Anti-deportation campaigns

from the national coalition of anti-deportation campaigns CAMPAIGNERS have reported that Lizwane Ndlovu, one of the original Zimbabwean detainees at Yarl’s Wood who went on hunger strike there over the summer, died last Thursday 10th November 2005. Lizwane Ndlovu is reported to have been not been well since being released from detention at the end of July. Campaigners say that she subsequently fell into a coma, and was hospitalised in Birmingham City Hospital who have confirmed Lizwane died there on Thursday last. We understand that Lizwane leaves two young children in Zimbabwe. Campaigners...

OVER 100 school children in Wigan took part in a rally last Saturday 5th November 2005 to demand five of their class-mates are brought back from Uganda. Sarah Hata and her children – Dennis, Hope, Maureen, Peace and Moris – were taken from their home, detained and finally, without warning, removed to Uganda on the 26 October. Teachers joined pupils from St Thomas More RC High School and St. Cuthbert's Primary School as read they out letters they have written to Prime Minister, Tony Blair. They are demanding that the Hata family are returned to their home in Wigan from Uganda whilst their...

A series of protests took place over the weekend in protest at the Government’s announcement that it plans to begin deporting “failed” asylum-seekers back to Iraq. Protests in Scotland, Wales and English cities with a large Iraqi population including Nottingham, Cardiff and Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham and London also highlighted the Government’s plans to cut benefits for Iraqis who do not return home, in an attempt to drive them out of the UK “voluntarily”. New Labour’s attempt to deport Iraqi asylum-seekers - many of whom are socialist political exiles from Saddam’s regime - back to a...

Two campaigns in suport of asylum seekers threatened by Britain's repressive laws. STOP THE DEPORTATION OF THE KHANALIS! The racism of immigration controls operates in many different ways. One way is to take asylum seekers out of the welfare state and make them dependant on a new poor law where they are involuntarily dispersed throughout the country and supported at 70% of income support level. The whole scheme is run by a Home Office body — the National Asylum Support Service (NASS). The latest way controls operate is through Section 9 of the 2004 Immigration and Asylum Act. This allows NASS...

By Dale Street As we go to press on 6 July around a hundred Zimbabwean asylum-seekers held in British detention centres are about to begin the third week of their hunger strike in protest at the government’s plans to remove them to Zimbabwe. To the best of our knowledge two hunger strikers have, for different reasons, been given temporary reprieve. But the campaign to save other Zimbabwean asylum seekers must continue. In January of 2002 the UK government adopted a policy of not returning asylum-seekers to Zimbabwe even if their asylum claims had been unsuccessful. Initially, this was intended...

On 14 July, the campaign by over a hundred Zimbabwean asylum-seekers who had gone on hunger strike, plus their supporters, won a victory. The Government has promised not to deport any "failed asylum seekers" to Zimbabwe before 4 August. On that day an appeal is due to be heard in the High Court against the Government's refusal to admit that the risks of harassment, injury, or murder by Robert Mugabe's police which people would face on being deported to Zimbabwe can be valid grounds for a fresh claim for asylum. Determined campaigning can win. But the respite is only brief. Zimbabweans and...

By Mike Rowley Very early on 4 May a group of activists from Oxford went down to Southampton Airport. Not, alas, to catch the 6.30 flight to Paris but to prevent an asylum seeker from being forced onto it against his will. That asylum seeker is a young man who fled to Britain from Congo-Brazzaville when close relatives were murdered by state forces. Once here, he was locked up in Campsfield House, a former young offenders’ institution north of Oxford. As a YOI, Campsfield was relatively nice, with sports facilities and views over the fields. Now it houses people who have committed no crime...