Author: antiracist

The Daily Mail wrote a piece about the direct action taken by people in Shadwell last Wednesday with a usual mixture of fear-mongering and feigned indignation. Here is our response.

We want to make it clear that we unequivocally support those who took action to stop an immigration raid in Shadwell on 22nd July. Immigration raids – sometimes accompanied by sensationalist TV crews – are a cynical and aggressive show of force by the Home Office, and it should come as no surprise that people are fighting back. A few damaged tyres and egged windscreens are nothing compared to the violence that takes place every day when people are snatched from their loved ones, indefinitely detained, and forcibly expelled from the country.

The gutter press and politicians will always seek to isolate those who resist state repression by painting them as a threat. The Daily Mail’s racist headline about ‘Muslim Gangs’ is an attempt to capitalise on anti-Muslim sentiment and the reclassification of any criticism of the British state and so-called ‘British values’ as ‘extremism’.

In reality, immigration raids have been challenged by people from many different backgrounds. The resistance to the raid on East Street market a few weeks ago and this most recent challenge joins many other acts of resistance, non-cooperation and solidarity that happen all the time but rarely make headlines. The reference to a ‘Muslim gang’ in the headline of yesterday’s Daily Mail article is irrelevant, spurious (see ‘What is a Gang?) and deeply racist. The only way we can counter these targeted attacks designed to intimidate and divide us is by standing side by side with those who find the courage to take action.

Reposted from Rabble LDN

Reports are circulating of an attempted immigration raid being sabotaged by Shadwell locals on Wednesday (22 July). 16 tyres were let down and officers were egged. To make matters worse for the immigration cops, they had apparently been accompanied by media in a bid to do a spectacular “tough on immigration” stunt. The cops were called, and sadly two people were arrested in the incident.

One commenter said: “While they were busy raiding Chapman Street, their tyres got slashed, valves taken and cars scratched. The local garage refused to sell them tyres or help them. To top it all off they got egged from the local tower block and a few landed direct on their heads. Welcome to Shadwell.”

This article is from Rabble.org.uk and refers to a raid carried out yesterday (21st June) in Walworth.

Home Office immigration enforcement have been targeting the East Street market in Walworth, London SE17, all week, with no less than five raids over previous days. Today they came again at 5PM and snatched one man from a fish shop, presumably accused of working without legal documents.

But this time, things were not going to go so easy for the thugs in blue. After call-outs went out through the local grapevine and also on social media, people from the area including the next door Aylesbury Estate rushed down to the scene. The Home Office snatch van was blockaded and penned in on a side street off the market. The bullies retreated inside the van with their prisoner while it was surrounded by people’s bodies and by makeshift barricades, the tires were let down, and it was pelted with rotten fruit and eggs from the market.

The Home Office thugs called in police reinforcements. They arrived with six cars of cops, plus dog vans and plainclothes cops, and a helicopter circling overhead, as the street was cordoned off. However, the crowd kept on growing as more people from the estate and nearby streets joined in, local teenagers called up their mates, others arrived seeing it on social media.

The stand off continued for over an hour, the local police clueless about what to do next. Then three vans of TSG riot cops arrived, tooled up in full body armour. The TSG pushed through, escorting the Home Office van limping out on deflated tires. They came under sustained attack as new barricades of street furniture kept getting thrown up to stop their progress and hails of rocks, bottles, road cones, etc., kept them at bay. At least one TSG cop was knocked to the floor, a riot van windscreen and other windows broken.

In the end, they managed to get their prisoner out, and also took one more arrested from the resisters. After the immigration van had got out the crowd kept blocking the TSG vans with commercial rubbish bins and other barriers to continue the fighting. Eventually, visibly shaken by the angry mob,the TSG managed to escape. After giving them a rowdy send-off, the crowd danced to a mobile sound system.

This was concerted angry action which brought together local teenagers, Aylesbury Estate residents, anarchists, and whoever was in the street and not going to take this shit lying down. If we could meet more raids with resistance like this it would seriously screw up the system of repression. This is the response we want to be growing on our streets, every day of the week.

Passers-by in Peckham surrounded and challenged immigration officers earlier this month as they attempted to carry out checks on people at local shops. It is not clear exactly how the events unfolded and there are contradictory reports about whether anyone was actually detained during the operation, but what is evident is that when people step up and show each other solidarity, we can make immigration checks and raids a lot more difficult.

The following video of the incident offers a rare glimpse of the beautiful moment when often-silenced voices on the ‘debate’ on immigration come together in a message loud and clear for those in power: enough of your populist racist bullshit, enough of your demagoguery, enough of your divide-and-rule tactics — we live and work side by side one another, and we will fight for each other.

As the government promises to come down yet harder on working class migrants, we hope to see more and more popular and direct resistance to these raids, just as in Southall in 2013 and London’s West End last year.

According to information released this month via a Freedom of Information request  and shared with us (refused by the Home Office but subsequently released on request for review), Enforcement Teams in London conducted 12,026 ‘visits’ to homes, businesses and other sites in 2014. Visits include both raids to arrest and detain migrants, but also information and intelligence gathering of the kind we saw in last year’s Operation Skybreaker.

This works out to an average of 33 per day – or 231 per week – across London. The now thankfully defunct TV show UK Border Force last year bragged that  “London and South East Enforcement Teams carry out over 100 raids a week”.

Today the Prime Minister of the new Tory government promised to continue this war against ‘unwanted’ migrants in Britain – black & brown, and above all working class and poor – with promises to criminalise migrants working without permission, roll out landlord checks on prospective tenants, prevent people from opening bank accounts, and end immigration appeals.

The only way to answer this is widespread refusal to collaborate with the rich parasites who run this country and to show maximum solidarity with our ‘illegal’ brothers and sisters. We can share information on people’s rights, such as the multilingual information on this site. This is empowering, creates cultures of solidarity, and can protect individuals during checks and raids. However, as the government promises to enforce its policy of ‘deport first, appeal later’ (i.e., not at all), and erode more and more of our freedoms, it is not enough to focus solely on rights. Information-sharing is one tool, but not our only one.

We have a vision. A city – a country, a world – with zero tolerance for attacks and harassment by cops, home office ‘enforcers’, or private security. Where if the uniformed bullies turn up to smash someone’s door in, barge their way into a workplace, or stop people in the street, they get surrounded by neighbours and passers-by who know the score and won’t take their bullshit.

We’ve seen this happen, we’ve been part of this happening, and it’s a beautiful thing. The moments where we say: ‘No’, these are our streets, here we fight for each other. This is what we want to help grow and spread: a culture where we stand up for ourselves and for each other, a culture of defiance and solidarity. As the government ‘socially cleanses’ vast swathes of this country, let’s make this our response.

 

Submitted by a witness to the raid

On Monday 19 April the police and officers from Immigration Enforcement conducted raids on shops on Deptford High Street. The raid started with Agege bread, an Afro-Caribbean bakery, and then proceeded to a number of other black or asian owned businesses at the south end of the High Street. As far as I can tell, nobody was arrested or cautioned in connection with any crime. The immigration officers also failed to find anybody without documentation.

The officers gave a number of different reasons for their actions. At one shop they told staff that they wanted to check that the gas on the premises was safe, at another shop they claimed to be checking the lighting, at another they said they wanted to check whether the shop was obeying fire safety regulations. After each of these claims proved unsubstantiated, immigration officers proceeded to check the immigration status of people they found inside the shop.

Officers were reported as being rude and often refused to offer any clear answer when asked about the reasons for their actions. At one shop in particular, they completely closed it down for around 4 hours, and refused to allow the shopkeeper to leave, even though he was neither under arrest nor being held according to any other powers. When he asked to leave, they threatened him with a caution. There were also reports of officers asking at a number of shops whether the shopkeepers could give them access to the flats above. They had no warrants to search any flats on the High Street, and were very unclear about why they would want to enter the premises anyway.

After the raid I handed out information from the Anti Raids Network and spoke to shopkeepers. A common complaint was that raids on the market had been stepped up in recent years. One shop has already been raided five or six times in 2015; another shop three or four times since January. This is spoiling their business: as well as having goods seized, the presence of police and immigration officers on the market completely undermines business, and encourages customers to stay away. One shop had three employees taken away by Immigration Enforcement earlier this year. When I asked employees at a shop whether they thought immigration officers were focusing on any types of people in particular, they told me clearly that the officers only targeted black and asian people, and generally ignore white people.

In February the local Labour Party, apparently in cooperation with Lewisham Council, organised a meeting for market traders to discuss issues facing them. In attendance were the local labour councillors and Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Lewisham Deptford Vicky Foxcroft. First among the issues was the problem of speculative raids, which the councillors claimed were unauthorised. Traders were worried that their business was being destroyed by the actions of the police and Immigration Enforcement. Traders came away from the meeting feeling like something would be done about this by the councillors. However, nothing has changed since then, and many feel like their business will not survive if they and their customers continue to undergo harassment.

Another feeling on the market was that one reason for the increase in immigration raids over the last few months was the coming election. Traders felt that they and their customers were being punished for the racist rhetoric around immigration and refugees that has characterised public debate over the last few months.

Finally, another potential reason behind the raids is the imminent opening of a new £47 million development on the High Street this summer, the Deptford Project. The Project is planned to include “132 new homes, 14 artisan arch space workshops, 7 commercial units, 2 restaurants and a new market square.” This new build, one of a large number over the previous decade, will dramatically reconfigure the racial and class make-up of the area, and is a potential drive for the new businesses opening on the High Street (a skate shop, a bike shop/cafe, a coffee shop, the Job Centre pub, an art shop, &c). It is noticeable that none of these new businesses have been subjected to raids or check-ups on their gas, electric, or flats above their shops. It is also noticeable that their clientele is more likely to be white and middle-class. One interpretation of these raids could be that they are a purposeful attempt to undermine the economic base of minority stallholders on the market, to make it appear an even more attractive investment to real estate speculators.

At this point shopowners, traders, customers, employees and just about everyone else on the market subjected to these raids are feeling helpless. People consistently told me that they aren’t sure what they can do, or who they can talk to, to stop this happening. Many have already tried to raise complaints with official channels, and either been lied to or ignored in response. One person told me that the thing they liked most about working and living in Deptford was that people supported each other, regardless of where they were from or what the colour of their skin was. They also told me that it felt like this sense of community and openness to others was being destroyed by the raids, and that they worried about the future of the market if they are allowed to carry on.

 

Tahar Khalifa beaten by guards in an attempted deportation on Tuesday 31st March.

On Tuesday, 31st March, Tahar Khalifa, detained at Brook House detention centre, was forcibly removed from the centre in an attempted deportation to Tunisia, on flight TU791 at 1745hrs. As he was going up the stairs to the plane he was physically assaulted and beaten by the guards.

In a statement Tahar says that there were multiple officers trying to get him up the stairs; one was choking him, another was twisting his upper body. Tahar was handcuffed at the front and one officer was holding him by the wrist and pulling very hard.

The attempted deportation has left Tahar with multiple physical injuries. The handcuffs left him with deep cuts on his wrist; two of his fingers on his left hand are swollen very badly and he can’t move them and he has an injury to his leg.

Tahar has indefinite leave to remain in Greece and has lived there for 21 years. UKBA was trying to remove him to Tunisia against his wishes. Tahar has said he will go back to Greece, as he should by law under the Dublin convention, but does not want to go to Tunisia.

When Tahar arrived back at Brook House, one detainee was witness to his injuries when he was brought back to the centre called 999. He was put through to 101, which he called several times. As soon as the local police force heard he was calling from Brook House, they ‘didn’t want to know’ and said it was nothing to do with them.

The witness spoke to three people in the local force, they all said the same thing. He called 999 a second time, who also said that Brook House was not their responsibility. The police called Brook House and informed the officers of the name of the caller. The officers came and questioned the caller threateningly about why he had called the police.

Tahar described that the officers were “really worried” after the incident and took him to hospital, where he stayed for about 5 hours. That night he was feeling very paranoid because he didn’t feel safe in the cell and had to have people around him all the time. The next day he saw the doctor inside Brook House, together with a witness who helped with translation and tried to explain about the paranoia and flashbacks that had followed the attack. The witness saw the paper the doctor was writing on, and he was signed off as without serious problem.

There was a nurse present with a camera but she did not take pictures of the injuries. When the witness mentioned the police, the nurse’s “face changed and she was really angry”.

One witness said:

“they know what they are doing. They pull the fingers from the joints so they don’t break them but it causes so much pain and damage. If it had been an officer who was beaten up the police would have come right away. We don’t feel safe to be in the care of the state because they have left our care in the hands of agency workers. We don’t have access to any legal information or anything like that. We don’t have access to the internet. We have computers in there but just screens not internet. Access is denied to all websites. It’s just a facade. He’s a humble guy, he’s not a trouble maker. He’s not a violent man, he can’t even speak English”

This incident is not an isolated case but part of a systematically violent immigration detention regime. Several reports released last month document the abuse and racism detainees suffer in detention centres in the UK:

*Recent report on Harmondsworth by Corporate Watch: ‘Its gonna break: life in the UK’s biggest detention centre’

* Channel 4 on Yarlswood.

Over 20 people have been killed in the UK detention system alone, and this figure does not include all the people killed in prisons or by the police.

In 2009 Jimmy Mubenga was killed during an attempted removal to Angola by plane.

Shut down all detention centres.
No deportations. No Borders. No Eurodac.

Photos of some of his injuries.

Today noise demonstrations inside and outside the detention centres.

This morning, a small group of supporters of the ongoing resistance inside Harmondsworth and Colnbrook, went again to make noise outside the two centres.

People in both centres were heard shouting ‘freedom’ and ‘we want justice’ from the central courtyards. Some people held signs up to the windows saying ‘no more detention’, others were banging on the walls and windows. One group managed to open a window and were shouting to the supporters outside ‘we want freedom’.

Detainees inside said they were not eating again today and people were refusing to go to the kitchens. They said that the Home Office had given no response to their demands and so they would CONTINUE to RESIST. Some people involved in the resistance have reportedly been moved to the isolation unit. They have been threatened with removal to other centres and with removal directions out of the UK.

The security levels were high, 8 security from the centre came outside and 8 – 10 police arrived shortly after. One security officer was trying to intimidate the supporters group, making up false stories about protesters to the police, encouraging them to make arrests. The police with help from the security forcibly removed the people making noise outside, pushing and pulling them away. No arrests were possible.

People inside the detention prisons of Harmondsworth and Colnbrook ask for more support outside. They ask that people spread their messages far and continue to come to make noise outside.

Resistance continues inside and out.

Solidarity.

No Borders. No detention prisons. No Eurodac.

Some of the most recent statements from inside:

NO ONE CARES

‘’We eat or no eat, release or no release no one cares. It’s very bad here.’’

THE PROTEST IS STILL ON

‘’The protest is still on, we are outside. There are 150 people still out there and we have agreed not to eat until the demands are met. There is the possibility that they will stay outside in the courtyard tonight

We don’t have any access to social media but if you can post this it would be great.’’

I’M TALKING ABOUT THE 600 PEOPLE WHO ARE WITH ME IN THIS DETENTION

I’m talking about the six hundred people who are with me in this detention. This thing is not fair. If this place was in another country all you would see is BBC and every media…but because it’s a place in the UK they defend…so when I say to the Home Office “This place is prison”, they say to me “No- is not prison”.

THEY IMMIGRATION OFFICERS NOW HERE

‘’They immigration officers now here and they took the papers [with messages] from guys and trying to stop protest. They wrote the names of they guys who are protesting and had papers.’’

See https://detainedvoices.wordpress.com/ for more testimonies and information.

Other reports:

*Recent report on Harmondsworth by Corporate Watch: ‘Its gonna break: life in the UK’s biggest detention centre’

http://www.corporatewatch.org/news/2015/mar/04/harmondsworth-immigration-detention-centre-secret-filming-mitie