Yesterday News of the World 'Fake Sheik' reporter Mazher Mahmood and colleagues entrapped 66 undocumented workers and delivered them to Colnbrook Immigration Removal Center.
The Home Office reckons there are currently between 310,000 and 570,000 undocumented workers in the UK but these figures are widely believed to be a huge underestimate.
It took the News of the World undercover reporters less than two days to entrap 66 undocumented in London. All they had to do was to pose as gang masters seeking cheap labourers.
The first buslaod came from the East End, where the newspaper using it's undercover reporters put out the word that they needed day labourers.
Yesterday at 9.30 am, a 53-seater coach pulled up outside the Ruskin Arms pub in East Ham. Scores of workers, some clutching lunchboxes, piled on board.
The second bus came from outside a Sikh temple in Southall into which squeezed 21 workers
To the surprise of all the workers, BOTH buses headed straight to the Colnbrook Immigration Detention Centre near Heathrow where 25 uniformed police officers stood in wait.
The convoy was ordered into a secure compound where 35 immigration officers swooped.
Each man was searched and placed in detention. All mobiles were confiscated.
Last night a Home Office spokesman confirmed that of the 70 workers the News of the World delivered, 66 people had been arrested and detained. Among them were EIGHT failed asylum seekers already sought by immigration.
The Home Office said: "We are grateful to the News of the World for its work to bring these cases to light. Tackling illegal working is a top priority."
It took the News of the World undercover reporters less than two days to entrap 66 undocumented in London. All they had to do was to pose as gang masters seeking cheap labourers.
The first buslaod came from the East End, where the newspaper using it's undercover reporters put out the word that they needed day labourers.
Yesterday at 9.30 am, a 53-seater coach pulled up outside the Ruskin Arms pub in East Ham. Scores of workers, some clutching lunchboxes, piled on board.
The second bus came from outside a Sikh temple in Southall into which squeezed 21 workers
To the surprise of all the workers, BOTH buses headed straight to the Colnbrook Immigration Detention Centre near Heathrow where 25 uniformed police officers stood in wait.
The convoy was ordered into a secure compound where 35 immigration officers swooped.
Each man was searched and placed in detention. All mobiles were confiscated.
Last night a Home Office spokesman confirmed that of the 70 workers the News of the World delivered, 66 people had been arrested and detained. Among them were EIGHT failed asylum seekers already sought by immigration.
The Home Office said: "We are grateful to the News of the World for its work to bring these cases to light. Tackling illegal working is a top priority."
Comments
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NOTW copied exactly a satire video sketch attacking extreme racists
01.06.2006 19:02
Well, yesterday I spent some time looking at 'funny' (no, not ***those*** kind) videos, and amongst the cute kittens, amazing stunt RC helicopters and yo-yo's were two that stood out, both using the same person. They took the form of 'comedy' stunts involving 'real-people'. First one had a guy dress up as a KKK member (in white robe etc), with a wooden cross, and harrassing black people in his search for fuel for a cross-burning.
NOW HERE'S MY POINT. The same guy appears in the second video. This time he seemingly drives up to a bunch of mexican migrants standing at a known location for day-work-hire of illegals. Promising them a job, he fills up the back of his truck with mexican workers (after making a point of telling one that he is too 'dirty' to sit in the front, and then proceeds to drive at speed over speed-bumps, to the obvious discomfort of his passengers. Finally, he reaches his destination, the local US illegal-immigration department. Upon seeing where he has taken them, the mexican workers flee in all directions on foot.
I didn't check on the origin of the two videos, but the first had an intro-sign saying 'white racist' as if both were from some satirical cable-comedy show in the States. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO THINK THAT THE NEWS OF THE WORLD DID NOT BASE THEIR ACTIONS ON THIS RACIST, OR RACIST-MOCKING VIDEO.
OK, I don't normally give references (because anyone who cares will learn so very much by using google themselves to follow up), and I didn't bookmark the portal, but typing 'funny video kkk mexican' into google gives a hit too perfect for words, and proves my point to a tee. The second proper search hit on google, and the first obviously refering to the above mentioned videos, occurs within 'stormfront' an extreme right-wing 'white-power' racist site.
Following the link, a person calling himself 'Kroenen SS' (what can you say) says of the video that the NEWS OF THE WORLD so carefully re-created "Its funny...". Who knows, maybe this "Kroenen SS" at the stormfront forum is actually the editor of Murdoch's rag.
Why do I so often compare Blair's government, party, and media supporters with the original nazis? I hope by now fewer and fewer are asking this question.
twilight
fucking wankers (NOTW)
01.06.2006 23:03
poor bastards (people)
Wheres is the news of the world office
02.06.2006 13:14
anon
Their headquarters
02.06.2006 18:39
a *nice* wikipedia article on how they got to be there too:
anon
Do you know a scandal I should investigate? Call or email the News...
07.06.2006 00:16
Do you know a scandal Maz (Mazher Mahmood) should investigate? If so call him on 020 7782 4402 or email
Here is what the Colnbrook detainees wrote to 'Maz':
Dear Mr. Mahmood,
We, the detainees of Colnbrook Detention Centre think that you are a gutless, incompetent, bully, and together with your editors and newspapers pick on foreigners because they are a soft target. You do not represent the real views of the common UK nationals, but rather, you have been misleading the general public with your unfair, ill-informed partial news for years. You have influenced the way this government perceives it should deal with refugees and asylum, by presenting it as incompetent, to make it adopt inhuman policies against people who have fled their countries of origin for one reason or another. This has led to refugees not seeking asylum with the authorities, for fear of being detained and removed to countries where their lives would be in danger. This has in turn pushed those refugees to provide for their survival by being exploited to work long hours for very low pay (such as the ones you helped catch), for those very fears.
From your name, I can tell that you are a descendant of immigrants. In your quest to further your career, to please your bosses, to embarrass the government, and for whatever other selfish motives you may have in taking advantage of foreigners in the UK, we wonder how you sleep at night. You should reconsider your position by educating yourself on refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants' issues before you unfairly target them. You should go back to your roots and stop thinking that you are better than any other foreigners just because you hold British citizenship.
Well done for doing none of your business, and encouraging vigilanteism. You would be very much at home with BNP and Migrant Watch, Mr. Mazer Mahmood (News of the World) for your Nazi-like work of spreading hate and kidnapping people to detention centres ( UK concentration camps). Print this in your hate paper if you have the spine!
Read below and enlighten your ignorant self.
Victims of Intolerance! - 'Asylum Madness' in the UK
'The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Star and their three Sunday stablemates - *News of the World, Mail on Sunday and Express on Sunday,' slammed by UNHCR report
"Ill-informed or sloppy journalists or editors are one thing: they can always be better informed. A media organization that deliberately pursues an agenda which is applied to all its contents - not just the editorials and opinion columns, but also the news coverage - is something altogether more deadly."
UNHCR have published their quarterly 'Refugees' magazine, this issue 'examines the phenomenon of intolerance in many parts of the world and exposes the myths and misperceptions that give rise to it.'
António Guterres UN High Commissioner for Refugee in the introduction says: ""In some countries, deliberate attempts to dehumanise asylum seekers are continuing, always presenting them as menacing statistics, as criminals and bringers of disease, or as some other form of generalised abstract aberration that is easy to hate,"
"In an increasing number of countries, asylum seekers - and the refugees among them - have become a tool for political demagogues, or have been turned into faceless bogeymen by an unscrupulous popular press. "
The report devotes two pages to the media in the UK, reprinted below:
Colnbrook Detainees
DEMONSTRATE OUTSIDE THE NEWS OF THE WORLD THIS SUNDAY
07.06.2006 00:19
DEMONSTRATE OUTSIDE THE NEWS OF THE WORLD THIS SUNDAY - 11TH JUNE AT 11am, 1 VIRGINIA STREET
(off The Highway, nearest tube Tower Hill - District & Circle, or DLR Tower Gateway)
Last Sunday the News of the World publically boasted about how they had kidnapped 70 migrants in an article 'We catch 2 bus loads of illegal immigrants'. They explain how their undercover journalist had gone out pretended to be taking people to jobs, picked migrants up in a bus and delivered them to Colnbrook detention centre. The objective was, apparently, to expose the Home Office's failure to deal with 'illegal immigrants'.
It is terrifying to know that gutter journalists can go around the streets as vigilante immigration officers, wrecking people's lives, livelihoods, and perhaps even sending them to their death. If they can get away with this, which group of people is next on their hitlist to be lifted off the streets.
This culmination of a frenzy of bogus journalism directed at refugees and migrants over the last few months. Day after day the papers have had an orchestrated frenzy around 'foreign' criminals and 'illegal immigrants' setting the political agenda.
These 'news'papers weep crocodile tears about racist attacks and murders but they create the vicious racist atmosphere which encourages these things to happen. Is it any wonder that the British National Party wins seats when these papers are pushing the government to attack refugees and migrants even more than they are now?
Lets show these merchants of hate what we think of them. Bring yourselves, Bring your friends, Bring placards, Bring anything that makes lots of noise.
BE THERE!
London No Borders
No One is Illegal
NO ONE IS ILLEGAL