Refugee Follow

Blowing the horn for refugees SOME 80 campaigners protested outside Dover Young Offenders Institution on Monday of last week. This was the day it was taken over by the Immigration Service to become Dover Removals Centre.

A 350-STRONG conference in support of refugees took place in Manchester last Saturday. Suresh Grover from the National Civil Rights Movement summed up the mood at the opening session. He said:

Italian Prim Minister Silvio Berlusconi stands accused of letting more than 50 refugees drown when their ship sank off the ItaIian coast last week. The right wing Berlusconi is Tony Blair's closest political ally in the European Union.

New Labour immigration minister Lord Rooker congratulated the government last week for driving away refugees fleeing poverty and persecution. Vicious measures have stopped people finding safety in Britain. A glance at those who do make it shows that it is the most desperate people who try to get here.

Coincidence? You decide. Elie Hobeika was blown up by a car bomb in Beirut, Lebanon, three weeks ago. He was a leader of one of the Lebanese fascist groups which massacred over 2,500 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Beirut in 1982. Hobeika had agreed to give evidence to a Belgian inquiry into the role of current Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon in the atrocity.

Murder, mutilation, robbery and starvation-that is the reality of life for those Afghans who survived George W Bush's war on terrorism. The US bombing and the turmoil that has followed has moved hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. Many now cling to life in refugee camps. Starvation stalks the country. One camp is home to 150,000 destitute people. International aid organisations admit they are overwhelmed. In the southern city of Kandahar revenge killings and mutilations have become common.

THE TREATMENT of Zimbabwean asylum seekers has underlined the inhuman way Britain treats refugees. For months, while top government figures denounced Zimbabwe's human rights record, Zimbabwean asylum seekers were sent back to torture and death. Now, after an intense campaign and under huge pressure, the government says it will temporarily halt deportations to Zimbabwe.

TWO ISRAELI bulldozers rolled into the Palestinian refugee camp in Rafah in the Gaza Strip on Thursday of last week. Guarded by Israeli soldiers, they crushed the homes of 112 families, leaving over 600 people homeless, around half of them children. The Israelis also tore up the runway of Gaza airport.

THE GOVERNMENT quietly pushed through changes to immigration rules last week. Now when an appeal against deportation has been dismissed only the home secretary will be told of the decision. Before last week the asylum seeker and his or her representatives or solicitors were also informed.

Alem is 14. He is both Eritrean and Ethiopian, and Eritrea and Ethiopia are at war. Alem's father finds that his family is unwelcome in either country. He brings Alem to Britain and leaves him there, where he thinks he will be safe. The book follows Alem as he gets to grips with England, the weather and the immigration system. He suffers many major setbacks.

George W Bush apparently requested a special screening of this film. But don't let that put you off seeing Kandahar, by Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. His concern for the suffering of the people of Afghanistan goes back to at least 1987, with his film The Cyclist, which featured Afghan refugees in Iran.

Activists from seven campaigns against refugee detention centres met in Oxford last Saturday to discuss government plans to quadruple the number of asylum seekers locked up in camps.