Yesterday, as we announced, we’d another rally in front of Seoul (Mokdong) Immigration Office and we’d a special reason, beside Samar’s arrest, to rally: we wanted to announce that our prisoners and some MSSC members will go from Tuesday in hunger strike. From MSSC Radika, a woman from Nepal, Gasiman also from Nepal, Mamoon and Masoom, both from Bangladesh will make a hunger strike “until K.B., Haq and Samar are released from detention centers” according to the public statement they made on the rally. Inside the prisons Samar in Yeosu, K.B., Haq and surprising Haq’s inmate in his cell from Mongolia started yesterday a unlimited hunger strike. Actually it is not a surprise, it is just the fruit of our efforts to get solidarity under the migrant workers.
The rally itself was a strong manifestation of our willingness not to give up our struggle until the government meets our demands.
Because we’d to learn, that behind the opposite police station around 100 immigration officers were hanging around, we finished the rally after 45 min and just wanted to take our buses back to Myeong-dong. But the immigration officers had supposed another plan: just they wanted to arrest us, nothing else. So, while we left the rally place to get our buses waiting just some meters away 200 riot cops tried to block us and made the way free for around 100 immigration officers, drawn together from Seoul, Uijeongbu, Incheon and several other cities around Seoul, attacked us from left, right and back. They were trying to get so much as possible prisoners from our group. But because of the strong efforts of our supporters [Democratic Labour Party, Socialist Party, KEB Credit Card Union members, Hitech Korea Union members, Ji Min-joo, protest singer Yeon Yeong-seok, Norae gongjang (Song Factory) member’s, Kwon Yeong-joo, student solidarity groups like SF and NOHAK etc./ THANX A LOT TO THEM!!] our enemies were able to get only one of our struggling members – Gupta from Nepal. Partly it was our mistake that they got him and we’ll learn from it. Of course he is now also included in our demand to release migrant workers activists from detention centers!