Here to stay, here to fight
Refugees,
asylum seekers and anti-racist campaigners turned out on Saturday [June
21st 2003] to re-affirm their determination to resist Government, media and far
right attacks on their right to live in
The close of Refugee Week saw over 80 people turn out at the Annual General Meeting of the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns [NCADC] in Birmingham.
The fact that the NCADC has not only survived but prospered in a year during which right papers, TV, press and Home Secretary David Blunkett launched a series of vicious attacks on the organisation is testimony to the determination of the workers, the management committee and the refugees and asylum seekers who were inspired by the NCADC to establish anti-deportation campaigns.
In
the past year the organisation reached and passed a remarkable landmark of
100 successful anti-deportation campaigns. This time last year Ally Mtiga
from
However,
there were also reports about people who had been deported, adding an air
of reality to the proceedings. Just last week Tayyip Oruc, a Kurdish asylum
seeker from
Nevertheless there was an air of rebellion as people fighting deportation, their friends and anti-racist campaigners affirmed their intentions to resist the Government’s use of detention centres, or prisons as they were correctly termed, cut backs in benefits which have forced many people to sleep rough and the increasing use of deportations as a threat to others seeking an escape from persecution and poverty.
Kakerai speaking on behalf of asylum seekers in Co Cleveland and Co Durham told of how refugees were “now having to exist without any benefits or accommodation from NASS and the Home Office. They are being made homeless.”
As this writer reported in the Morning Star in January homelessness in the north-east in increasing, this in an area where houses are being knocked down because there are not enough people to live in them. Yet refugees have nowhere to sleep. This is madness.
Kakerai continued “most of the refugees have seen family and friends killed. They suffer from depression and are badly traumatised. Some have had to have surgery because of their torture. The British Government knows it would be unsafe to return us, but they continue to arrest and deport us. We are treated like animals, not human beings. This goes completely against Human Rights.” He thanked the NCADC for its work on behalf of “the forgotten people.”
There were campaigns from people who had fled to Britain from all over the World, including form Bangladesh, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Eritrea, Burundi, Pakistan, Afghanistan, ex-Yugoslavia, Tanzania and the Congo.
It should be a source of pride to British people that their country is seen as a ‘haven’ to escape to. Instead a media inspired witch hunt has led to refugees and asylum seekers being demonised in the eyes of the indigenous community. As the chair of the meeting remarked “I think it would be fair to claim that we all have a common assertion that mankind and humanity are better served by building bridges rather than walls; and walls is the fundamental basis of immigration controls.”
There was a delicious irony to discover that the Daily Mail’s year long campaign against the NCADC, with five front page stories, had actually inspired a number of people to contact the group and run their own campaigns and in spite of the freezing for a number of months of the grant from the National Lottery [Community Fund] the group lost only a few thousand pounds. Donations which normally totalled around £1,500 had leaped ten fold to £15,404, many of these coming from rank and file trade unionists. Requests for continued assistance were made.
The NCADC has also opened a 4th office, this time in the North-East with ex-Labour Councillor Kath Sainsbury employed as the co-ordinator. She can be contacted on 01642 606 027
June 22nd 2003