This is a story of the hundred of thousands invisible people - the “illegals” who feed the underbelly of Britain. Apparently there are up to 200,000 Chinese undocumented slave workers in Britain and god knows how many from other countries in Africa, Asia and South America.

Xiao Mei Guo was a 29 year old Chinese woman murdered for the fun of it because no one would bother to ask where she was or report her missing.

One day in August last year, a man called Derek Brown approached Xiao and offered to buy a large batch of DVDs if she agreed to come to his flat to prove they worked. She followed him. Nobody ever saw her again. He had bragged to a friend that he was going to become a “famous” serial killer, and so he came here, to Jack the Ripper’s old stomping ground.

The court – which reached a guilty verdict this week – was told that Brown picked out Xiao because “nobody would miss her”. She was an “illegal”. She had no rights. She was part of the moneyless shadow-world that swirls around the rich world, unpoliced and unprotected.

Like so many undocumented people, Xiao Mei Guo used to sell DVD’s. All over Europe there are the DVD sellers. In Spain Senegalese men, in France too there are Senegalese and other West Africans. Here in London it is mainly Chinese women and a few men. I think of the film “Dirty Little Pretty Things” and wonder how many of the invisible people go missing and end up as someone’s liver or kidney. Nobody ever looks at these people. In Spain I used to watch as the DVD sellers work the bars and streets and even when people bought the DVDs, I noticed they never ever looked at the men. The plastic DVD’s were more visible than the men selling them. I never bought DVDs in Spain but I have bought them here and I cant remember ever looking at the person I bought from.

Tags:

London
Undocumented workers
Immigration Britain

Last Thursday, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network [IJAN] was launched together with the Charter [also in Spanish] and Call-to-Action, at a press conference in London. The launch was chaired by Selma James together with Michael Kalmanovitz of the Payday Network and social activist and founding members of Matzpen, Prof Moshe Machover. The launch of IJAN is the culmination of 2 years of intensive work by anti-Zionists across the world.

What is different about the IJAN? Unlike other Jewish organisations such as Jews for Justice for Palestinians Anti-Zionist and unequivocally committed

to the dismantling of Israeli apartheid, the return of Palestinian refugees, and the ending of the Israeli colonization of historic Palestine.

I really felt I was witnessing something different in the launch of IJAN and saw it as a very important development in the fight against world racism, imperialism and capitalist oppression because for the first time I was hearing Jewish people standing up against the state of Israel and the ideology which seeks to legitimise the oppression and genocide of Palestinians. IJAN represents a network of Jewish people who do not want to be associated with Zionism and Israel, support the right of return of all Palestinians and oppose the Jewish homeland and the reject the right of all Jews to live in Israel.

Zionism is racist. It demands political, legal and economic power for Jews and European people and cultures over indigenous people and cultures. Zionism is not just racist but anti-Semitic. It endorses the sexist European anti-Semitic imagery of the effeminate and weak “diaspora Jew” and counters it with a violent and militarist “new Jew,” one who is a perpetrator rather than a victim of racialized violence.

[Read more…]

In “I’m a sexworker dont take away my livelihood”, Lara responds critically to the “Brothel Report” by the Poppy Project (research into the UK sex industry in London. which goes to great lengths to paint sexworkers as women who are forcibly trafficked, drug addicts, drunken victims of pimps. Lara’s story which is one story but no doubt there are as many Lara’s as there are sexworkers with vastly different experiences challenges this stereotype of sexworker as victim

“I feel obliged to state at this point that I have a good degree from a good university, as so many people assume we do this job because we are poor, uneducated souls. I say “we” because I am not alone – I know many, many women who work the length and breadth of the UK in the same way as I do. I cannot speak for all these women, of course, and I do not intend to try to do so, but suffice it to say that my situation is not an unusual one.”

Lara goes on to explain “her situation” which is probably typical of the majority of working Mums across the country. A situation she was personally unhappy with - long hours away from home, little money to show for the hard work, no time for your kids. She chose to do something different that would enable her to have a better quality of life - work as an “escort” from home. As she explains this is not for everyone but it was done out of choice and she is not a victim to be pitied nor a criminal nor a bad parent.

Escorting seemed like the natural solution. I say “natural” because it felt natural to me. I am well aware that this is not a job everybody could do. But as a sexually-aware and sexually-experienced woman in her mid-30s, the thought of having sex with strangers did not terrify me. I remember thinking that I might even enjoy it (and that has proved to be the case).

I work from a flat on which I pay the mortgage – I do not have any landlord to worry about. I charge £150 per hour and I get enough enquiries to enable me to choose my own working hours

What the Brothel report does is conflate sexworkers like Lara with women who are forced into prostitution through trafficking, pimping and drug addiction. Lara represents many women in the sex industry who have the right to chose how they earn a living without having to live up to some latent Victorian sense of morality that is built on belief that women and sex are dirty. As Lara points out the kind of people who traffic women for prostitution are hardly likely to bother whether prostitution is legal or otherwise. They are already operating illegally by trafficking and abusing women. By criminalising prostitution as opposed to focusing on preventing and prosecuting trafficking AND by failing to support those women who are real victims of crime, more women like Lara are put at risk by having to go underground and of loosing their children. What the Brothel Report doesn’t show is the hypocrisy of the British government towards trafficking victims who when found are in nearly all cases deported back to their home countries where they are once again vulnerable to be trafficked not just back to the UK but other countries across Europe and beyond.

Tags:
Sex Workers
Poppy Project
Brothel Report

Mr Ayodeji Omotade has been charged with threatening, abusive, insulting, disorderly behavior towards British Airways (BA) crew, as a result of intervening in the violent deportation of a fellow Nigerian.

The man, who was thought to be about 30, was being held down in his seat by four or five police officers as the other passengers filed on board, and was crying out in broken English that he was afraid he would die if he were sent back to Nigeria……………….The officers took him off the plane, then returned and arrested Ayodeji Omotade, one of the passengers who had complained vociferously about his treatment. When others on board protested noisily about Mr Omotade’s detention, the captain ordered them all off the flight.

British Airways need to answer to the question why they are prepared to collaborate with the violent removal of a distraught asylum seeker? Why has the peaceful protest by passengers against the inhumane treatment of a deportee been treated as a criminal act? Other airlines, including Virgin Nigeria have refused to fly victims of ill-treatment from escorts, and those who fear for their lives. .

Mr Omotade is being punished for acting humanely towards someone in distress. This is not an extraordinary act. It is something most of us would do when witnessing brutality. It is a situation that any one of us could find ourselves at any time.

“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 BA didn’t like it. This type of corporate tyranny must be challenged and stopped.” Ayo Omotode

PRESS RELEASE

September 14th, 2008RESPECT NIGERIANS COALITION (RNC) TO HOLD A PEACEFUL PROTEST AT THE BRITISH AIRWAYS CORPORATE HEADQUATERS, HARMONDSWORTH ON WEDNESDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER, 2008

Fellow Nigerians and well-wishers of Nigeria, This is to inform you of our intention to hold a peaceful demonstration at the Waterside Corporate Headquarters of British Airway Plc at Harmondsworth, London following the airlines persistent refusal to do what is right by Ayodeji Omotade and the Nigerian passengers whom its officials treated in a disrespectful, discriminatory, dehumanizing and racist manner on March 27, 2008 aboard Flight BA 075 from London Heathrow to Lagos, Nigeria [Full details here]

Despite repeated attempts to engage with BA - holding a peaceful protest at their Lagos HQ; discussing with their executives in Nigeria; writing to shareholders and meeting with some of them at the AGM, the company has persistently ignored our demands. Even several attempts by the Nigerian President, Umaru YarAdua and government ministers have been stonewalled.

We are now taking our protest to BA headquarters in London with the hope that the BA Board and senior management will address our demands.

ACTIONS
We are now calling on all those who believe in justice to join us in supporting Mr Ayodeji Omotade at the following two events in London:

[Read more…]

The New Statesmen publishes a special issue on the detention of non-British children some of whom are detained for indefinite periods of time in a manner which is “cruel and inhuman”.

It is shameful that UK law allows children who are not British to be detained without time limits and without judicial oversight. Many of the 2,000 or so children detained for administrative convenience every year have been here seeking asylum with their families. Others arrive on their own and are detained because, in the absence of identification papers, the immigration authorities refuse to believe that they are children.

For years the British government has tried to cover up the truth of what happens to women and children in detention centers such as Yarlswood. Now Sir Al Aynsley-Green, who is the Children’s Commissioner has exposed the reality for children in Yarlswood, nonetheless the government is refusing to change it’s policy towards asylum seekers in general and the detention of children in particular……

We were told of children denied the use of a toilet (or allowed to go only while being watched with the door open) before lengthy journeys in caged vans. Girls claimed they were made to get dressed in the presence of male officers, and boys vice versa. Virtually every child spoke of their fear and distress at being awakened and shouted at by adults in uniforms who had entered their homes violently. Children said they were separated from their parents, were not told where they were being taken, and were humiliated in front of friends and neighbours as parents were handcuffed and they themselves were marched into vans. One child told me of being removed from his class at school by uniformed officers. Children, even the youngest, are deeply affected and traumatised by these events. Many of them have recurring nightmares about them, and they often demonstrate changes in behaviour. They can become persistently withdrawn, cling to their parents, refuse food or wet the bed. Children’s best interests appear to me to be entirely invisible during the arrest and escorting process……………..

The UK’s immigration policy and detention of children is despicable. This is not just about compassion it is about justice and what is the right way to treat children - all children. Continue reading the rest of the report……….

UPDATE

A Center set up to keep children out of detention centers is due to close

The Home Office is abandoning a programme to accommodate children and their families outside immigration detention centres, it emerged last night.

Millbank, a former old people’s home in Ashford, Kent, was converted into a home for asylum-seeker families as part of an “alternative to detention” government pilot last year.

The project was aimed at keeping children in local schools while encouraging their families - who have exhausted their asylum appeals - to voluntarily return home.

However, the Guardian has learned that after almost a year in operation - during which it was supposed to accommodate up to 170 people a day - Millbank is empty.

Tags:
Detention of Children
UK Immigration and Asylum Policy
Yarlswood Detention Center
Jackqui Smith