[Netnews-action] 4 July: Lobby British Airways Manchester to stop deporting to Zimbabwe

[michael]

-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Emma Ginn <ncadc-north-west at ncadc.org.uk>

Hi.  At our last picket of British Airways, our "Honk To Stop British
Airways Deporting to Zimbabwe" got us a number of honks ... this time
round it should be quite loud !

please come, show solidarity with the Zimbabwean hunger-strikers, help
us get passers-by and British Airways customers to sign Model Letters to
MPs and British Airways demanding they stop Zimbabwe deportations.

a national TV news station plan to come, and the bigger the crowd the
better.

and it may well be that the Home Office will still plan to carry out a
deportation care of British Airways on Tuesday


so, please - take a long lunch-break and join us on Monday

thanks !

emma
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Manchester Committee To Defend Asylum Seekers - Press Release

Lobby of British Airways Manchester to stop deporting to Zimbabwe
12.30 - 2pm Monday 4th July - British Airways Travel Shop, 41/43
Deansgate, Manchester, M3 2AY

Leonard R, a maths teacher from Manchester, faced being split up from
his family here earlier this year and being removed on a British Airways
flight into the hands of Mugabe's regime that persecuted him in
Zimbabwe.  Supporters asked British Airways not to deport Leonard but
they said their hands were tied.

Leonard R narrowly escaped deportation ; he lodged a Judicial Review and
was released from Campsfield Removal Centre where a teenage detainee was
found hanged earlier this week.

Leonard, the wife of another Zimbabwean currently being detained, and
supporters will be gathering outside the British Airways Travel Shop on
Deansgate at 12.30 on Monday.

"A brutal crackdown" in Zimbabwe, and the UK - Speaking in Brussels last
week, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that African leaders needed
"to recognise the scale of the horror that is taking place in Zimbabwe".
The Times reported that he told Zimbabwe's neighbours to do more to stop
the abuses and said "no government which subscribes to human rights and
democracy should allow this kind of thing effectively to go on under
their noses."

Yet whilst the Foreign Secretary has said that Zimbabweans are being
subjected to a "brutal crackdown" by Mugabe, it seems that right under
his nose his colleague the Home Secretary is sending Mugabe more victims
is his very own brutal crackdown, with arbitrary targets on deportations
at any cost.

Earlier this month Amnesty International reported about UK immigration
detention ; "The human cost of this policy is frighteningly high. We
found that languishing in detention with no end in sight had led to
mental illness, self-harm and even to people trying to take their own
life" and that detention "is in many cases protracted, inappropriate,
disproportionate and unlawful".

Many of the 99 Zimbabwean detainees reported to be on hunger-strike in
UK removal centres believe they have been refused asylum unfairly.
Speaking on radio, Kate Hoey MP said she knew personally and for a fact
that one of the hunger-strikers is a torture victim.  She said she had
managed to intervene to defer his deportation.  Meanwhile
hunger-strikers told The Times that they were threatened by staff at
several detention centres and told that they would be the first to be
deported.

The BBC "Asylum Undercover" programme captured guards abusing detainees
on film, boasting of assaulting detainees and how much they enjoyed it.
Immigration minister Des Browne revealed in January that detainees had
made 71 allegations of "improper treatment" regarding immigration
"escorts" in 2004 - we believe that's the "tip of the iceberg" ;
detainees call in daily with injuries ranging from cuts & bruises to,
fractures, sexual abuse and serious head injury.

In December 2004 the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of
Torture publish a report detailing that out of 14 cases they examined,
there were indications that 12 asylum seekers had been subjected to
excessive and/or gratuitous force in the deportation process. Not long
after, the Home Office agreed it would fit CCTV in the vans taking
detainees to the airport.

Three Zimbabwean women that have been on hunger-strike at Yarl's Wood
Removal Centre said that they have been taken to the airport in cars
without CCTV rather than vans with CCTV, claiming they were taken in a
convoy of three cars and assaulted whilst being taken to the plane and
also on the way back.

Zimbabwean detainees tell us that some of them have "removal directions"
for the next few days and that one for next week details a British
Airways flight.

Deporting Zimbabweans into Robert Mugabe's hands is as reprehensible as
what Mr Mugabe's regime does to them when they arrive. The paranoid
Zimbabwean government has branded asylum seekers being forcibly returned
from the UK as 'trained and bribed malcontents' and 'Blair's mercenaries
of regime change'. British Airways should play no part in deporting any
Zimbabwean asylum seekers and join the widespread demand that all
Zimbabweans be released from UK detention immediately.

Our lobby is aimed at all airlines, not British Airways. Commercial
airlines are involved in the removals process - we want to back their
concerns about removing asylum seekers to dangerous countries.

In this instance, British Airways can consider both UK legislation that
obliges them to carry deportees, and the current United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees directive "for States to suspend all removals
to Zimbabwe (initially made by UNHCR in March 2002) is maintained and
remains current and valid".  If British Airways were prepared to insist
respect of the UNHCR directive, we think they would be hugely supported
by the advocacy sector in any consequence - possibly joined by their
customers and UNHCR.

Please come and support the lobby!  Encourage commercial airlines to
challenge the situation! 

Contact : Emma Ginn on ncadc-north-west at ncadc.org.uk / 0161 740 6504