On June 17th & 18th the EU will vote on the proposed anti-immigration legislation”Returns Directive” which will enable member states to:
Detain and deport migrants including vulnerable people, unaccompanied minors (under 18 years of age) and pregnant women.
Expel unaccompanied minors and other migrants to a country where they have neither family nor legal support.
Ban an expelled migrant from re-entering any part of the EU for up to 5 years. Detain non-EU migrants for up to 18 months.
Europeans arrived en masse in the countries of Latin America and North America, without visas or conditions imposed by the authorities. They were always welcome, and they continue to be, in our countries on the American continent, which therefore absorb the economic misery of Europe and its political crises. They came to our continent to exploit its wealth and transfer it to Europe, with a very high cost for America’s original population. Such is the case in our Cerro Rico, in Potosi, where the fabulous silver mines provided the European continent its coinage from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The goods and personal rights of the European migrants were always respected.
Today the European Union is the main destination for the world’s migrants, as a consequence of its positive image as an area of prosperity and public freedom. The vast majority of the migrants come to the EU to contribute to this prosperity, not to take advantage of it. They occupy jobs in public works, construction, personal services and hospitals, which Europeans can’t or don’t wish to fill. They contribute to the European continent’s dynamic demographic, to maintaining the relationship between the active and inactive that in turn makes possible its generous systems of social security, internal market stimulation and social cohesion. Migrants offer a solution to the EU’s demographic and financial problems
As far as the UK is concerned many of above measures are already taking place and this will add to the criminalisation and internment of immigrants. As things stand right now it is near impossible for asylum seekers to seek legal representation or medical assistance whilst in detention - see here and here and here.
Thousands of Zimbabweans are to face forced removal back to Zimbabwe after the elections. So far 500 failed asylum seekers have received letters asking them to leave voluntarily or face deportation but the eventual numbers could be as many as 7000. In 2005 the courts ruled in favour of Zimbabwean asylum seekers on the basis that simply by claiming asylum in the UK their lives could be in danger if deported. The decision to begin forced removals of failed asylum seekers contradicts the British governments stance towards Zimbabwe including supporting a ban of the Zimbabwean cricket team and the PM refusing to talk to Mugabe. In one breath the British governments accuses Mugabe of being evil personified and in another states there is no danger to returned asylum seekers.
Support for the asylum seekers is growing amongst MPs and local government as well as refugee organisations especially with today’s release of a report damming Britain’s asylum policy as “inhumane and oppressive”
The commission found that Britain’s treatment of asylum-seekers “falls seriously below the standards to be expected of a humane and civilised society”. Its interim report will be delivered to the Home Office today by a delegation of asylum-seekers.
The report details how the “adversarial” system is failing applicants from the very first point of interview, with officials accused of stacking the odds against genuine claimants. “A ‘culture of disbelief’ persists among decision-makers,” it said. “Along with lack of access to legal advice for applicants this is leading to perverse and unjust decisions.”
The culture of disbelief is very real as in the case of the Ghanaian woman who despite suffering from cancer and knowing fully well that she would not receive treatment in Ghana was still deported straight from her hospital bed in Cardiff and has since died. Another recent case is the Cameroonian woman who was immediately sent to Yarls Wood and her claim for asylum based on torture was ignored. A number of gays and lesbians seeking asylum on the basis of their sexuality and political activism are having to “prove” their sexuality - how do you do that? Right now there are thousands of people with no papers, unable to work or access health care or any support whatsoever. The Refugee Council is itself arrogant and selective in the way it responds to asylum seekers. A friend of mine recently went to the Refugee Welfare center and was insulted and made to wait the whole day before being able to make a claim for emergency money. The person had no money, no home, no job nothing and the REC were unable to do anything. The culture of disbelief is not just within the government but also at least with some of the staff at the Refugee Council’s welfare center. It is racialised where people of colour are looked on as suspect particularly when trying to access medical care whether at a hospital emergency room or doctors clinic.
The White Season is publicised as a programme examining why the English white working class feel “increasingly marginalised” but what we end up with is a free for all season for racists attempting to justify their irrational hatred for all people of colour and dislike of anyone foreign. From the dying Bradford working men’s club to the lost souls in London’s east end and the ‘Poles’ in between, we are repeatedly told how bad life is and it’s all because of the them. Reluctantly at first but as each programme progresses the more the racism flows freely and unchallenged.
The hands of immigrants turn the white man black in England’s green and pleasant land!
Bradford whites have no where to go so spend their days moping over pints of Guinness and ale and eating themselves up with racist hatred for the people they imagine are the root of their problems. There is one particularly horrible scene when a young unemployed man sitting in front of an English flag with a swastika in the middle says he hates “Paki’s”so much he wouldn’t bat an eyelid if he saw a child run over.
The Barking whites, are all packing up and moving out to be with “their own kind” in “outer Essex” . The programme begins with a group of pensioners in a dancing class making comments about the changes in their community
“Theres far too many people coming into the country we don’t have enough space for them”
“and they’re not our people”
“its supposed to be a free country but it’s not free when we want to speak is it” ”
theres so many nationalities here now you don’t know who’s who you don’t know where anybody s from”.
There is a little social engineering as the programme’s narrator suggests a white couple and Nigerian couple come together even though they would prefer to be with the white Albanians. Then there is the relationship of convenience between a Polish Holocaust survivor, Monty and a Ugandan woman Betty, who come together as two lonely people. Both benefit from the relationship which we are told is platonic, she looks after him and he looks after her. But there is something distinctly unpleasant about it.
The Barking programme is surreal as Betty attends a Holocaust reunion, she the only Black woman and only the men speaking to her and looking lost as they all stand up to sing the national anthem. Colour plays a large role in the prejudices, as the white couple wonder about their neighbor who doesn’t look too black well not black like a Nigerian - which is what he is. And the odd scene in which Dave the resident bigot and BNP campaigner with two mixed race grandchildren, is confused over a young lad when he is told the boy is mixed race and his mother African - he clearly thought the lad was white!
It’s all a bit suspicious having this programme which feeds so intensely into the latest immigration panic. Labour falling over itself whipping up anti-immigration sentiment with ideas floating around such as a “welfare” tax where immigrants have to pay a one off fee to offset any use of the health service and education; a £1000 bond payment by Britons for non EU relatives and friends who visit; no more council funded interpreters as foreigners must learn English; a “British” day and swearing allegiance to the Queen – judging from CiF in the Guardian this one is definitely going to be a non-starter except maybe for BNP supporters.
It is ironic that the BBC should broadcast a TV programme about white working class feeling marginalised when a fair percentage of English TV is centered around those very people such as East Enders, Coronation Street, a host of day time talk shows, sit coms, game shows etc. Try to find a Muslim or an African / African Caribbean on TV - the former will be something about terrorism - an attempt to blow up Parliament and the latter drugs, gangs and 419 scams. Furthermore because their is no opposing point of view the audience is left thinking the people in the programme are representative of the English white working class.
I notice Margaret Hodge (MP for Barking and Dagenham) adding her 5 cents worth to the programme in CiF with a spiel about how the borough has changed over the past 15 years. Hodge’s racism though not crude like Dave’s and the Bradford working mens club, is not even subtle. Back in October 2005, I commented on Hodge’s calls for immigrants to integrate. Then the immigration panic grew out of a Muslims wanting to have government funding for their schools. There have always been government funded faith based schools but it was only when Muslims began to want funding that they became an issue.
The basis of Ms Hodge’s demands is the rising racism amongst Britain’s white working class whose perception of generations of immigrants living in Britain, is based on complete myth and one which is forever being developed by sections of the tabloid press. The solution for Ms Hodge is not to combat the racists or educate this section of British society on the realities of immigration, asylum seekers and immigrants but to pander to the racists by implying that racism is the fault of the mainly Asian but also Black communities for not integrating. The word integration means that immigrants (in Britain the term refers to all non-white people no matter how long they or their families have actually lived in Britain, whether they were born there or whether they hold British nationality or not) must adopt the dominant morals, values and language the host culture.
Hodge is optimistic that in the end everything will be green and pleasant and Jerusalem will be found in multicultural Barking. I am also optimistic but only because in another 5 years there probably wont be any more white English working class in Barking and the BNP will have moved along with them to outer Essex in which case I might move to Barking myself. What the programme does show is that the racisms expressed have no rationality whatsoever and are built on myths and anger at the meaningless and emptiness of their own lives.
On the 5th anniversary of the Iraq war, Iraqi Veterans Against War (IVAW) US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan will be gathering in Washington today for 4 days of testimony on their experiences and feelings. The testimonies will be streamed on the internet and broadcast on satellite TV.
The veterans are not against the military and seek not to indict it – instead they seek to shine a light on the bigger picture: that the Abu Ghraib prison regime and the Haditha massacre of innocent Iraqis are not isolated incidents perpetrated by “bad seeds” as the military suggests, but evidence of an endemic problem. They will say they were asked to do terrible things and point the finger up the chain of command, which ignores, diminishes or covers up routine abuse and atrocities.
As of 1940hrs 29/02/08 I have been placed under an injunction preventing me from speaking publicly and publishing material gained as a result of my service in UKSF (SAS).
I will be continuing to collect evidence and opinion on British Involvement in extraordinary rendition, torture, secret detentions, extra judicial detention, use of evidence gained through torture, breaches of the Geneva Conventions, breaches of International Law and failure to abide by our obligations as per UN Convention Against Torture. I am carrying on regardless ”
Ben Griffin, Former UK Special forces trooper
The “Million women rise” march organised as part of the IWD event in London and supposed to be a day of solidarity between women and women’s group from across Britain ended with one group of women being silenced. The march started in Hyde Park and ended in a rally in Trafalgar Square. Whilst other women spoke about domestic violence, Iraq, Zimbabwe and expressed solidarity with women from everywhere on a range of issues one group were excluded. As poet and activist, Jean Binta Breeze stood on stage and read two of her poems on violence against women.
Across the square two members of the organising committee were informing one woman that she would no longer be allowed to speak.
Terisa Mackay of the Solidarity 1st Coalition to Decriminalise Prostitution based in Ipswich and who is also a member of the TGWU.
Terisa was due to speak about sex workers in Ipswich and how the women women were coming to terms with the murders and conviction of serial killer, Steve Wright, trying to return to their work and lives. Just before she was due to speak Terisa was informed that the organisers had changed their minds and she would no longer be able to speak. This decision was taken on the basis that two of the organising committee members did not approve of her speech and rather than challenge the two women they agreed to their decision.
What was supposed to be “a show of political, social, economic and creative solidarity.” was anything but that as I personally witnessed acts of verbal and physical violence from one group of women against another.
Ushers called in reinforcements to line up in front of the stage to prevent women from the various groups such as the English Collective of Prostitutes, Women Against Rape, All Africa’s Group’s Campaign and the Black Women’s Rape Project and their supporters from accessing the stage to express their disgust with the organisers decision.
They were further prevented from using their loudspeaker system and one of their members who was filming was attacked by another woman from the crowd. I witnessed all of the above plus women shouting that the sex workers should not be allowed to speak and one of them calling my friend a “black bitch”.
I and my friends and colleagues left, what had started out as a march of solidarity - or so we thought at the beginning- with not just a sense of frustration and disgust but the realisation that the words RESPECT and SOLIDARITY were not in the vocabulary of some of the women attending the march and rally. Whilst they were prepared to listen to Middle Eastern and African women about violence, rape and prostitution, they were not prepared to listen to sex workers in their own cities and country not to speak of the vulgar racism spouting out of their mouths. Clearly for some attending the march, sex workers were not entitled to respect, solidarity or a voice and Black women were bitches!
How safe to stand up in London and shout support for the “other” not on your doorstep yet when you are face to face with the presence of sex workers and women of colour you try to silence them and scream “not in my backyard”!
Criminalisation and marginalisation of Sex Workers
Andrea Spyropoulos 10 minute talk at meeting held by the Safety First Coalition at the Houses of Parliament, London, 17 October 2007 — versus the increased criminalisation of sex-work in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
