Demonstration at Waterside Reporting centre, Kirstall road as part of a National day of action against reporting centres (as part of refugee week) Thurs June 22nd 10am – 4pm

From 10am to 4pm there will be a demonstration outside Waterside reporting centre to mark our opposition to the inhumane treatment received in the reporting centres. This will include information on what really happens in reporting centres and a stall to welcome asylum seekers with free food, a free shop, and music. This is one of many events taking place on Thurs 22nd June around the UK outside reporting centres to let the Immigration and Nationality Directorate at the Home Office know that the war on asylum seekers must
stop.

Waterside Court in Kirkstall is the home of the regional office of NASS – the National Asylum Support Service – and the Immigration Nationality Directorate. Asylum seekers must report here with their identity card and papers every month, fortnight, week and even
every day, or risk imprisonment and deportation.

The reporting system is a form of mental torture. For some it’s a 25 mile trip and many have no transport. Asylum seekers and their children are forced to queue outside the building come rain or snow for up to an hour. Guards and immigration officials routinely humiliate asylum seekers, shouting at them for being 5 minutes late, calling them liars, speaking down at them and making racist comments. Their bags, wallets, even the inside of their mobile phones are searched. All this just to show your ID and confirm your address!

But it gets worse. Every time they report, asylum seekers face the prospect of being suddenly detained and deported, ripped from their families and friends and returned to face possible persecution and death. Such fear and stress has tragic consequences as the
recent suicide of a young man in Leeds proves.

Judith, a Nigerian asylum seeker living in Leeds says:

“One time, an official told me that someone would come and talk to me about changing my reporting time, so I sat down. Then 6 officials came and took me to a special room. They told me I had to leave the country and that my flight was tomorrow. They detained me from
midday until 7.30pm with no food or water, secretly took my picture in this room to use for travel documents and then escorted me like a prisoner to Yarls Wood. The guards stank of drugs; the van stank of urine as people before me had been forced to relieve themselves because the driver refused to stop. The next day, they forced me on to the plane but I could not go back to Africa, so I screamed and screamed and they kicked me so hard in the stomach I nearly died.”

In the evening of 23rd June from 6pm, there will be an evening of film, food and music at the Common Place social centre in Wharf Street, including the premiere of “Tears and Fears” a film made by a destitute asylum seeker from Leeds. This is a benefit event to raise money to help support destitute asylum seekers and those fighting the Home Office’s unjust decisions to refuse asylum.

Leeds No Borders works in solidarity with refugees, migrants, asylum seekers and other
campaign groups in Leeds and beyond. We are committed to practical solidarity, mutual aid and direct action in the fight against deportations, detentions, poverty and racism. We are part of a growing network rooted in the belief that all immigration controls are racist and divisive, and should be opposed and ultimately abolished.

There are over 2000 asylum seekers currently imprisoned in UK ‘detention centres’ and some 30,000 will experience detention every year. More than 2,000 children of asylum-seekers are locked up every year, leaving them suffering depression, nightmares and eating problems. They have committed no crime and many are subject to beatings and racist abuse.