Resistance grows to Rwanda camps

Outside Home Office headquarters

by New Worker correspondent

Demonstrators gathered outside the Home Office in London on Monday to protest against the Government’s plan to send asylum-seekers to detention camps in central Africa. Around a thousand people rallied outside the Home Office HQ in Westminster to oppose widely-condemned plans to send refugees to detention camps in Rwanda that have even been denounced by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Prince of Wales.
    The Westminster picket, called by Stand Up to Racism and the Care4Calais movement, was part of a national Day of Action which included protests at the Brook House immigration removal centre at Gatwick airport and the mass action on the streets of Peckham in south London that forced Home Office officers to release an alleged illegal immigrant after a five-hour stand-off with hundreds of protesters that included three local Labour councillors.
    Over a hundred people had been told that they could be removed from the UK under the Home Office’s new policy to send migrants to Rwanda in a bid to curb Channel crossings. Thirty-one of them were due on the first flight on Tuesday with the Home Office planning to schedule more this year.
    Prince Charles was said to be "more than disappointed" by the Government's policy, with reports that he privately described the move as "appalling".
    On the eve of the first planned deportation flight PCS, the union that represents immigration officers, and the Care4Calais legal team were in court appealing against the result of their submission for an injunction last week to stop the flight going ahead. Care4Calais said: “Another Rwanda deportee has had his ticket cancelled. Twenty-one people have now had their Rwanda tickets cancelled, but ten still have live tickets for tomorrow.”
    They waited in despair at the RAF air-base at Boscombe Down in Wiltshire for their one-way trip to an uncertain future in Rwanda. But at the last moment the flight was grounded after the intervention of the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of an Iraqi national on the flight. All the migrants were then removed from the plane and the flight to Rwanda cancelled
    The European Court of Human Rights is not a European Union institution and Brexit has not affected the UK’s obligations to the Strasbourg court or the European Convention of Human Rights. The Court was set up in 1959 to rule on individual or state applications alleging violations of the civil and political rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights. It was originally proposed by Winston Churchill and British lawyers were involved in its formation. Its judgments are binding on the 46 Council of Europe member states that have ratified the Convention.

Anger as May reneges on promise to child refugees

by New Worker correspondent

PROTESTERS gathered in Whitehall on Friday night, 10^th February and the next day Lord Alf Dubs – accompanied by a group of children and other campaigners – presented a petition to Prime Minister Theresa May after she stunned the country by reneging on Britain’s promise made last May to take in 3,000 child refugees from the informal Calais camp.

There are estimated to be around 14 million refugees from the various wars in Africa and the Middle East – mostly the result of interventions, invasions and bombings by Britain, the United States and France.

Most of these desperate people are stuck in refugee camps in the countries close to their homes. But hundreds of thousands have been arriving in Europe seeking safety, peace and stability for themselves and their children.

And most European countries have accommodated thousands of them – none more than Greece and Italy, where the refugees first arrived in Europe.

But the British government has refused to take more than a relatively tiny handful – just 3,000 of the unaccompanied children. And even that pledge had to be wrung out of the Government by an amendment formulated by Lord Dubs to a parliamentary Bill on immigration. Dubs is a veteran campaigner who first came to Britain in the 1930s as a child refugee fleeing the Nazis.

Last week Home Secretary Amber Rudd claimed that the agreement to take even this small number of child refugees would “encourage migration” – as though people fleeing wars were making an optional lifestyle choice – and that local authorities did not have the resources to accommodate them.

Hundreds of religious leaders and celebrities have joined the swelling protest at May’s cruel betrayal of very vulnerable children.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, warned that halting the initiative would see more children being trafficked, exploited and killed. He said he was "saddened and shocked" at the decision and has insisted it is "deeply unjust" to leave the burden of caring for them on Italy and Greece, where thousands of refugees and migrants arrive from the conflict-ridden Middle East and north Africa.

He said he understood Rudd's argument that British and French authorities feared the scheme was acting as a "pull factor" for children to head to the Britain, and that it provides opportunities for people-traffickers. But speaking to BBC Radio 4's World At One, he said: "Parents do not casually wake up one day and say, well the easiest thing to do is to send our children off by themselves. This is the symptom of a situation more extreme than anything that any of us can ever imagine.”

About 50,000 people signed the petition that Alf Dubs presented to Number 10 Downing Street on Saturday.

When addressing the crowd of campaigners who had gathered outside Downing Street, he repeated the words of Nicholas Winton, who organised the evacuation of hundreds of Jewish children including Dubs from Prague in 1939, saying: “If it’s not impossible, there must be a way.”

Dubs said. “It doesn’t need a whole new consultation. We are going to keep the pressure up about this. I believe that the Government decision to limit the number of children allowed in to 350 flies in the face of both parliamentary opinion and public opinion.

“I was shocked and in disbelief, I couldn’t believe the Government could back off in quite that way. We want the Government to change their minds. The Government have said they don’t want to take more than 350 in total under the amendment.

“I think that’s a very shabby cop-out. I believe that there are thousands of unaccompanied child refugees suffering greatly in Greece, Italy and some in France.

“The Government has said no more and I think that is an abdication of their responsibilities, it goes against public opinion and it goes against parliamentary opinion.”

A number of Tory MPs have also promised to fight the decision to close the Dubs scheme. On Saturday, a Conservative peer who was granted asylum in Britain after fleeing the Bosnian war urged the Prime Minister to live up to Britain’s history as a haven for refugees.

A High Court challenge to the decision to close the Dubs scheme has been pencilled in for 2–4 May. The challenge, which is being brought by the charity Help Refugees, claims that the consultation process with local authorities that led to the cap on the scheme was “fundamentally flawed”.

BRITAIN’S SHAME OVER CHILD REFUGEES

By Daphne Liddle

AROUND 1,500 child refugees from the newly demolished “Calais Jungle” camp were completely abandoned for three days as the French and British governments denied responsibility for their care.

So far Britain has accepted just over 270 unaccompanied refugee children who have relatives already in this country. This is a drop in the ocean of the huge tide of refugees accepted by other European countries and many of those trying to get to Britain, through Calais, do have some contacts in Britain.

The French authorities have long regarded these refugees as Britain’s responsibility and the Calais Jungle as a health and safety hazard.

Last week the French authorities, using emergency powers, started the demolition of the camp. Most of the adults were driven away and have found their way to Paris. They are now sleeping on the streets of the French capital that are likely to become part of a new “Paris Jungle”.

That left around 1,500 unaccompanied children still in Calais with nowhere to go. The French authorities provided them with some empty shipping containers for shelter that was more secure than the shanties and tents they had been sleeping in. Most were teenagers between 12 and 17 but a few were much younger.

But no food or water was laid on except by charities working there. For three days they remained while French President François Hollande clamoured for Britain to take at least another 1,000 child refugees.

This raised the hopes of many of the children, so that when, on the third day, the French authorities softened and a fleet of buses arrived to move them out in groups to reception centres all around France, many thought they were setting off for Britain to be united with their relatives. They were bitterly disappointed.

The children were given no choice of where they were being taken but groups of friends and children from the same country of origin were allowed to stay together.

Two British immigration officers were put on each bus, at the request of the French authorities, to convince the children that Britain had rejected them and that it was not the French government that was preventing them going to Britain.

The actions of Theresa May’s government are all the more shameful after it ignored an offer by Queens Park Rangers football club to provide a fleet of coaches with social workers on board to bring the children to Britain if only the Government would sort out the paperwork.

Both the French and the British governments share much of the responsibility for the refugee crisis through imperialist interventions, bombings and invasions of Middle Eastern and African countries have led to endless wars, collapse of some governments and chaos that has made these countries unsafe to live in.

Millions of refugees have fled Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria – even more millions of refugees are still in these countries, homeless and destitute in their own lands.

Volunteers in Calais had put up a large sheet of paper on the fences around the shipping containers where refugees spent their last night in the camp, so departing asylum seekers could write messages.

They wrote: “We are not toys to play with. We are kids. We need lives” one message said. Another said: “Never give up. Going to the UK.”

Refugees welcome

 PROTESTERS gathered in Parliament Square in Westminster on  Saturday 15th October  to demand Government action to help refugees held in France’s infamous “Calais Jungle” camp, in a protest organised by Stand Up To Racism.

The demonstrators marched through the streets of London holding anti-racism banners and chanting: “Refugees are welcome here.”

An estimated 10,000 people are living in the refugee camp in Calais, known as the “Jungle”.

Conditions in the camp are overcrowded and unsanitary, and its inhabitants are also struggling with food shortages. The makeshift camp is located close to the Channel Tunnel linking France with Britain and there have been numerous incidents of people attempting to reach Britain by boarding trucks approaching the tunnel.

The French government has stressed that their British counterparts need to take their share of responsibility for the people in the camp. Visiting Calais in September, French President François Hollande expressed his “determination that the British authorities play their part in the humanitarian effort that France is undertaking and that they continue to do that in the future.”

French authorities want to close the camp by the end of the year and move the refugees to reception centres around the country. Aid groups have warned that the planned closure will lead to children and other vulnerable people disappearing and falling into the hands of smugglers – an issue raised by speakers during Saturday’s protest in London.

Organisers said that over 100 children went missing when French authorities shut part of the camp earlier this year.

Thousands march for refugees

by New Worker correspondent

AN ESTIMATED 10,000 people gathered in Park Lane, London on Saturday 17^th September for a march and rally to demand that Theresa May and her government fulfil their obligations under international law to admit more refugees to Britain to help to alleviate the growing world refugee crisis.

The march, organised by Solidarity with Refugees,  Amnesty International, the Stop the War Coalition and a number of charities was one of many around the world aiming to put pressure on the United Nations summit for refugees and migrants, which began in New York on Monday and was hosted by US President Barack Obama. Theresa May also attended this summit.

Currently there are 65 million displaced people and another 20 million in danger, the highest number since the end of the Second World War.

Marchers carried banners and placards from many diverse organisations, parties and community groups. Prominent slogans were: “No-one is illegal”, “Stop the drowning”, “Choose love” and  “Be human”.

The speakers at the rally in Parliament Square, where the huge march from Park Lane concluded  included Green leader Caroline Lucas, Labour peer and veteran campaigner Alf Dubs as well as actors Vanessa Redgrave, Douglas Booth, Juliet Stevenson and Liberal Democrat campaigner Shas Sheehan.

Vanessa Redgrave told the rally: “Citizens in this country, of whatever background, all want to obey the law. There are human rights laws. The present government and previous governments, Labour, coalition and Conservative, have been breaking international human rights law. We must hold them to account.”

Lord Dubs, who arrived in Britain under the Kindertransport programme for Jewish children as a six-year-old fleeing Nazi persecution, said in his speech that the Government has been “pretty hopeless” at dealing with the issue.

He told the crowd as he pointed towards Parliament: “I tell you, speaking here is a million times better than speaking in there. There is only one thing that is shifting this government and that is the force of public opinion and that means you.”

Solidarity with Refugees director Ros Ereira there had been a lack of leadership over taking action on the issue. “This week is going to be Theresa May’s first opportunity as our Prime Minister to represent us at a global summit.

“I really hope she is going to set the tone for what kind of a country we can be post-Brexit and with her new leadership. Hopefully she will want to portray us as an open, tolerant, welcoming society that wants to play an important role on the global stage and lead an appropriate global humanitarian response.”

Green MP Caroline Lucas told the rally that the solution to the refugee crisis is “not just humanitarian, it is political will”. She added: “It is not a crisis of the numbers of people coming, it is a crisis about the way the Government is managing it.”

She accused the Government of “failing to recognise that those seeking refuge in the UK are not desperate to come here, they are just desperate”.

According to the UN’s refugee agency, more than 3,200 people have died or gone missing attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe so far this year. Figures show a total of almost 300,000 people have attempted the journey and thousands remain stranded in Greece and Italy in poor living conditions.

Last year’s Refugees Welcome event attracted 100,000 demonstrators according to the organiser and took place shortly after the publication of pictures of refugee toddler Alan Kurdi’s body washed up on a Turkish beach.

Following that rally, the Government agreed to resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020. But, Ros  Ereira said, progress since then has been much too slow.

“We were really excited to hear the agreement was made,” she said. “I was always going to wish it would be more and better than that – but it was a huge step in the right direction. We are not on track to be meeting that commitment at the moment and of course we need to be doing more. The situation is growing, there are people dying and we need to stop that happening.”