World Migration Newswire Archive

Octavie Bei a national of Cameroon and resident of London. Is due to be forcibly removed from UK to Cameroon on Kenya Airways Flight KQ101 tomorrow Friday 23rd April 2010 at 20:00 to Nairobi and onward to Cameroon.

Death of Kenyan man in Oakington last week offically recorded as unsuspicious. But Detainees in Oakington are saying otherwise. 60 imprisoned following protests. Cambridge Migrant Solidarity following up the injustices in Oakington...

Deaths from Self-Harm in immigration detention, murder, undetermined

This afternoon, her partner, Mohsen and his solicitor fought furiously to prevent the flight with appeals and an injunction. A large number of supporters, friends and activists remained on standby to travel to London Heathrow Airport ready to act. Peace campaigners deployed themselves in London and Washington even showing up in television news reports being broadcast from outside the British Parliament building.

There's now just under a month to go before the Paris Day of Action for Freedom of Movement!
...Have a read of this mini-update & book your travel now...

The day before her deportation takes place, supporters of Bita Ghaedi gather in London to object to her forced removal to Iran. Bita is an Iranian woman who has been living in the UK and campaigning against chronic human rights abuses committed in Iran during recent Pro-Democracy protests.

She has no where to go once she arrives in Iran and will be on the run almost immediately. She has lost weight as a result of repeated hunger strikes she has been undertaking in her desperate attempt to stay in the UK.

This morning (16th April 2010) at 7am, nine police and UK Border agency officers broke into Bita Ghaedi's home and forcibly arrested her. She has been removed to the infamous Yarls Wood detention centre and has been scheduled to be removed to Iran on 20th April 2010. If this removal is successful, the British Government will have condemned this woman to certain death.

Stop Deportation, along with other groups in Europe, are proposing a European Week of Action Against the Deportation Machine, with a focus on joint European mass deportation flights and Frontex. The proposed date is the first week of June 2010, 1st-6th.

The idea is that groups and campaigns throughout Europe organise their own direct actions, demos and marches against forcible deportations from European countries, which are increasingly carried out through joint coordinated 'operations' involving private contractors and shadowy agencies like Frontex and the IOM. Protests will inevitably take a variety of shapes but a series of coordinated, decentralised actions and protests would make the message clearer and louder. A week, rather than a day, of action would allow groups more flexibility to do what they want to do.

By trying to widen the scope and diversity of the groups involved, we also want to draw attention to the fact that anti-deportation is not a 'single issue campaign'. People choose or are forced to migrate for a variety or reasons, from wars and armed conflicts fuelled by the arms trade and western interests, through poverty, exploitation, discrimination, gender oppression, domestic and state violence, to climate change.

Here is a summary of the last week in Calais by No Borders/Calais Migrant Solidarity activists working there

"The notion that there is a flood of asylum seekers into richer countries is a myth, despite what some populists claim, our data shows that the numbers have remained stable." UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres

A transnational day of action for freedom of movement is in the pipeline. The event will take place in Paris on 15th May, target soon to be announced....

See the (translated) callout, below, book the date in your diary, start forming your affinity groups, and check the blog for updates.

DUDLEY SAYS .... NO TO RACISM !

Behind yesterday's seemingly positive declaration of the Chagos Islands as a "Marine Reserve" by the UK government lies a sinister not-very- well- hidden agenda...

Brighton CMS held demo outside the UKBA offices yesterday in Brighton, in solidarity with migrants in Calais and beyond.

«Total chaos!» At midnight on 30th March, this text message was sent from one of the detainees inside Ponte Galeria, the immigration prison in Rome, Italy. An hour prior to the text, a riot inside the detention centre had started: mattresses were burnt and two huge fires reached the infirmary. Some of the detainees were on the roof, while others broke three or four doors and reached the outer fence. The detention centre was soon full of riot police. Gunshots were heard around 1.20am.

It is no coincidence that the anti-immigrant, anti-Roma policies are put forward as policies for legality, security and against social and urban decay. It is a media strategy which also prevents the news getting out of Italy about the climate of racism that is now present on all levels of society. And this is one of the tasks our group has taken upon itself: to stop a curtain of silence and disinformation falling on the tragedy of racial violence and abuse.

The UK government through its Border Agency has decided not to give priority to the asylum application of Iraqi, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) leader Ali Hili, in exile in London. The application has been outstanding for nearly three years and while it is outstanding, Ali cannot travel.

On Friday 19th March the "Justice for UBS Cleaners - Reinstate Alberto Campaign" are now staging an international day of action against UBS offices in 3 countries and 6 capital cities including Zurich and New York.

More than fifty men from northern Iraq have been given deportation tickets telling them they will be removed to Erbil in the Kurdistan Regional Government controlled area in northern Iraq. The 50 are currently being held in immigration prisons in Heathrow, Gatwick and Doncaster. They told the detainees that they will be removed at 6pm tomorrow morning (17 March). The tickets state that they will be:

‘removed no sooner than 7 days and no later than 22 days from the date of this notice’.