Hunger strikers have been assaulted by guards and Denise McNeil, Aminata Camara, Sheree Wilson, Shellyann Stupart, Gladys Obiyan (designated as ‘ring-leaders’) have been detained in isolation in Bronzefield and Holloway prisons, again without being charged of any crime or being remanded in custody by a judge — their detention is purely administrative and on the say-so of bureaucrats in the UKBA.

The Yarl’s Wood Five and all others who have committed no crime must be released from detention immediately.

Close the detention centres! Stop the deportations!

What You Can do to Help:

The detained women are asking you to email/fax/phone/write to: Rt. Hon Alan Johnson, MP, Secretary of State for the Home Office, requesting that Denise, Aminata, Sheree, Shellyann, and Gladys, are returned to Yarl’s Wood immediately or released into the community.

Download model <Yarl’s Wood Five.doc>, which you can copy/amend/write your own version, there are no Home Office reference numbers available as the women were moved from Yarl’s Wood, without their belongings.

Rt. Hon Alan Johnson, MP
Secretary of State for the Home Office
3rd Floor, Peel Buildings
2 Marsham St
London SW1 4DF
Telephone: 020 7035 0195
Fax: 0870 336 9034
Email: Privateoffice.external@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
Emails: UKBApublicenquiries@UKBA.gsi.gov.uk
CITTO@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

Please let the campaign know of faxes/emails sent:
WomenBehindTheWire@ncadc.org.uk

Please keep sending Solidarity messages

Immigration controls, which exist to protect the lords of Capital from the importunities of those whose wealth imperialism has expropriated. Controls are implicitly racist and unfair — not least because their roots lie in fascist agitation against Jews, Africans and Asians. New Labour and the Tories are entirely committed to Fortress Europe and its network of dehumanising concentration camps, and ‘removal’ centres, where people are declared ‘illegal’ ie ‘un-human’ by virtue of their skin colour and passport and deported to persecution, torture and murder; frequently by governments propped up by ‘the West’. This is all on the pretext that there are ‘not enough’ jobs or houses to go around, as if there a fixed number of jobs or houses or schools. All the while the richest 1% of the world’s population grow ever richer (the wealth must be coming from somewhere) and food production and consumption and waste increase while half the world starves.

No to all immigration control legislation! No to immigration controls! Equal and full employment rights for all!

Working with four other unions, FDA, Unite, GMB and POA, Prospect has come to an agreement on the final changes to the scheme. Prospect members will therefore not be taking industrial action. There may be picket lines at your place of work on each of these days and for any subsequent action. It should be noted that PCS pickets at any place of work will be aimed at PCS grades and are not intended to prevent Prospect members from attending work on these days [...] This means that any Prospect members who decided not to cross a picket line would be in an individually vulnerable position, and in law we cannot advise members to take such action.

This does nothing to negate the PCS hierarchy’s own appalling economism and narrow self-interest. Members of the hierarchy are only interested in safeguarding their own comfortable permananet civil service jobs, cozying up to the bosses and ‘cutting’ little deals with them. Some delegates are uninterested in agency workers and actively discourage them from joining the union.

New Labour has failed to repeal the Tories’ anti-union legislation, but in the event of a Tory government after the May election, the position of workers will deteriorate even further, with attacks on workers’ terms and conditions of employment increasing, as the Tories, with their Victorian workhouse mentality, seek to make the workers pay for the economic and social devastation which are the fruits of Tory policies last time they were in government.

The fascist SDL is in disarray — its ability to organise has been severely degraded. The tactic of confrontation not accomodation has been vindicated yet again.

Abolishment of executions, immediate and unconditional release of labour activists and all other social movements activists from jails,

Rescinding all charges against labour movement arrestees,

Immediate and unconditional freedom in formation of labour unions, without the need to have permission from managements, compliance with all labour related international conventions, eradication of all non-labour establishments from working environments, and to prosecute the suppressors and deniers of workers’ human rights,

Unconditional rights to have strike, protest, and freedom of speech,

Complete equality between men and women at work and in all other aspects of social, economical and family lives,

Total abolishment of child labour and providing educational and medical environment for all children.

On the Royal Mile, over 100 police, including helicopters, police intelligence units and camera crews — are you putting that on YouTube pal? — formed four lines across the road either side of Jenny Ha’s pub where fascists were meeting. A Dutch observer shook his head and said ‘this country is gone, this country and America — fucked. They don’t allow fascists to do this sort of thing in civilised countries’.

Behaving in a predictably bone-headed and heavy-handed manner, police kettled hundreds of antifascist demonstrators and local residents for hours, with residents being prevented from entering or leaving, and shop-workers also kept from going to their jobs inside the cordon. Attempts to negotiate their passage through the cordon by neighbours, relatives and colleagues were rebuffed by police. Meanwhile the police personally escorted individual nazis to and from Jenny Ha’s pub through antifascist lines. Starting at two o’clock, SDL members were bused away from the area on chartered public buses under heavy police escort.

While most of the fascists scurried away back to their rat-holes, a few of the criminal scum were brave enough to show their faces on the street, whereupon they set about tearing up placards and attempting to intimidate demonstrators — obviously trying to start fights. The police looked on and did nothing to stop them. Racists are a protected species in Edinburgh. Next time they are called out to pick up the pieces of an Asian or Polish kid murdered by racist thugs, police can reflect upon their contribution to a ‘job well done’.

For a supposedly simple ‘public order’ policing operation, on which the police claimed to be doing nothing more than standing between two opposing groups, there were a great many officers engaged in ‘intelligence gathering’ — photographing and filming antifascists. Police were not observed filming the nazis.

Whose streets? Our streets! The SDL know they can’t come back to Edinburgh without an escort from a thousand of their mates in Lothian and Borders Police.

Home Office and UKBA officials with their imperialist world view of ‘blacks’ as brute savages and ‘monkeys’, strive for a passive and submissive detainee population to facilitate the efficient processing of inmates away from this country, where, as in any proper Greek tragedy, they can be quietly tortured and murdered off stage.

The Home Office claims everything is in order and while it denies mistreatment of the women, careful reading of the statement confirms the women are being ‘punished’ for protesting against the injustices to which they are subject.

Write to Phil Woolas MP, the Minister of State for Borders and Immigration (woolasp@parliament.uk or http://www.philwoolasmp.org/emailPhil.html) and the UKBA (UKBApublicenquiries@UKBA.gsi.gov.uk) to protest against the women’s brutal and dehumanising treatment.

The Guardian and Black Women’s Rape Action Project

Detention results from political decisions that represent a “hardening attitude towards irregular migrants and asylum seekers (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe)

End the Detention of Foreign Nationals Now!

Since the 5th of February 2010, we the residents at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre are on hunger strike which involves over 84 + women, who are protesting against the period of time spent in detention and the treatment that they receive while being detained.

The strike was sparked to protest and demand that the frustration and humiliation of all foreign nationals ends now.

We are demanding the following actions

• End the frustrations, physical and mental torture at the centre
• Allow enough time and make resources available to residents who need to fully present their cases.
• To end all false allegations and misrepresentations by the UKBA regarding detainees in order to refuse bail or temporary admissions.
• Access to appropriate medical treatment and care as in the community, access to edible and well cooked food, phones with good mobile connections, with camera and recording facilities to back up cases.
• To stop the forceful removal and degrading system of deportation of detainees
• To put law into practise, European rules governing standard of conditions of detention for migrants and asylum seekers and the length of time in detention.
• The abolition of detention for asylum seeker and torture victims
• Detention should be by a standard procedure prescribed by law, authorised by judicial authority and be subjected to periodic judicial reviews.
• To end the detention of children and their mothers, rape survivors and other torture victims, to end the detention of physically, mentally sick people and pregnant women for long period of time.
• To end the separation of children from their mothers being detained whether in detention or destitution.
• To end the detention of women detention after serving time in prison.
• To abolish the fast track system, in order to give asylum seekers a fair chance with their application, while understanding the particular needs of victims of torture, and access to reliable legal representation which the fast track system denies.
• To end the repeat detention of women granted temporary admission while reporting or signing after a short period out of detention.
• To a set period of time allowed to detain women, which should be no longer than 1 month, while waiting decision either from UKBA or court proceedings.

Finally instead of detention of foreign nationals, there are alternatives to detention stated by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). ‘The detention of asylum seekers and irregular migrants in Europe’, adopted on the 28th January 2010, extracts below.

9.1.1. detention of asylum seekers and irregular migrants shall be exceptional and only used after first reviewing all other alternatives and finding that there is no effective alternative;

9.3.4.1. placement in special establishments (open or semi-open);

9.3.4.2. registration and reporting;

9.3.4.3. release on bail/surety;

9.3.4.4. controlled release to individuals, family members, NGOs, religious organisations, or others;

9.3.4.5. handover of travel and other documents, release combined with appointment of a special worker;

Full Text: Council of Europe - Parliamentary Assembly Resolution 1707 (2010) The detention of asylum seekers and irregular migrants in Europe

Please support our concerns, lobby your MPs, Councilors, MEPs, demanding our immediate release and an end to arbitrary detention.

With Thanks,

Women behind the Wire @ Yarl’s Wood IRC

Messages of support/solidarity to: WomenBehindTheWire@ncadc.org.uk

In an act of vindictive union busting Alberto Durango, a leading activist in the campaign to achieve justice for cleaners in London, is facing the sack. Alberto, a leader of the Latin American Workers Association and member of UNITE, has been in the forefront of a series of campaigns to organise mainly migrant workers to challenge the exploitation and dire working conditions amongst cleaners.

Following a campaign at Schroeders bank the company Lancaster (part of Rentokil Initial) singled out Alberto for victimisation. He worked for Lancaster for over a decade: only when he became a union activist did they target him. A series of allegations were thrown at Alberto, they orchestrated his arrest by the Home Office based on misleading and false claims. He was released without charge. Having failed in their efforts Lancaster sacked Alberto regardless claiming he never worked for them under his true identity. After his dismissal the company then admitted following a union appeal that he had in fact worked for them in his true identity after all.

Alberto found new employment with the company MITIE at the Swiss bank UBS, he helped organise these workplaces and he is the elected shop-steward. However the contract has been transferred to Lancaster (Rentokil). Immediately on taking over the contract Lancaster have ignored the protections afforded by TUPE and set out to attack the terms and conditions of the workforce. They have now sacked the UNITE rep Alberto. Despite an ongoing Tribunal they have based this suspension on the reasons given when Alberto previously worked for this company. This is blatant persecution of a union activist. Just as in the building industry we are seeing these employers are operating a blacklist against trade unionists.

The City banks and the cleaning companies they hire to service their buildings’ are out to create a climate of fear that will deter workers from becoming reps and organising into unions. This is not an issue only for the migrant workers it is an attack on every member of the labour movement, it is the cutting edge of the agenda for cuts in pay and jobs. The workers at UBS deserve our solidarity – we must not let then succeed in victimising Alberto. It is time to stop these companies from engaging in discrimination, bullying and victimisation.

Chris Ford, UNITE Clerkenwell & St. Pancras 0694M branch organiser

DEMONSTRATION

Reinstate Alberto – Hands off Our Union
Friday 12 February 1:00 PM,
Outside UBS Capital, 100 Liverpool Street, London EC2M 2RH (note: changed from original venue)

Sponsoring organisations:
Latin American Workers Association; The Commune; La Comuna; Colombia Solidarity Campaign; Permanent Revolution; National Shop Stewards’ Network; Labour Representation Committee, Brent Trades Union Council, Rifondazione Comunista, Workers’ Liberty, International Federation of Iraqi Refugees, Coalition to Stop Deportations to Iraq, Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!; Green Left

Individual sponsors:
John McDonnell MP; Jeremy Dear, NUJ General Secretary, Steve Hedley RMT (LUL) Regional Organiser; Professor Gregor Gall, Research Professor of Industrial Relations, University of Hertfordshire; Pete Firmin, LRC Co-National Secretary; George Binette, Camden UNISON Branch Secretary (pc); Derek Wall, General Election Candidate for Windsor/former Green Party principal Speaker, Jerry Hicks, UNITE General Secretary Candidate, Vaughan Thomas, RMT (LUL) Regional President, Paul Haste, Morning Star industrial reporter

Please add your name and organisation to the sponsors:
write to latin_americanworkers@hotmail.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

This afternoon, Sunday 7th February, police raided the Kronstadt Hangar in Calais, smashing glass doors and arresting those inside.

The hangar, a new space for migrants and activists in Calais rented by the No Borders network and the French organisation SoS Sans Papier¹, opened yesterday afternoon to immediate repression from the authorities.

After the opening police blockaded the streets around the hangar and tried to prevent migrants from entering. In spite of this 150 migrants went in to have tea and coffee.

When people tried to leave this lunchtime they were beated by police batons and several of them sustained injuries, including one who was hospitalised. Soon afterwards, police forced their way into the hangar, causing damage to the building and arresting those inside.

London No Borders condemns this repression of migrants and supporters in the strongest terms. Its spokesperson Thomas Hausberg said that “if providing even basic support to homeless and destitute migrants is considered a criminal offence, the state has lost all semblance of humanity.”

It seems that this police repression and violence has been officially sanctioned. French Immigration Eric Besson has branded the Kronstadt Hangar “unacceptable” and in recent days Calais mayor Natasha Bouchart said she was prepared to use all means to prevent the space from opening. “Bouchart”, commented Rosie Young, another No Borders activist, “seems to have a personal vendetta against the migrants”.

This Tuesday London No Borders and No Borders Brighton are calling for a protest at 12.30pm outside the French Consulate in London.

London No Borders

For further comments please call 07535 319119 or e-mail noborderslondon@riseup.net

¹ At a press conference hosted by London No Borders last Thursday, it was explained that the aim of the Kronstadt Hangar is to provide a safe space for migrants and supporters to meet, to make the migrants visible and give them a voice of their own. For more details on the press
conference see: http://london.indymedia.org/articles/4265

See also Guardian article from Thursday.