A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Vucaj family deported today - Protest, Saturday - Glasgow

no borders | 29.09.2005 12:15 | Anti-racism | Migration

A march in rally in Glasgow city centre against racist deportations will have added anger and sadness this Saturday. The protest was called by school-friends and neighbours of the Vucaj family, imprisoned 2 weeks ago, deported today.

1. Update from Positive Action in Housing
2. Press release from Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees
3. Anti-deportation links

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

1. Update from Positive Action In Housing, a Scottish anti-racist organisation:
(see

http://www.paih.org for background info)

Thursday 29 September 2005 - 11 am
VUCAJ FAMILY DEPORTED TODAY

Protest to take place in George Square Saturday 1st October, 2005 at 11 am
Further info: 07773321727

We understand the Vucaj Family has been deported on the 10 am flight to Kosovo from London Stanstead. The last we heard of the family was at 4.21 am. See below. Yarls Wood has wiped the family's details from its database as removed.

Robina Qureshi, Director of Positive Action Housing, said:
"At 4.21 am this morning, I was woken in the night,13 year old Saida Vucaj phoned me weeping and exhausted. She said they woke her and her family and told them to get dressed because they are taking her and her family back to ‘our country’ - and then the line went dead. I called back but the very friendly switchboard person told me he could not put me through until after seven am. ‘But they will be gone by then, please put me through’ I said. Sorry, he said, no can do. Phone after seven pm.

Now I’m the one who is upset. Worse than that I’m a fool because I believed that someone somewhere in a position of power would be able to help this family who have been Glasgow residents for five years, law abiding and honest. I was fool enough to think that children and photographs and lobbying and a visit to the first minister only seven days ago might change hearts, might win some form of reprieve. Instead, the family are being woken at dawn – yet again, so nothing’s changed there - and being ‘sent back’ to Kosovo or Albania taking with them the clothes on their back and their Glasgow accents.

I am disgusted by this calculated, unremitting barbarity known as the UK asylum & immigration policy. I feel ashamed of this country, that shame knows no depths, this calculated, unremitting barbarism that has broken that little girl’s heart will haunt this country for generations to come. I cannot express enough how disgusted and heartbroken I am for Saida Vucaj and her family, and all the other families waiting years and years and then suddenly picked up Nazi style to be deported. Disgusted."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

2. Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees press release
(before news of Vucaj family deportation broke)

Demonstration and rally:
AGAINST DEPORTATIONS

Saturday 1st October 2005, meet at 11.00am at
George Square then to St Enoch Square, Glasgow
Rally at 12 noon at St Enoch Square

End dawn raids on families End detention End deportation

Across Glasgow, refugee families are living in fear. Either they will be arrested at Brand Street (the Home Office) when they go to sign in, or they will be awakened between 5am and 7am one morning, given 5 minutes to pack and then after the father is handcuffed, split up from each other and put into vans by security staff. Sometimes they are not even allowed to phone friends. Then driven to a detention centre in England to await deportation.

Their destination will be a country in some sort of turmoil, often a war zone or a police state where imprisonment without trial, torture and execution are rife: a country from which they have fled in fear, leaving everything behind to seek safety and asylum in Britain.

Often these refugees have spent 4 or 5 years here. The children think of themselves as Scottish and speak “Glaswegian”. They are part of our community here. When their friends find out they are gone, they are also traumatised.

Scotland has a declining population and refugees are a vital part of this country’s future. Yet Jack McConnell is unable and unwilling to challenge Home Office policy, talking merely of “more sensitivity”. Meanwhile the Vucaj family remains in Yarlswood facing an uncertain future and Olusola Popoola, who attempted suicide in Dungavel rather than be parted from his family and has now been removed to Colebrooke high security removal centre.

We demand an immediate end to dawn arrests, to detention and to deportations.

Speakers will include: Sandra White SNP MSP; Patrick Harvie Green MSP; Tommy Sheridan SSP MSP; Kenny Ross Scottish regional sec’y of the Fire Brigade Union; Robina Qureshi PAIH and Aamer Anwar human rights lawyer.
Also a number of community and refugee campaigners and Scottish school friends of those recently removed will speak.

From: Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees
Contact: Margaret Woods - 07870 286 632