Tag Archives: Airlines

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Dover detainees begin protest after forced removal to Angola on British Airways kills Jimmy Mubenga

Detainees in Dover immigration prison will start a mass protest today following the death of fellow detainee Jimmy Mubenga during his forcible
deportation on a British Airways flight to Angola.

In a statement, signed by over 25 of the detainees, they demanded

“an official investigation into the death of Jimmy Mubenga during his forcice
deportation to Angola on 12 October 2010. We demand that all those responsible for this brutal crime at the UKBA, G4S and British Airways are
held responsible and punished accordingly.”

Detainees in other detention centres around the country are said to have been disturbed by the news and may well start their own protests.

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Britain sending refused Congo asylum seekers back to threat of torture

Asylum seekers tell of imprisonment in DRC and violent persecution when they return.
Diane Taylor in the Guardian newspaper: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/27/drc-congo-deport-torture, Wednesday 27 May 2009.

No Borders opposes the Britain state’s policy of removing asylum seekers to DR Congo which they are now doing again with charter flights such as the one last Thursday carrying 24 people to Kinshasa. As usual, the UK Border Agency trots out it’s usual story about “ensuring that removals are carried out in the most sensitive way possible, treating those being removed with courtesy and dignity”. Yeah, right: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/british-guards-assault-and-racially-abuse-deportees-396034.html

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Tinsley House blockade against Iraq removal via charter flight, and hunger strike on inside

Early in the morning of March 17th, anti-deportation activists bravely put up a blockade of Tinsley House, an immigration detention near Gatwick airport, in order to try and prevent removal of Iraqi asylum seekers collected from here and also at detention centres at Dover and Campsfield (Cambs). Find full reports and pictures on Indymedia.
And not only action on the outside, since at the same time everyone inside Tinsley was on hunger strike, due to changes in the meal system since Brook House opened (breakfasts and evening meals are shipped from the new centre, portion sizes are smaller & evening meals have to be ordered 48hrs in advance).
Continue reading Tinsley House blockade against Iraq removal via charter flight, and hunger strike on inside →

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Sudanese cameraman new removal date set for Tues 2nd Dec – flight cancelled again but action still needed

UPDATE Dec 2nd: GOOD NEWS! Mustafa was released from Campsfield House IRC yesterday and arrived back in Nottingham late last night. He was released with nowhere to stay, but his friends were waiting. His campaign and Mustafa send many, many big thank yous’ to all the people who have signed petitions, faxed letters, been out in the cold getting signatures and letters signed. He still needs the signatures so he asks that people continue to circulate the petition around their contacts.

UPDATE: Mustafa’s removal flight was cancelled but please sign the petition and continue to email and/or send faxes [attachment=20] to the Home Office as this may only be a temporary delay to his removal (Click on read more for full text of email).

Support the campaign to prevent the second attempt by the government to remove Mustafa Abdulrahim Mustafa, Sudanese cameraman, from the UK. Mustafa Abdulrahim Mustafa from Sudan is detained in Campsfield House IRC and due to be forcibly removed from the UK on Tuesday 2nd December 2008 on BMI flight BD 0997 from Heathrow Terminal 1, @ 16.00 to Khartoum. Please sign the petition, and forward the petition address to others:
http://www.petitiononline.com/MustafaM/petition.html
Click on read more for other things you can do.
Continue reading Sudanese cameraman new removal date set for Tues 2nd Dec – flight cancelled again but action still needed →

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No Borders call for sustained action against BMI airways on 20th of each month, starting October 2008, until they stop deportation flights

No Borders call for sustained action against BMI airways on 20th of each month, starting October 2008, until they stop deportation flightsAfter the despicable stepping in of British Midlands Airways (BMI) to fly out Babi Badalov by force after Azerbaijan Airline bowed to pressure not to do it, South Wales No Borders have called for sustained action against BMI. In their leaflet [attachment=19] they say, “On the 20th October let?s hit BMI with everything we?ve got! Then let?s do this on the 20th of every month until BMI see sense.”

“BMI Babi – the airline with a tiny heart”

Read more for full text of the South Wales leaflet including contacts for BMI, and all other airports they operate from. BMI Baby operate from East Midlands airport. Please contact No Borders Nottingham if you wish to campaign against deportation flights.
Continue reading No Borders call for sustained action against BMI airways on 20th of each month, starting October 2008, until they stop deportation flights →

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Nottingham’s Mustafa Abdulrahim Mustafa detained & faces deportation on Saturday 4th October: Urgent appeal

Nottingham's Mustafa Abdulrahim Mustafa detained & faces deportation on Saturday 4th October: Urgent appeal

UPDATE: Mustafa is still here in England, but please continue to fax letters to the home secretary and immigration minister on his behalf. He is still in Campsfield house removal centre and the home office say they have no plans to release him.

Mustafa Abdulrahim Mustafa, who has been in UK since June 2004, was detained when he reported at his reporting centre in Loughborough this week. He is a Sudanese African of dual Dinka/Massaleit heritage ? his mother is from the Dinka tribe of Southern Sudan, and his father is from the Masseleit tribe in the West of Sudan. He criticised the Sudanese regime though his film work for which he was tortured: beaten and humiliated. Mustafa was detained last year when the Home Office were rounding up Sudanese prior to the second HGMO case last year. Another Appeal is set for November this year on the issue of torture of returnees to Sudan. But, as is typical of the Home Office before Appeals are heard, removals are rushed through. Mustafa has been given a Removal Notice set for Saturday 4th October, with BMI flight number BD 997 from Heathrow Terminal 1, flying to Beirut, and then on to Khartoum. We urge you to write on his behalf, to the Home Secretary, the Immigration Minister, and the Airline. Mustafa should not be returned to Sudan. Follow read more link for how to help. Model letters: [attachment=17] and [attachment=18]
Continue reading Nottingham’s Mustafa Abdulrahim Mustafa detained & faces deportation on Saturday 4th October: Urgent appeal →

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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.
Continue reading Nottingham family detained after morning immigration raid: Urgent appeal →

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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.
Continue reading Cardiff’s Babi is deported by BMI – the airline with a tiny heart →

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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.
Continue reading 52 Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers removed 17/18th September following brave airline revolt of the 15th. →

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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.
Continue reading Asylum seekers and fellow passengers resist airline deportations. Resistance is not futile! →