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Round-Up April-May 2006
Our work with TCAR amongst impoverished asylum seeker communities in Newcastle is starting to show significant results. On 5 April around 40 people participated in a ‘Big Noise Demo’ outside North Shields Reporting Centre, banging pots and pans, and using instruments and megaphones to draw attention to the role played by the reporting centres in the whole apparatus of repression. The protest finished with a march into the centre of North Shields to talk to local people about the situation faced by some of the most vulnerable and oppressed people in their community. On 15 April a TCAR contingent travelled to Manchester to participate in the demonstration against the detention of asylum seekers, and issued a call for a national day of actions against reporting centres for 22 June. On 29 April a TCAR contingent took part in the Tyne and Wear May Day march, demanding the right to work for asylum seekers. Unfortunately this was marred by one of the Communist Party of Britain organisers from the 'May Day Committee', Martin Levy, who despite previously agreeing to allow a TCAR speaker on the platform, tried to prevent it at the last minute. He justified this by saying that a TCAR speaker had been called for earlier without a response, and now it was apparently impossible to change the schedule, despite the fact that it was running ahead of time. When discussions between this organiser and a group including a wide range of asylum seekers, communists, anarchists, trade unionists and other activists failed to move him, the TCAR speaker from Zimbabwe took to the stage anyway, and TCAR received major vocal and financial support from the crowd. An FRFI public meeting on racism in Newcastle on 19 April was attended by several residents from Woodlands Crescent, an estate which had been boarded up pending demolition, but then opened to house asylum seeker families. The houses are in appalling condition, street lighting is virtually non-existent, and residents have been subject to repeated racist attacks. Since attending the FRFI meeting many of these residents have become involved in TCAR, and are beginning to organise within the estate and to devise strategies to defend against attacks, both from individual racists and the state. On 4 May at 6am Mariam Nandawula, a Ugandan member of TCAR living on Woodlands Cresent, was snatched from her home together with her 5 year old son Jonah by around 10 immigration police and taken to Yarls Wood detention centre, due for deportation at 6.35 on Saturday morning. Another member of TCAR saw the raid and sounded the alarm. After two days of work and phone calls by hundreds of people, KLM made the decision not to carry Mariam on the scheduled flight. Following this a new solicitor was found, and a fresh asylum claim is now being lodged for Mariam and Jonah.