Cardiff Zimbabwean Activist Speaks Out

Finally, a bold step is taken by Mr Brown, as it would seem, but lets pick up on the obvious: Halting deportations to Zimbabwe. What about those in detention? What does that mean for them? Nothing at all.

What does it mean for a suffering Asylum seeker? It means continue suffering while we try to get you back to Zimbabwe to a life you escaped 10 years ago. 10 years that you will never get back, to a home that is now foreign to you.

Basically, Mr Brown is not going to do anything positive for the Asylum seekers, the exit route has already been mapped out, keep them in Limbo, as long as it takes, until we can send then back.

But Mr Brown picks out the positives in all this. Failed asylum seekers get accommodation and shopping vouchers to keep them from being destitute. Some of the accommodation I have seen would not be suitable for a dead dog and this accommodation is not pro families. If you were single when you applied no consideration is made when you now have a family, thus you are forced to stay at a specified address while your family stays else where; with most abandoning the accommodation because partners can be forced to live in different cities. No one cares to address the family issue.

As for the shopping vouchers, let's see what one can do with £35 per week: buy food, clothes and all you need with just £140 per month? Because the shopping voucher is used in very specific shops and you have no actual money for local travel, all those asylum seekers walk because they can't afford to catch the bus. Imagine braving the cold and rainy weather on foot, well we are African so we must be accustomed to suffering even in places where things are meant to be easier.

The LEFT Alternative fights for unity between all workers - legal or 'illegal', migrant or 'native', locally and internationally. We support ALL anti-deportation campaigns.

Letter to the G8 - From a Zimbabwean Activist in Cardiff

Dear Gordon Brown,

It is with deep sadness that I watch and read the news about the G8 were you masquerade triumphantly on your new added sanctions that do not cause Mr Mugabe any loss of sleep but actually turn up the heat on the already suffering, brutalised, dejected, hopeless, sick, starving, poor and dying Zimbabweans citizens.

For years we have had sanctions against Mugabe, travel restrictions but it seems those were targeted at the Zimbabwean citizens as We are the ones that seem to be restricted on travel as Mr Mugabe seems to still travel as he pleases.

Recently you have decided to punish our sportsmen how is that a deterrent for Mr Mugabe who has had some of the most vocal protests about his regime come from our sports women and man.

What a performance you put on showing fake concern, Zimbabweans that escaped the regime have been made destitute and live in limbo; with uncertain futures while Your goons at the Home Office wait for the window opportunity to forcibly remove over 12 000 failed asylum seekers.

At the moment we have 6 Zimbabweans that have been in detention for 23 months.They have been treated like criminals or terrorist held for so long with no sentence, indefinitely. Their only hope being to just surrender to their fate and voluntary return to Zimbabwe for slaughter. So that we can read about them and add them to the statistics that you have and read every morning with your cup of tea.

In closing next time you speak on behalf of the Zimbabweans and their suffering don't bother with the performance because We all know you do not care about Us.

Simultaneous No Borders Blockades to Prevent Dawn Raids on Asylum Seekers

PRESS RELEASE: 18.12.2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

STARTS

“No Borders” Activists Prevent “Dawn Raids” on Children Protesters from the No Borders network are currently blockading the bases of Immigration Enforcement Officers in simultaneous actions across the country, stopping them from entering or leaving in vehicles. The protesters are currently blockading immigration reporting centres in Glasgow, Bristol and Portsmouth.

The protesters have been there since early this morning, and they have said that they will stay there until they can ensure that today, families throughout the country will be safe regardless of where they come from.

The protest coincides with the UN International Migrant's Day. In response to the growing number of attacks on family homes by the Borders and Immigration Agency, the No Borders network have taken action to expose and prevent the sinister tactic of “dawn raids” employed against families and young children.

In Bristol, the protesters were in place in time to obstrtuct bemused immigration officials, whose vehicles are now trapped in the car park. A frustrated police officer on the scene was heard to say, “how did you know a dawn raid was happening this morning?”

Dawn raids are used to gain custody of whole families in order to imprison them. Every day, doors are kicked in and families are snatched from their beds and taken to detention centres, where they are punished for seeking refuge in this country. They are taken away from their houses, jobs, schools and communities – their lives. Immigration Enforcement Officers come in the middle of the night as the children and their parents sleep in bed, and have not left to go to school or work. It also ensures no witnesses are present. There are no official statistics as to the number and regularity of these raids because the government will not release the figures. But the fleets of vehicles which have been blockaded this morning and the harrowing personal accounts of families indicate large-scale capacity.

Today No Borders have highlighted just a few of these bases, which are hidden around the country.

Simon Summerhill of the No Borders network said, “we are here to expose what the government is doing – breaking down doors and snatching children from their beds in the middle of the night. Some children go to school, others go to prison. Immigration officers regularly target the vulnerable- families, children and the ill or traumatised, in order to boost their official figures of deportations.”

Asylum seeking children are denied the human rights that all other children have. These rights include the right to go to school, the right to privacy, the right to family life (as established by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989). Under UK laws, children seeking asylum can be sent to jail and are often denied the right to education.

No Borders maintains that a legal system which divides between children that have human rights and those that do not, is institutionally racist. To deny a child the right to education because of their background is racist, just as to deny an adult the right to work because of their background is racist.

Nikki Dickinson of No Borders: “This is institutionalised child abuse. They take kids who have already been traumatised and cause them even more distress. The effects of snatch raids, detention and deportation on children are unmeasurable. The families have often been settled in an area for years, and their removal affects the community around them- family members left behind, friends and teachers at school, neighbours.”
ENDS

Notes to editors

1.No Borders is a coalition of groups who argue against all immigration controls and that freedom of movement is a basic human right.
2.The Scottish Executive Cabinet has recently announced its total and fundamental opposition to dawn raids - to any kind of forcible removal of children - and to detention of children. They also called for an amnesty, but they were rejected by Westminster.
3.For updates on the blockades, or for an interview with a No Borders activist, call: 07527463767

Cardiff RESPECT believes that workers of different countries have more in common with each other than their rulers. We believe that racism is a tool used by our rulers to divide and rules us. We defend the rights of migrants to live and work in this country free from harrassment.

Immigrant Workers - More State Harrasment

Immigration officers in late-night raid on restaurant
Nov 29 2007 by David James, South Wales Echo

NINE people were arrested by immigration officers in a late-night raid on a city restaurant.
Several police officers and staff from the new Borders Agency cordoned off the Hawaiian Restaurant, City Road, Roath Cardiff, at around 9.30pm yesterday.
Two of the men arrested are believed to have been failed asylumseekers from Albania.
A spokesman from the Immigration and Borders Agency said that officers had been acting on intelligence. He said: The agency, supported by South Wales Police, carried out an enforcement operation acting on intelligence that a number of immigration offenders would be present at the premises in Cardiff.
As of 9.30pm, two men suspected Albanian failed asylum seekers “have been arrested and taken to a police station in Cardiff forquestioning.
The restaurant did not want to comment last night.The raid happened on the same night as Immigration Minister LiamByrne visited South Wales to attend one of a series of events aimedat hearing the publics reaction to the Government's proposed immigration shake-up.
The new Borders Agency has already been separated from the HomeOffice and has carried out a series of raids on takeaways andrestaurants in South Wales. But the Government is planning to go further and introduce an Australian-style points system to control migration better in thewake of a series of scandals that revealed the lack of informationheld by the authorities about the number of migrants in Britain. Inspector Paul McCarthy of South Wales Police confirmed fourofficers had attended the raid last night and that dog handlers had been requested.

The rich are free to move to whichever country will give them the biggest tax break, but when poor people migrate they face racism, demonisation and state harrassment. Cardiff RESPECT stands shoulder-to-shoulder with immigrant workers and utterly condemns the actions of the border agency, we say: "One Race - The Human Race!".

Big business asks no questions when it comes to the source of their profits. So we, in Cardiff RESPECT, make no distinction between native-born and other workers, living in Wales, when it comes to fighting for rights, or to winning support for a socialist future. We see ourselves as the representatives and organisers of that section of the international working class living and working in Wales. We only recognise ‘illegal’ worker status in order to combat it. The fight to unite our class internationally, and to oppose all attempts to divide us, is as important today, as past heroic struggles to free and abolish slavery, to liberate women and to enforce workers’ rights. Indeed, the fight, to prevent the imposition of outlaw status on millions of workers, shows us that all three of these great campaigns still need to be re-fought.

Support Constance Nzenu's Anti-Deportation Campaign

The rich are allowed to move to which ever country will give them the biggest tax break but poor and working class people face demonisation and harrassment. Cardiff RESPECT says: No deportations!

Constance arrived in the UK in April 2005. Her asylum claim has been rejected and she is now facing imminent removal to Cameroon, the country from which she fled.

Constance left Cameroon because she was being forced into an arranged marriage that she did not want to engage in. Constance was living a happy life in Cameroon; she had completed her second degree in Law and was about to enroll for her PhD until the direction of her life was taken out of her hands.

Her father had made an arrangement with his friend for Constance to marry him in exchange for a large amount of money. Constance was not consulted in this matter. The man she was being forced to marry was from a different tribe. He is a Muslim. Constance is a Christian. She would be his third wife.

The condition on which Constance was to enter into this marriage was that she would undergo Female Genital Mutilation, which is widespread among Muslim communities in Cameroon.

Nationally, the United Nations estimates that about 20 percent of women in Cameroon are victims of circumcision, which can be carried out at any stage: at birth, during early childhood, in the course of adolescence, just before marriage or after the birth of the first child.
http://medilinkz.org/news/news2.asp?NewsID=1660

USA Report on Human Rights Practices:

Cameroon 2006

“Cameroon law does not prohibit female genital mutilation (FGM), Internal migration contributed to the spread of FGM to different parts of the country. The majority of FGM procedures were clitorectomies. The severest form of FGM, infibulation, was performed in the Kajifu region of the Southwest Province. FGM usually was practiced on infants and preadolescent girls. Public health centers in areas where FGM is frequently practiced counseled women about the harmful consequences of FGM; however, the government did not prosecute any persons charged with performing FGM. The Association of Women Against Violence continued to conduct a program in Maroua to assist victims of FGM and their families and to educate local populations. During the year breast ironing emerged as another form of violence against women, practiced in an effort to protect prematurely well-developed young girls from predatory older men. NGOs were leading public awareness campaigns to combat this practice.”

Constance refused to enter into this marriage and the matter was taken to court by the ‘fiancé.’ Constance similarly refused to go to the court hearing because she knew, from her education in Law in Cameroon, that the outcome of the case would be in the man’s favour.

Constance then left her family where she had been living, a search warrant was issued and the police became involved. Her Father also put an announcement out in a national newspaper offering a reward for anyone who returned her to the family because if the marriage didn’t go ahead they would owe the ‘fiancé’ the dowry money and be shamed within the community.

If Constance is forced to return to Cameroon she faces an uncertain and unhappy future: there will be recriminations from the police, the court, the ‘fiancé’ and her family, all because she refused to engage in the arranged marriage and the consequences of this marriage.

Constance would like to be free of persecution in Wales where she now lives; allowed to remain in Britain and become a European citizen in order to be able to work her way up in life and bring up her British born child in a Human Rights friendly environment.

‘Friends of Constance and Andrea’ are now campaigning to keep them in Cardiff.

Constance Nzeneu is an asset to the Cardiff community where she has lived for 2 years and three months. Her son Andreas was born here. Andreas’s father is German. He works in between Germany and the UK, and they have an ongoing relationship.

In the years she has lived in Cardiff, Constance has actively participated in the community and has made many friends here. She is an active member of the Heath Evangelical Church and Refugee Voice Wales and she has volunteered for Displaced People In Action and Black African Women Stepping Out. All these organisations have valued her contribution highly.

For more information about how you can help Constance, see here

Immigrant Workers: Police Harrassment in Cardiff

RESPECT members in Cardiff have reacted with disgust and anger to the news that fellow workers are being harrased by the home office and demand the immediate release and right to work of 5 arrested immigrant workers described as "illegal".

Adam Johannes, a clerical worker and member of Roath RESPECT who saw the operation first hand commented:

"Why should it be classified as illegal to come to Cardiff from another country to find work and seek a better life?

The UK state and their media demonise asylum seekers and economic refugees, but surely the real enemy of working people is the top 10% of the population who own two-thirds of the wealth in this country and are making us work the longest hours for the worst pay in Western Europe?

The wealthy will move to whichever country gives them the biggest tax break, but working people face discrimination, imprisonment and deportation.

It is vital that trade unionists, anti-capitalists and the organised labour movement defend immigrant workers and challenge racism: No one is illegal".

On Friday, the police sealed off both ends of Caroline Street (popularly known as Chip Alley) shutting down the street for half an hour as immigration and border authorities raided local fast food outlets. They bullied and harrased workers in the late night kebab and chip shops demanding passports and proof of status. 5 workers were taken away.