Anti-deportation campaigns

Toma Nikolaev is a well-respected Roma rights activist, journalist and former parliamentary candidate in Bulgaria. He has been persecuted in Bulgaria due to his criticism of the apartheid-like treatment of Bulgaria's 700,000 Roma. Fearing for his life after a bomb was placed near his home, Mr. Nikolaev sought asylum in the UK. On April 8, 2012 Toma Nikolaev attended a sit-in front of the Bulgarian Embassy in London to mark Roma Nation Day. Shortly after he was arrested under a European warrant and he spent three days in custody before being released on bail. He is scheduled to appear at...

John Laing, a cleaning contractor hired by London Overground, recently tricked nearly 30 of its employees — including an RMT union rep — into reporting for fake overtime, and subsequently handed them over to the UK Borders Agency. The workers, who were told to report to a meeting in a school hall on 25 October, were arrested by UKBA cops. They were detained and told they had to produce papers to verify their immigration status. Most workers had valid papers, and were later released. However, one worker — Marciano Flora — now faces deportation. Marciano has lived in the UK for five years and...

Betty Tibakawa is a young lesbian from Uganda who fled to the UK, because in her own country she was violently attacked because of her sexuality. Three men abducted her, kicked her in the stomach, and branded her inner thighs with hot irons. Her injuries were so severe she could not leave her home for two months. The UK immigration system wants to send her back to Uganda where they say she is “not at risk of harm”. Uganda has some of the most repressive anti-LGBT laws in the world. Huge international pressure only just managed to adjourn a law that would have made homosexuality (currently...

Six Iranian refugees are now in their fifth week of a hunger strike to demand asylum in the UK and protest against mistreatment by the Home Office. On Friday 6 May supporters will march to the Home Office in Westminster to demand fair treatment for refugees. The six were tortured and imprisoned for their involvement in opposition to the Iranian regime. But despite clear evidence of this, the Home Office has refused to let them stay in the UK. Facing deportation, they took drastic action: four of them have sewn their mouths together in protest; by Friday all will have gone 32 days without food...

Last month 72 workers disappeared from Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals. They were part of the hospitals’ ancillary staff. They are migrants. Where did they disappear to? The economic crisis means their cheap labour is not as useful anymore – at least for the moment. So the UK Border Agency was called in to get rid of them. The NHS trust complied. The workers were either arrested or deported. The workers who clean the hospital and feed the patients earn around the minimum wage. And due to the UKBA the workers are not even always paid for their hard work. Isn’t this slavery? As hospital users, as...

Start of the anti-immigrant drive: Tories plan to send orphans to Kabul. The Government's decision to fast-track the deportation of child and adolescent Afghans from Britain to Afghanistan is an outrage against public decency and elementary human rights. If the people of Britain have not been numbed and brainwashed by the torrents of scapegoat denunciations of immigrants in the press and by politicians (including the New Labour government), then this decision will be met by the fierce outcry it merits. These are children and adolescents who sought refuge in Britain as "unaccompanied asylum...

On 21 February anti-detention campaigners held a protest at Yarl’s Wood immigration prison in Bedfordshire in solidarity with women detainees who have been on hunger strike since 5th February. Activists from No Borders London, Campaign Against Immigration Controls and Feminist Fightback managed to get past the prison’s security barriers and walk around the barbed-wire fence with banners, shouting solidarity slogans via loudspeakers and making noise with pots and whistles for well over an hour. The protesters were repeatedly cheered by detainees inside, who waved their hands through half-open...

Messages of support/solidarity to: WomenBehindTheWire@ncadc.org.uk www.ncadc.org.uk Protest in support 2.30-4.30pm, this Friday 12 February Serco Offices, 18-20 Hand Court (off High Holborn) Facebook event here . Update from the Guardian (09/02): "Yarl's Wood women on hunger strike 'locked up and denied treatment'" 84 + Women on Hunger Strike, behind the Wire @ Yarl's Wood IRC "Detention results from political decisions that represent a "hardening attitude towards irregular migrants and asylum seekers" (*PACE) End the Detention of Foreign Nationals Now! Since the 5th of February 2010, we the...

Around 30 Iraqi asylum seekers whom the government tried to deport to Iraq last week are among a group of 50 hunger strikers at Brook House detention centre in West Sussex. The UK has been deporting “failed” Iraqi asylum seekers back to Iraqi Kurdistan for several years but last week for the first time tried to deport 39 people to Baghdad. In Baghdad, the authorities said they would only let in those who wanted to be let in, and no one should be forced to go back to Iraq against their will. Most on the flight chose to return to the UK. In a statement, the hunger strikers explain: “We have been...

30 June 2009, 23:50 The joint charter flight that was meant to carry rejected Nigerian refugees to Lagos via Dublin this afternoon has been delayed for several hours due to deportees' refusing to board the plane. As of 11pm, the flight, which was scheduled for 17:15, had still not left Gatwick airport. The resistance by the deportees had started earlier in the day when a family, who had not had Removal Directions and were only told to "pack" in the morning, refused to leave their cell. The family, who have a 10-year-old daughter, had an outstanding Judicial Review and were not expecting to be...