Brixton Rally says end deportations
Brixton Market, London. Sat 7 Mar 2020
The protest in Brixton has been going for almost an hour when I arrive,
and Antonia Bright of Movement for Justice is speaking
The protest was organised by MfJ and Lambeth Unison Black Workers
Group
They call for an end to all charter flights which are used to forcibly
deport asylum seekers and others
many of whom are still taking legal action to allow them to stay in
the UK.
The latest flight to Jamaica took only around a third of those the
Home Office had intended to deport, as the
court found that many had not had a proper chance to contest their
deportation as they could not contact their
legal advisers from the detention centre because telephones were not
working.
The Home Office has a hostile racist culture and is institutionally
racist - as a recent report has found, though this term was censored.
Karen Doyle of MfJ speaks. She holds a phone in her hand and has connected
with an asylum seeker held
in detention. The phone is connected to the PA system and we can hear
the conversation about the conditions
and the failed deportation attempt. People call for these asylum prisons
to be shut down. The detainees are
poorly fed and have few facilities and it is very hard for them to
properly prepare legal cases from them
A man who the courts stopped being forcibly deported tells us about
his treatment. He was held in a small
cage inside a van taking him to the airport for 14 hours without food,
in a space too small for him to even sit down
in what amounted to torture - and not released for hours after the
Home Office knew he could not be deported.
He talks about the conditions inside the privately run detention centres
and shows a picture of the small barred room he was housed in.
We don't treat asylum seekers humanely, despite many having gone through
terrible situations before they
come here, often victims of violent attacks and rape and in poor mental
and physical state. The Home Office
treats them as criminals and tries to deport them whatever they have
gone through - and disbelieves the
stories they tell. Accuses them of lying when they say they are gay,
of making up stories....
As another man speaks I have to leave
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