) we’ll be discussing the situation in the Caucasus and south-Central Asia’s Russian borders. This is the area where warfare has taken place in recent weeks, following bombing by the Georgian military of South Ossetia and reprisals by Russia and South Ossetian militias. This has resulted in huge numbers of ‘internally displaced’ persons (refugees). It is also the region to which Babi Badalov was deported to from Cardiff by the British Government on Sunday, to Baku/Baki in Azerbaijan. All are welcome to turn up to this informal meeting at 7.30pm on Friday 26th September at The Sumac Centre in Forest Fields (follow link for directions). The meeting will be followed by followed by vegan African food cooked by Small World Kitchen at 9pm (suggested donation £3). Members or guests of Forest Fields Social Club may also buy drinks from the Sumac bar.
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200 strong ‘Freedom of movement’ block on Stop the War march in Manchester, 20th September 2008

200 strong 'Freedom of movement' block on Stop the War march in Manchester, 20th September 2008No Borders activists and anarchists marched together as part of a ‘Freedom of movement’ block on the Stop the War Coalition march in Manchester on 20th September 2008. Police surveillance and harassment was considerable, as reported on Indymedia UK. Around 200, some from No Borders Nottingham, supported the block.
200 strong 'Freedom of movement' block on Stop the War march in Manchester, 20th September 2008
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Manchester Roma Solidarity demo on 19th Sept 2008 well attended

Manchester Roma Solidarity demo on 19th Sept 2008 well attendedBetween 50 and 60 protesters. including Nottingham anarchists, picketed the Italian consulate in Manchester on Friday 19th Sept from 11.30am until 1.30pm, in a demonstration against the worst persecution of Roma people in Italy since the fascist era. The protest, called by the Anarchist Federation and No Borders, saw both sides of the Ducie Street entrance to the consulate at 111 Picadilly picketed, with the picket extending down the street and onto Picadilly, where both sides of the pavement were lined with demonstrators. 1000 leaflets detailing the persecution were distributed to interested passersby. The side street to the consulate was temporarily renamed Il Duce Street after the nickname of Italian fascist leader, Benito Mussolini. Consulate staff came down to investigate. More photos: Manchester Indymedia
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52 Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers removed 17/18th September following brave airline revolt of the 15th.

We are angry to convey the news that after the brave stopping of a charter plane before it was able to leave on 15th September, 52 Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers (including those assaulted and injured in the earlier revolt) were forcibly removed from British immigration detention centres to Erbil International Airport, Northern Iraq, on 17/18th September. They were met by two hundred Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) troops. From a report to the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees-IFIR & Coalition to Stop Deportation to Iraq-CSDIRAQ by one of those removed, at least one was separated off from the other asylum seekers and escorted away by the troops. Iraq is safe, our warmongering politicians lie, yet again. We lost this one, but resistance has worked before, and will no doubt continue.
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Cardiff’s Babi is deported by BMI – the airline with a tiny heart

LGBT Asylum News, Sunday, 21 September 2008: http://madikazemi.blogspot.com/2008/09/
Babakhan (Babi) Badalov was deported to Baku, Azerbaijan, from Heathrow Airport yesterday afternoon on a British Midlands Airways (BMI) to Baku. He was due to fly earlier in the day on Azerbaijan Airlines but the airline refused to take him after they were contacted by supporters of Babi. He sent a little poem to his friends in UK.

Cardiff's Babi is deported by BMI - the airline with a tiny heartBABI+HELLO FROM HELLBAIJAN
Fakkk you miss jacquyi locksmith from hellbaijan
fakk you united king kong yankee go khomebashi
will not died n kill myself
will conitine except you giving me adventure pain
i am live but its very terrible place to be here
i am affraid of my family come find me here
i lav all all you there
you all so good and nice plesant to me
—
Babi Badalov

Babi’s is not an isolated case. John ?Bosco? Nyombi was deported on a flight in Entebbe, Uganda on Friday evening. See: http://gayswithoutborders.wordpress.com/

We wish you luck Babi and John! Until these deportations are stopped it is the politicians like Jacqui ‘lock’ Smith & Liam Byrne, the UK Border Agency officials and their private contractors, and not least airlines like the defunct XL airways, Virgin (never done it before, honest), BA (British don’t care-ways) & now BMI ‘Babi’ (the airline with a tiny heart) who have (and will have) blood on their hands if the threats to the lives of these and other gay deportees become a reality.

*Note: If you are considering local action, BMI Baby may claim they are not the same as BMI (who deported Babi from Heathrow on flight BD929), which is, of course, nonsense – they’re the ‘low cost’ subsidiary of British Midland (who also bought British Mediterranean Airways BMED in Jan 2007), and so it’s little different than Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Nigeria. Yeah Baby! Nice try.
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Cardiff Gay Radical Artist Asylum Seeker Snatched! Protest Wednesday.

Babakhan Badalov, (Babi) the openly gay, internationally renowned radical artist and poet from Azerbaijan was arrested on the morning of 16th September during a reporting session in Cardiff. There will be a protest on Wednesday 17th September against Babi?s incarceration outside of the place where he was grabbed; the UK Border Agency offices at 31-33 Newport Road, Cardiff at 12 noon. All are welcome. This protest will only last one hour so people can come along in their lunch-breaks, and show your support with any banners or placards that you are able to make. Details and complains to Home Office from No Borders Wales. Friend and activist Hywel Bishop said: ?I?ve never seen anyone so scared. If Babi gets sent home he faces persecution from the state for his art, beatings from the local community, as well as the threat of honour killing from his family because they can?t live with the fact that he?s gay.?

On the same day, in Nottingham, a Zimbabwean women was detained at The Bridewell police station. There are many more signing detentions and dawn raids we don’t hear about. The inhuman harassment of asylum seekers in Britain is continuous. How much clearer can it be that nation states are the enemy of any freedom-loving person?
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Judge describes Nottingham ‘illegal’ worker “a perfectly respectable man who fled from Zimbabwe.”

At last, some recognition of the crazy way the British state treats asylum seekers, whilst allowing the populist press and racist troublemakers to call them scroungers. Even though he’d had to obtain fake documents to work and earn a living, Nottingham Evening Post reported that, Judge Dudley Bennett described a Zimbawean man Weldone Javangwe as a “perfectly respectable man” who has contributed to the Nottingham community. “You have been paying your taxes and you have not been a drain on our society in any way.” […] The decision was welcomed by Regis Manyanya, chairman of the Nottingham Zimbabwean Community Network, which campaigns for Zimbabweans refused asylum to be given the right to work. He said: “There are a lot of people in the same situation. Because they are living in destitution some of them feel they have no option but to work illegally. Some are being pushed into prostitution. “They are hard-working and want to make a living, but because of the system they are forced into committing these types of crime.”

Until the day when people are able to escape war and torture freely without borders, all asylum seekers should be able to work so they can try and avoid destitution while they concentrate on their cases and appeals, without this unnecessary additional hassle from vehicle licensing snoopers, immigration officials, police and the so-called justice system.
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Asylum seekers and fellow passengers resist airline deportations. Resistance is not futile!

How can 60 men vanish? Yesterday morning at Tinsley House immigration removal centre (IRC) near Gatwick airport, 15-20 men (Kurdish Iraqis) were being hurried to get ready to board a coach. Several were still waiting for responses from their solicitors, but their phones were quickly removed. At Colnbrook, another IRC at Heathrow airport, detainees had just received the news to get ready, and half an hour later all their phones were off too. Meanwhile at Dover there were about 20-30 men being hurried to board the coaches at about 11.30am, again phones off. When they asked where they were going to be taken so that they could let their families know, they were told, “Thats a Home Office Secret”. No departure time, flight number, airline, destination. So that’s around 60 Kurdish Iraqis being rounded up to be whisked away by the British state with maximum efficiency, minimum information, maximum fear. But this Iraqi Charter Flight never left the UK. Early reports suggest that detainees were forcibly put on to a Hamburg International plane. The plane sat on runway for four/five hours (probably because Erbil was unapproachable due to poor visibility caused by a sand storm). Then a ‘disturbance’ broke out, one detainee sustaining injuries, and a plane window was broken. The pilot said the plane was not air worthy and all detainees were removed from plane. All detainees are now back in removal centres. Dozens of Iraqi Kurds have been forcibly removed into an extremely dangerous and very often deadly environment – is it any surprise that they are resisting? These removals must end now.

Important update by International Federation of Iraqi Refugees-IFIR : Forcible Deportation of Iraqi asylum seekers ended in violence

Earlier this year, in a press release by the Respect Nigerians Coalition, it was explained how a man Ayodeji Omotade had been charged with threatening/abusive/insulting/disorderly behaviour towards British Airways (BA) crew, as a result of intervening in a violent deportation flight to Lagos on March 27, 2008, from Heathrow, London. Despite widespread public protest, including internationally, the case against Mr Omotade is going ahead, although his trial (due to take place Tomorrow Thursday 18th September at Uxbridge Magistrates Court) has been adjourned ? no new date yet. He sends his heartfelt thanks everyone who wrote messages of support.

Join a peaceful protest the day before at 12 noon, WEDNESDAY 17 SEPTEMBER, 2008, at British Airways PLC, Waterside (HAA3), Harmondworth, UB7 0GB.

Mr Omotade asks: “What would you do if someone on your flight was
distressed and crying out for help? Would you stay silent or would you
speak? I spoke and B A didn’t like it. This type of corporate tyranny
must be challenged and stopped.”

More details: Respect Nigerians Coalition: http://www.respectnigerians.com/BoycottBA.pdf

Note: the recently failed charter airline & tour operator XL Airways was previously forced by activist pressure to pull out from deportation flights. More pressure can and must be put on airlines not to participate in forced removals and deportations.
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