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The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britain

JamieSW — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 10:40:48 +0000

The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britain
Arun Kundnani, 2007, Pluto Press, ISBN 978-0-7453-2645-0

For all the time that politicians, columnists and activists spend discussing it, racism is seldom defined with any precision or accuracy, or indeed in any way that might inculcate an awareness of its complex, multiple nature and origins. It’s most often understood simply (and yet very specifically) as discrimination, by an individual, on the basis of another individual’s skin colour. Sir William Macpherson’s report into ‘matters arising’ from the murder of Stephen Lawrence asserted that this discrimination may be practised, fostered or encouraged, even unwittingly, by institutions as well as individuals; a fairly mild, reasonably obvious statement, which nonetheless seemed to create consternation at the time.1

But Macpherson’s slight extension of racism’s mode of operation (refuted, at any rate, soon afterwards by the government who caused it to be written2) brings us no closer to describing what racism actually is, if indeed it’s more than just simple discrimination. Racism can be construed as an effect, arising from a broad range of conditions of disparity: historical, economic, ideological, and crudely political. In this interpretation, it is the expression of all of these conditions, and as such it is ultimately symptomatic of the inequalities inherent in what we now call ‘the global order’. But racism can simultaneously be understood to lie within the originary inequality itself, to be implicated at the cause, in the rationale lying behind policy and law; so it is in its nature cyclical – as a system of belief, a way of thinking difference, it is implicit in the basic legal and social structure of our modern state, and, expressed as a set of behaviours, it is then perpetuated by this structure.

One of the most persuasive and accessible historians of the roots and forms of racism, Paul Gilroy, emphasises what he terms ‘racialisation’, the ideological and historical processes by which thinking in terms of race became first possible, then predominant, and finally unavoidable.3 Gilroy details a history of ‘racialised thinking’, the positing of a type of ineluctable difference determined by biological categories of race. The basis of racism lies in this troubled history of the thinking of the concept of race itself. But this thinking is not static, and nor are the social contexts upon which it is brought to bear; so biological race is inflected now as cultural or ethnic difference, and is no less irreducible. As Kundnani points out,

“… race is a socially constructed concept that is both wider in its range and more profoundly rooted in the history of the nation than is commonly supposed. Moreover, the restriction of the concept of racism to ‘colour’ difference has concealed the full range of ways in which racism has operated in Britain, including against Jews, Gypsies and the Irish.”4

This is extremely pertinent to any current discussion of racism, which is now, in Britain as elsewhere, overwhelmingly directed against Muslims. Columnists and commentators of many political persuasions pronounce that anti-Muslim sentiment is not racism at all, since Islam is a religion, not a race; such argument betrays not only an ignorance of the workings, history and logic of racism, contemporary or otherwise, but also an adherence to a rather literal and outdated concept of ‘race’. As a legitimation of discrimination in law and vilification in society, anti-Muslim racism is every bit as real as the anti-Semitic racism that was propagated so blithely by the British rightwing press of the 1930s.

In order to substantiate this already complex definition of racism, one must also account for the way in which relations of power are implicated in racism. Racism (as effect) is the public enactment of a prior disparity of power between one group and another; indeed, far from being ‘anti-social’, racism is a violent demonstration that this disparity has already been sanctioned, historically, within society and the state.5 Most often, a group that experiences racism has received its identification, its definition as a coherent group, from the powerful group (it has been ‘overdetermined from without’), in order that it can be ‘acted upon’. (And, as Kundnani demonstrates, this identification can change to suit current policy: in the late 1990s, second- and third-generation British Pakistanis found that they had ceased to be ‘Asian’ and had become ‘Muslims’.) But racism is not merely the expression of this power relationship (calling someone a ‘black bastard’); for the power relationship is itself shaped and defined by racism. This is why, within a British context, anti-white feeling amongst, say, black or Asian groups cannot be called ‘black on white racism’: because the unequal relationship that defines racism is entirely absent in this situation.6

It might appear that The End of Tolerance is about far more than just racism; but then, racism itself is about far more than ‘just racism’. The task that Kundnani sets himself is to guide us through the many contributory factors to 21st-century British racism, to show how old arguments are given new articulation, how, in the process, racism becomes more, not less institutionalised, its causes becoming more tortuously misrepresented, and how, as a consequence, its comprehension grows more difficult. Most significantly, and most damningly, he examines rigorously the contribution made by government. Whilst any citizen of average intelligence is aware of the essential duplicity of their government, it is nevertheless extremely disturbing to realise, as one reads the book, the extent to which government action and policy – sometimes knowingly pernicious, sometimes merely feckless and populist – has been the single most active agent in the promulgation of a new racism. To this end, he describes in turn the details and effects of New Labour’s radical restructuring of immigration, asylum and nationality law; its reckless and calamitous foreign policy (both before and after the 11th of September 2001); its repressive and cavalier instincts in criminal justice; its contempt for international conventions and doctrines of universal human rights; its subservience to globalised corporate interests very often in direct conflict with the interests of British citizens; and its framing of, and pandering to, a populist agenda around issues of cultural identity, in the interests of maintaining its electoral base with white middle-class voters.

A picture emerges of policy and legislation that, accustomed as we are to viewing it always through the exigencies of the current moment, is usually only visible in fragments: the disparate statements and actions, consultation documents and acts of parliament are considered in painstaking detail, and one starts to appreciate that, incrementally, an entire regime of racist ideology has been constructed over the last decade, one which goes further in terms of law and consequence than anything enacted by the governments of Thatcher or Major (whose own more overtly racist, but, in many ways, less thoroughly invasive and far-reaching policies the Labour opposition of the time regularly spoke and voted against).

Multiculturalism

A great angst is at large in the country at present, amongst government ministers in particular, about communities (almost always Muslim) who ‘refuse’ to ‘integrate’ into British society and culture: they speak their own languages, at home and on the street; they follow an alien religion; they wilfully dress, eat and behave differently; and they live in ‘no-go’ areas that ‘British people’ (that is, white Britons) are afraid of entering. The main problem with this overall diagnosis lies not in its individual inaccuracies, but in the inference drawn: that these communities have willingly cut themselves off from the ‘shared values’ of society, that they are an alien and potentially hostile presence living amongst the host community (a phrase which carries obvious and intentional connotations of parasitism), and that we should not be expected to tolerate this any longer, as we have done, so blindly, for so many decades. After all (it is argued) it is precisely this toleration, under the guise of multiculturalism, which brought us to this situation in the first place.
There are a great many misrepresentations in this set of attitudes. Small distortions are piled upon greater falsifications to create a thoroughly mendacious, thoroughly racist picture of minority communities in Britain, and their situations and concerns. The notion that multiculturalism ‘allowed’ communities to ‘self-segregate’, by encouraging the expression of their culture on an equal footing, is one of a series of reversals of cause and effect that render the argument fairly worthless. As Kundnani writes,

“… the policies that were implemented in the 1980s in the name of multiculturalism were a mode of control rather than a line of defence. Multiculturalism in this sense referred to a set of policies directed towards taking African-Caribbean and Asian cultures off the streets – where they had been politicised and turned into rebellions against the state – and putting them in the council chamber, in the classroom and on television, where they could be institutionalised, managed and commodified. Black culture was turned from a living movement into an object of passive contemplation, something to be ‘celebrated’ rather than acted upon. The method for achieving this was the separation of different ethnic groups into distinct cultural blocs, to be managed by a new cadre of ethnically defined ‘community leaders’, and the rethinking of race relations in terms of a view of cultural identity that was rigid, closed and almost biological…7”

By refocusing communities on a politics of competitive recognition, multiculturalism had the desired effect of fragmenting a broad-based movement that had, by the time of the Brixton, Handsworth and Toxteth riots of 1981, become a dangerous challenge to state authority. “The often conservative community leaderships tried to insulate their clans from the wider world, not… to strengthen group identity… but rather to protect the structures on which their power depended. Ethnic identity became an escape from a racist society rather than the basis for a challenge to it.”8

So a partial segregation of minority communities, who were kept at arm’s length both from the ‘centre’ and from one another, was one of the consequences of multiculturalism9; this was exacerbated, particularly in northern England, by a combination of rapid industrial decline and openly discriminatory housing policies, which led to workers and families who had previously been side by side in the same mills, factories and streets gradually being screened out to separate parts of town. Over time, in towns like Oldham or Bradford, this division became entrenched and self-perpetuating; damp, cramped ghettoes, centred around the Victorian back-to-backs vacated by rehoused white families, at least offered some safety for Asians who didn’t wish to risk racist attacks on the overwhelmingly white estates. The 1988 Education Act and its doctrine of parental choice further encouraged segregation; infamously, a year earlier, parents in Dewsbury had set up their own ‘white’ school in a room above a pub, on the grounds that their local school had too many Asian students.

This portrayal of two decades of managed, multifaceted discrimination as self-segregation, a refusal to integrate, and as something which is therefore the fault of the communities in question, is typical of the insidious nature of contemporary racism. Its apparently ‘commonsensical’ explanation of the segregation that clearly exists is also difficult to counter. Through careful, detailed argument, Kundnani turns the proposition on its head: it was neither state pandering to cultural difference, nor unwillingness to mix, that led to our segregated cities and society; rather, it was years of conscious, racist manipulation and exclusion of communities, conducted for short-term political advantage.

The demand now made of these communities is that they surrender their obstinate difference and declare their allegiance to as-yet-undefined ‘British values’ (as far as they can be identified, these seem, paradoxically, to be the very ‘values’ attacked in successive government legislation over the last decade). That the call for integration must simultaneously be accompanied by an agonised quest to invent a ‘British’ identity into which to integrate is, in the circumstances, only mildly amusing. The current focus on Muslim communities’ non-integration is of course sharpened by the supposed threat they pose – a threat upon which there seems to be consensus across the political spectrum. Kundnani develops this: “What had before been interpreted as a problem of Asians living in separate cultures has, since 9/11, been taken to be a problem of Muslims living by separate values.”10

If the very existence of cultural diversity within the nation has now come to be perceived as a threat, what hope is there for anti-racism? The type of pluralist solidarity that Kundnani calmly advocates now seems tantamount, in the state’s terms, to a call for bloody racial rioting on the streets of Britain. Clearly, the potential for collective action is severely restricted by the demonisation and suspicion directed at British Muslims (who can nowadays only be framed in a positive manner when they are supporting spurious government-authored definitions of ‘moderate Islam’, and thus attacking the externally perceived and misrepresented ills of their community). Kundnani notes that, today, “ ‘anti-racism’ is reduced to a conflict-management exercise carried out by the state, which does not grasp the underlying causes of racism and leaves existing power relationships in place.”11 One could comment that the state grasps the underlying causes of racism only too well.

The distorted debate over integration has a corollary, which has also been discussed with tedious regularity lately, the issue of religious tolerance. Just as the state now depicts Islam as uniquely anti-democratic, violent and authoritarian, and therefore the ‘enemy within’ British society, so a raft of ‘secularists’ of various persuasions argue that it is directly opposed to the very Enlightenment values that define and guarantee the rights and freedoms that we in the West cherish. For both parties, the fact that the men who bombed London on the 7th of July 2005 were born and raised in this country adds to the apparent urgency of delivering this challenge to Islam. Notwithstanding the fact that these defenders of ‘the Enlightenment’ rarely acknowledge the limits of their own positivistic world view (Theodor Adorno was not the only Western citizen to suppose that imperialism, totalitarianism and the gas chambers were a culmination of scientific rationalism, rather than its monstrous, aberrant deviation), the broader question that this raises concerns the nature of solidarity. We find ourselves in a pale re-enactment of the political territory of the 1960s and ’70s, when the British Left was perfectly happy to welcome immigrant communities under its umbrella, so long as their ‘sectional’, identitarian demands could be made subservient to the movement’s programmatic ‘universalism’.

For ‘integrationist feminists’ as Kundnani calls them, denouncing practices such as wearing the veil, forced marriage and ‘honour killing’ (usually the only examples of the patriarchal nature of Islamic culture that these commentators can cite, because they are the most visible to the outsider, and so are disproportionately reported in the media), “combating violence against Muslim women is seen as fighting against a culture, while combating violence against white women is seen as a fight for rights”.12 Kundnani points out that denunciation of inequality in Muslim communities almost never amounts to actual solidarity with women’s groups within those communities. And when the government chose to target forced marriage, instead of working with Muslim women, “solutions were sought in tightening up immigration controls; those trying to escape abusive marriages faced the threat of deportation rather than support and protection”.13

“Renunciation of one’s identity becomes a prerequisite for emancipation, and a new kind of superiority is entrenched in the name of feminism. State coercion is then justified as a possible means for bringing about this “emancipation”… Behind this “integrationist feminism” lies the tendency to regard the West as the sole bearer of enlightened progress and the European Enlightenment, not as one particular expression of universal values, but as the only possible expression for all time.”14

Kundnani argues, fairly vaguely at times, it must be said, for a pluralist tolerance which can make this kind of ‘cultural supremacy’ obsolete, but the question that remains unanswered is whether one can voice disapproval of, or disagreement with, Islamic religious culture without automatically being co-opted into a mainstream ‘secularist Enlightenment’ agenda. The answer may lie in a reappraisal of the question; or rather, in stating that another question might be both more pressing and more revealing. Why is it that a defence of the ‘progressive’ gains of bourgeois Western society necessarily involves an attack, specifically and most immediately, on Islam, rather than on any of the reactionary tendencies in our own culture? It often appears that much of this attention is the result of ignorance and laziness, an uncritical rush to ‘comment’ on whatever appears to be most topical. Furthermore, it’s at least arguable that to set out one’s secularist or socialist argument solely in reference to the predominant, stereotypical portrayal of the repressive, alien nature of Islam is itself reactionary: it further alienates the very individuals struggling to build progressive politics from the basis of their membership of the Muslim community. This isn’t in any way a renunciation of the responsibility to criticise or to analyse, for fear of somehow causing offence. It’s simply a caution that anti-racism – the central, most fundamental element of any progressive politics – must be based on solidarity, and that solidarity requires a relationship between equals.

“In a context in which anti-Muslim racism is institutionalised by the ‘war on terror’, it is natural and necessary that Muslims organise as Muslim in fighting the specific racism they face. Confronted by an intensely anti-Muslim political culture, Muslims cannot be expected to leave their religious identity behind when they enter the public sphere. To do so would only reinforce the mistaken belief that there is an incompatibility between Islam and democracy.”15

Globalisation

British racism cannot be understood only in the context of conditions within Britain, and the larger part of Kundnani’s book sets about putting these conditions in the setting of the global factors that nourish racism everywhere. Ultimately, his plea is for a particular form of ‘global citizenship’, as the only ethical response to the structural inequalities of a world where corporations move capital unimpeded across borders and between territories, while nation states police the movement of people across the same borders.

Throughout, Kundnani combines historical overview with analysis of contemporary situations. So, for example, accounts of postwar immigration from the Commonwealth, the origins of International Monetary Fund (IMF) ‘structural adjustment’ programmes in the Third World, and historical conflicts in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan give important context to discussions of the development of present-day asylum and immigration law and foreign policy priorities. This gives Kundnani’s argument depth and authority, even if it can sometimes make the forces he describes seem depressingly unassailable. Many contemporary polemics fail adequately to historicise the mysterious and vaguely-defined phenomena that comprise globalisation; Kundnani’s measured descriptions of its origins and evolution make his work a valuable corrective. He describes the way in which IMF and World Bank debt ‘restructuring’ packages have repeatedly impoverished debtor nations and helped to breed repressive regimes, friendly to neo-colonial political and business interests, from Suharto in Indonesia, to Pinochet in Chile, Moi in Kenya and Abacha in Nigeria. He details how the US and UK over decades selectively sponsored other brutal administrations in Africa and the Middle East for the purposes of immediate regional leverage, only to turn away refugees subsequently displaced by conflict in those states. And through all such considerations he underlines the convergence of Western corporate and political interests at the global level.

This is most clearly the case in chapters on immigration, asylum and the ‘market-state’. Analysing the four major pieces of immigration legislation put onto the statute books by New Labour, Kundnani demonstrates how the treatment of refugees has deteriorated rapidly in ten years.16 During this decade, successive Home Secretaries have striven for two ends. Firstly, they have attempted to make conditions here so unattractive to potential refugees that they are deterred from attempting to come. Presumably, this is in large measure a populist approach, since the Home Office’s own research accepts that those fleeing their homes halfway round the world have very little knowledge of provision available here, and choose a destination based instead on existing or previous connections with a country, and perceptions of it as safe.17 Under Section 62 of the 2002 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act, the Home Secretary has the power arbitrarily to detain an asylum seeker until the settlement of their case (this is euphemistically referred to as the ‘fast-track procedure’); an enlargement of the Home Office’s estate of detention centres was announced in May 2008. At any time, around two-thirds of those in detention under Immigration Act powers are asylum seekers, and roughly five per cent of all asylum seekers are in detention centres.18 Statistics do not even exist for the numbers kept in prisons or police cells.

Secondly, entry into the UK for those without papers has been made much more difficult. Former Home Secretary Jack Straw, quoted by Kundnani, comments that the Geneva Convention “gives us the obligation to consider any claims made within our territory… but no obligation to facilitate the arrival on our territory of those who wish to make a claim”.19 Nearly all refugees will only be able to have their case considered once they have arrived in the UK. “And the only way they can do that is by some form of clandestine entry into the country: either stowing away in a lorry or boat, clambering on the undercarriage of a moving Channel Tunnel train or using forged documents.”20 And whilst, in theory, Article 31 of the Geneva Convention recognises that illegal entry of a country is sometimes necessary for persons escaping persecution, the government continues to criminalise those who are forced to use people traffickers to get to the UK. Furthermore, “those asylum seekers who do travel to the UK legally with a valid passport are told by the Home Office that they could not be a genuine refugee, on the assumption that the authorities in the home country would refuse to allow a genuine dissident to obtain one.”21 Roughly two-thirds of all asylum applications are refused, even in many cases where the applicants have independently verified proof of torture. Out of 380 decisions made on applications by Iraqis in the first quarter of 2008, 280 were refusals.22

If the government’s approach to asylum has the effect of giving trade to the people traffickers, so too does the market’s continued demand for low-paid, unprotected labour; many failed asylum seekers, driven into destitution by the summary withdrawal of support and unable to return home, find themselves working illegally, with no rights and no legal protections. Others come expressly to work for ‘gang bosses’ in the agricultural industries, and find that after ‘deductions’ for accommodation and transport to work every day, they have next to nothing to live on (not that there is much living to be done after an 18-hour day picking crops). The new five-tier, points-based ‘managed migration’ system is supposed to streamline entry into the UK for those coming to work, but it institutes a ‘guest-worker’ system under which low-skilled workers will have limited or no access to employment protection during their stay in the country, and on termination of their contract will have no right to remain. Migrants are now valued only as economic assets: there must be free movement of ‘labour’ – that is, of individuals as productive resources, servicing the demands of the ‘flexible’ marketplace wherever it may need them – but the right of individuals to live safely, free from persecution, must be restricted and rationalised as much as possible.
The effect of an asylum policy principally aimed at deterring applicants, of failed claimants becoming destitute in large numbers, and of low-paid, unprotected workers finding themselves constantly on the brink of illegality, is the effective criminalisation of large numbers of non-EU migrants. The supposed ‘proud tradition’ of Britain’s welcome to the displaced of the world (something of a myth to begin with, as many Jews fleeing Nazi Germany or East African Asians escaping Idi Amin could testify) is reduced to a squalid, dehumanising numbers game, with the government eagerly setting itself targets for numbers it will deport by the end of the year.

The precise details of ministerial statements on the imminent existential threat posed by immigration, even those that gain some brief notoriety, have the habit of slipping from public consciousness very shortly after they’ve disappeared from the headlines and opinion columns. Successive acts of parliament redefine the territory until it’s unclear which rights exist and which have been repealed, who is welcome and who unwelcome. What persists, what is nurtured, is a generalised, non-specific fear and paranoia. The asylum seeker, the illegal immigrant, the economic migrant, all these various ‘underclasses’ of non-citizen or para-citizen come to represent the same thing: a gathering, innumerable encroachment, threatening the fragile ‘being’ of the state. The great merit of Kundnani’s work is his ability to trace the connections between the domestic contexts of racism and the many aspects that bear down on the discussion, and legislation, of immigration and asylum. Likewise, chapters linking Britain’s foreign policy adventures and their aftermaths (current, recent and more distant), with the progressive withdrawal of civil rights, the extension of arbitrary executive powers to detain and deport, and the new regime of control orders and internment, illustrate the bluntly racist motivations behind an extraordinarily repressive array of measures.

Nevertheless there are problems with the book, mostly editorial in nature. Many of the book’s different chapters originated as articles for Race & Class, of which Kundnani is editor. The original articles, closely argued, densely substantiated pieces of sociological research, could have been more extensively reworked to make them fit together better: the book’s 200 pages feel longer, partly because of the book’s great scope, but also because its chapters jump between complex topics fairly unpredictably. Also, because of the essentially hermetic nature of each chapter, there’s a certain amount of repetition or, conversely, spreading of related information between disparate chapters. There is a certain chronology imposed on the contents, but this soon becomes lost because of the number of subjects tackled by Kundnani in his twelve chapters. Closer editorial attention might also have achieved a greater evenness of tone throughout: some chapters begin with extensive historical or contextual notes (which in places, such as the first chapter, read like a school history textbook), and move to personalised ‘case study’ illustrations of the topic at hand, statistical or quantitative analysis, or passionate polemic. Kundnani is a sociologist first and foremost, and his expertise is the book’s strength, but he is also a perceptive and persuasive activist-writer, and he (or his editors) perhaps should have decided who might be the book’s primary audience.

There’s a narrowness to his terms of reference too, no doubt due in part to his social scientist’s suspicion of the ‘cultural turn’ in the politics of race and class. His cursory, two-page summary of everything in postcolonial theory from Stuart Hall to Homi Bhabha does him no favours (Gilroy doesn’t warrant a single mention); whilst it’s true that postcolonial critics challenged the ‘politically black’ identity of the 1970s (the discarding of which he presents as a uniquely retrograde step), just as they challenged all such overarching categorisations of identity, the solidarity of broad interests of culture, race and class that he espouses would be supported by those critics too; and ‘political blackness’ was already under attack, as he himself shows, from other directions. At this point his history is less than complete.

Finally, and most surprisingly, there are some basic errors in the use of statistics: in chapter 10, for example, he quotes Home Office asylum figures for the second quarter of 2006 to show the number of asylum seekers in detention, but reads the wrong column: “by June 2006, there were 2,285 being held in detention centres, despite a lower rate of asylum claims than in 1997”.23 There were indeed 2,285 people detained under Immigration Act powers as of the 24th of June 2006, but only 1,705 of these had ever sought asylum at any stage. This is a small, and perhaps quite pedantic quibble, but any text that straddles a line between pure sociology and anti-racist activism needs to be doubly sure of its numbers: it’s the easiest way for an opponent to discredit the whole enterprise.

Universal rights

“… asylum seekers do not ask for British charity; they claim rights as global citizens in an age when the national sovereignty of poorer nations has been eroded. Through its part in the empire of global capitalism, Britain carries with it a profound obligation to today’s migrants… It is an obligation that runs through the dirty politics of sponsoring foreign regimes that oppress their own people, in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and elsewhere… It runs through the wealth that Britain continues to extract from Africa and Asia… Ultimately, it is an obligation to treat today’s migrants, not as scroungers or opportunists or victims of some self-created calamity of which little is known, but as global citizens. It is in the very processes of globalising capitalism, which Britain has led and profited from, that their global citizenship derives.24

It turned out that the moment human beings lacked their own government and had to fall back upon their human rights, no authority was left to protect them and no institution was willing to guarantee them… The conception of human rights based upon the assumed existence of a human being as such broke down at the very moment when those who professed to believe in it were for the first time confronted with people who had indeed lost all other qualities and specific relationships except that they were still human.”25

Hannah Arendt’s words of half a century ago seem to ring with a new urgency (but nothing in this discussion is really new, just endlessly revisited; the phrase ‘never again’ really must be the most callous irony, the rhetorical equivalent of putting one’s hands over one’s eyes and ears). The governments of highly-developed nations carry out foreign invasions in the name of ‘humanitarian intervention’ – in the name, that is, of abstracted ‘human rights’, belonging to no-one and yet ultimately enforceable; at the same time, they abnegate their duty to protect those made destitute and stateless by their actions, and raise the possibility of ‘opting out’ of the Geneva Convention on Refugees (where extra-territorial rights were defined and promised for the first time), or the European Convention on Human Rights, because they no longer feel the lavish protections they afford are ‘appropriate’ to our age, with its new security concerns. As Arendt so mordantly points out, one’s universal rights are only an issue when it is finally impossible to protect them.

We might follow Slavoj Zizek in arguing that we must not therefore dismiss human rights as “a reified fetish”, well-intended but worthless: rather, this stage of globalised neocolonial capitalism is precisely the point at which these rights can posit the political space proper, the point at which the individual subject – the refugee, the internee, the illegal worker – is able to assert their exclusion, their statelessness, their absolute repudiation, as the only meaningful point from which to assert the “universality of the social itself”: and they become the universal political subject.26 On these terms, it could not be more essential for anti-racists in Britain to build positions of solidarity with those struggling to make this most fundamental of assertions, for the sake of every subject.

1. Sir William Macpherson (1999) The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: Report of an Inquiry (London: The Stationery Office), http://www.archive.officialdocuments.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/4262.htm.

2. Kundnani quotes former Home Secretary David Blunkett, who in 2003 told Black and Asian Home Office workers that ‘institutional racism’ was ‘a slogan’ that ‘missed the point’. Kundnani, p. 131.
3. See particularly Gilroy (1993) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness (London: Verso) and (2000) Between Camps (London: Allen Lane).
4. Kundnani, p. 15.
5. Of course, certain types of crude, overtly racist behaviour are (often somewhat belatedly and begrudgingly) outlawed by the State, but this apparent paradox simply testifies to the gulf that can exist between appearance and actuality: whilst racialised thinking underpins the workings of the State, the government can distance itself from the ‘working out’ of this thinking, separating cause from effect in a manner that we shall return to later.
6. As has been exhaustively argued elsewhere, white people’s act of identifying themselves ‘as white’ is, in a curious way, an act of disidentification, of claiming to have no race, much in the same way as individuals often presume themselves to have no accent. See Theodore W. Allen (1994) The Invention of the White Race: Volume One; Racial Oppression and Social Control (London: Verso); Alastair Bonnett (2000) White Identities: Historical and International Perspectives (Harlow: Prentice Hall); David Roediger (1991) The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London, Verso). Also see Suzanna Chan (2005) ‘Some notes on deconstructing Ireland’s Whiteness: Immigrants, emigrants and the perils of jazz’, Variant 22, available at http://www.variant.randomstate.org/22texts/Whiteness.html; and the journal Race Traitor, available at http://racetraitor.org.
7. Kundnani, pp. 44-45.
8. Ibid., p. 45.
9. For a further consideration of the history and problematics of multiculturalism, see Daniel Jewesbury (2006) ‘Show some disrespect!’ in Mute 2:2, available online at http://www.metamute.org/en/show-some-disrespect
10. Ibid., p. 127.
11. Ibid., p. 133.
12. Ibid., p. 138.
13. Ibid., p. 139.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., pp. 185-186.
16. The four acts are, in order of implementation, the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 and the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006. Multiple Statutory Instruments have also been passed under the terms of these acts, for example, those providing for the ‘fast-track’ asylum procedure and the new five-tiered points-based managed migration system.
17. See Kundnani, p. 77.
18. Home Office Research Development Statistics (2008) Asylum Statistics: First Quarter 2008, at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs08/asylumq108.pdf.
19. Kundnani, p. 68.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., p. 69.
22. Home Office, op. cit.
23. Kundnani, p. 159.
24. Ibid., p. 71.
25. Hannah Arendt (1958) The Origins of Totalitarianism (Cleveland, Ohio: Meridian Books), pp. 292-297
26. Slavoj Zizek (2005) ‘Against Human Rights’, in New Left Review no. 34, p.131. Available to download free at http://libcom.org/library/against-human-rights-zizek.

Migrants exploited for cheap labour

Ellie Keen — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Detainees at the Campsfield House immigration prison in Oxfordshire are being “exploited for cheap labour” due to staff cuts, the Oxford and District Trades Union Council has revealed. The rejected asylum seekers, who are locked up for lengthy periods pending their deportation, are being paid £5 for six-hour shifts of cleaning and kitchen work.

A statement by the Oxford and District TUC said: “We maintain our position that Campsfield is a shameful operation and should be closed. As long as it is open, jobs should be properly paid and be done by trained staff. For detainees there should be adequate recreational, educational and other provision… Detainees should receive an adequate financial allowance and not be obliged to act as slave labour for a multinational that makes big profits out of an operation that causes detainees enormous stress, uncertainty, general misery and often mental illness.”

Tracy Ellicott from the Campaign to Close Campsfield told Corporate Watch that detainees are not forced by GEO, the company that runs the prison, to work as such. They are, however, “forced in the sense that they are locked up for 24 hours a day, uncertain of their future and with no money to purchase any essentials they may need.” She added detainees can apply to do certain ‘jobs’ in the centre, such as cleaning, kitchen work and in the library. But none of those she has been visiting was prepared to speak out about this as they are “too scared of retaliation.”

The shifts are 6 hours long and detainees are paid £5 per shift, or 83p an hour. A GEO guard has reportedly said that, according to Home Office rules, they could only pay detainees a maximum of £24 a week. Radio Oxford quoted a statement from the Home Office two weeks ago to the effect that this was all above board and had been agreed with the Home Secretary. A Border and Immigration Agency (BIA) spokesperson said: “All detained persons are provided with an opportunity and encouraged to participate in activities to meet their recreational and intellectual needs. Individuals are entitled to undertake paid activities at rates approved by the Secretary of State.” As usual, GEO declined to comment.

Since taking over the running of Campsfield in June 2006, Global Expertise in Outsourcing (GEO) has cut back on both staffing levels and educational, recreational and other provisions at the centre. Over the past year, GEO has sacked education workers, nursing staff have departed, staff turnover has increased, the welfare officer has left and in September, the chaplain was suspended. GEO’s main business is immigration detention centres and mental health centres throughout the world, especially in USA, UK, South Africa and Australia. It also runs a part of Guantánamo Bay base in Cuba.

Private companies like GEO that run immigration detention centres make huge profits. Seven of the UK’s ten detention centres are run by private companies. The average cost for detaining someone in 2007/08 was £119 per day.

“It is unbelievable that people who have done nothing wrong are not only locked up in prison like criminals, but are also being treated like slaves,” Ms Ellicott said. “GEO is obviously saving money by using their ‘captives’ to perform menial tasks for slave wages.” She added, “of course, they could save a lot more if these centres were closed altogether!”.

The Home Office admitted migrants imprisoned in detention centres are “exempt from the minimum wage” but claimed they are “not forced to work.” A BIA spokesperson insisted: “This is voluntary and we are constantly looking for new opportunities to meet demand for this work.”

However, according to the immigration law, all asylum seekers are prohibited from work and live on state support, which is fixed at 70% of what is deemed to be the bare minimum to live on. The Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 states that “it is contrary to this section to employ an adult subject to immigration control if… he has not been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom.” The majority of those held in immigration detention centres are rejected asylum seekers (have not been granted leave to enter or remain in the UK) who are waiting to be deported back home.

Report on Abuse of Refugees and Asylum Seekers

JamieSW — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:01:23 +0000

The British government has been implicated in the abuse of refugees and asylum seekers, according to a report published this month by a group of human rights campaigners and medical legal experts.

The report, Outsourcing Abuse: the use and misuse of state-sanctioned force during the detention and removal of asylum seekers, contains a detailed dossier outlining cases of systematic physical and verbal abuse against refugees and immigrants who face deportation to their country of origin. Most of the alleged assaults took place at the hands of security guards during transit between detention centres, during deportations to airports, or removal from places of residence.

Outsourcing Abuse was a response to a demand by the Home Office to corroborate an earlier dossier, which hit the headlines after the Independent published details in October 2007. Home Office ministers and officials dismissed the claims of abuse as unfounded, saying that many of the alleged victims had not come forward with further information to prove their mistreatment.
The new report contains nearly 300 cases of alleged assault, which took place between January 2004 and June 2008, and draws on a wide range of sources including solicitors, journalists, airline passengers, hospital staff and doctors. Many refugees and asylum seekers were also prepared to recount their ordeals, despite fears of retribution from the Home Office or the private security companies it employs to detain and deport them.

The report states that “Many additional allegations of assault have been reported to us that we simply have not had the resources to consider and therefore have not been included in the dossier. Because of this, coupled with the fact that other victims are fearful of coming forward, we feel our dossier is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Outsourcing Abuse paints a picture where appalling physical and verbal abuse is condoned and accepted, if not actively encouraged. People are routinely kicked and punched, or otherwise injured by excessive use of force, and many are subjected to racist verbal abuse.

Some victims allege they were given injections to sedate them or forced to take pills. Others tell how they were denied access to emergency hospital facilities after sustaining injuries.

Typical of the 48 case studies contained in the dossier are:

A 19-year-old Congolese man who claims that in 2007 he was thrown to the ground and kicked in the face, whilst being transferred to a segregation unit. An independent doctor advised care for head injury and noted abrasions to the forehead, bruising and swelling around the face.
A Malawian man in the same year who alleges that he was pinned to the floor by Detention Custody Officers (DCOs) and “kicked all over his body, including his head”, at Dungavel detention centre.
A Sudanese woman whose escorts repeatedly jabbed her in the eye and assaulted her after the pilot refused to fly.
An Armenian man was left with a punctured lung after escorts stamped on him in the back of a van and then left in an immigration holding bay without medical support for hours.
A Cameroonian man who claims he was detained without sufficient food or water and denied medication for treatment of hepatitis C. When, because of his illness, he refused to co-operate with efforts to move him on board a Kenya Airways flight for deportation he said, “They started beating me, kicking me all over. They put me on the floor and continued to kick me everywhere. I was agonising of pain. I thought that they will kill me.”

The report comments that,

“Usually removals are stopped when the pilot refuses to proceed, which may be because the detainee is screaming and / or because there is a physical struggle with escort staff occurring and the pilot considers it will be unsafe to fly.”

A total of 78 charter flights were arranged between February 2006 and March 2007, 60 of which were flights to Eastern Europe and 14 to Afghanistan. It is not known how many airlines are contracted out by the government for deportees, or what the budget is for this policy, though it is likely to be in the millions.

Many of those affected by this process are small children and babies, who may be separated from their parents for days or weeks. John Wilkes, chief executive of the Scottish Refugee Council, said,

“The UK government has signed up to protect the rights of children under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, but shamefully except for children in the asylum and immigration system.”

Many refugees and asylum seekers are suffering mental health problems as a result of the abuse they are subjected to. The report reveals that 85 percent have chronic depressive symptoms and 65 percent contemplate suicide. In 2007 there were 1,517 immigration detainees on “suicide-watch”.

Many of the abused immigrants were of uncertain legal status when they were detained or deported. In some cases the state “pre-empted” the legal process altogether by intervening before they had access to legal representation—clearly breaching the Geneva Conventions and International law.

The situation is so bad that the former Chief Inspector of Prisons, David Ramsbotham was forced to caution the government in the introduction to Outsourcing Abuse.

He states,

“Of course there will always be cases that are less than genuine, and they must be dealt with accordingly. But every case must be investigated and, in line with the law of the land, individuals regarded as innocent until proved guilty. That applies to those whose cases are outlined in this dossier. If the Home Office, Ministers and officials alike, is sensible it will pay due attention to the dossier, which is not written in an emotive way, but contains constructive advice that should not simply be rejected.”

Ramsbotham’s exceedingly modest appeal is likely to fall on deaf ears.

Requests for further information under the Freedom of Information Act regarding forced removals on charter flights, as well as the government’s contract with the private security firms, have been rejected by the Home Office on the grounds of “commercial secrecy”. The same secrecy surrounds the detention centres used to hold asylum-seekers pending the outcome of their application. Seven out of 10 in the UK are managed by private companies on behalf of the Home Office.

Labour’s immigration minister, Liam Byrne, boasted in May, “We now remove an immigration offender every eight minutes—but my target is to remove more, and remove them faster.”

The government announced in August 2007 that it intended to “fast-track” the deportation procedure and in May this year announced a 60 percent increase in the number of detentions. Despite a 72 percent fall in asylum applications between 2002 and 2007, there has been a 106 percent increase in the number of applicants detained.

In Europe, in the name of combating “illegal immigration”, a Return Directive is being set up across the continent to send undocumented workers to neighbouring countries without any administrative formalities. This legislation will allow states to hold immigrants for up to 18-months and impose a five-year ban on their return to the EU. According to a representative of the European Association for the Defence of Human Rights, the Directive will establish detention as a “norm”.

The website Inter-Movement Committee for Evacuees commented on the new directive, “Retention has been slipping little by little into the logic of internment, transforming these centres into camps.”

Is This A Free World?

Ellie Keen — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:59:00 +0000

Liverpool stories of the invisible ones

It is a wet and windy late summer afternoon of 2007 and I find myself sitting in a living room, waiting for the man who over the next months is going to show me through the ugly face of the asylum system in Britain, one that is far from the blatant lies told by the tabloids.

I don’t know it yet but soon I will find out that this man, let’s call him Maxi, was a quite important and respected person in his country. But here and now, this seems a distant past; all he has left now is his dignity, for this man is destitute.

In the Home Office’s jargon, Maxi is a ‘failed asylum seeker’; this means that his claim for asylum has been refused and the meagre support that he receives from the government has been withdrawn (no free mobiles or other perks as the urban myth goes). Maxi is in this country on borrowed time, frantically trying to gather fresh evidence that may help him convince the government that his life is in danger if he is sent back to his country.

The trouble is, unable to work and without a place to stay, he relies on friends and other kind souls to get some kind of support.

So it comes as a surprise when this man enters the room smiling, almost beaming and says: ‘I’ve just found my first job in England’, which in itself is an interesting comment since he’s not allowed to work. Without any apparent resentment, he then tells me how he feels he needs to break the law, no matter how dangerous this is for his case, as he has no other option left.

He just wants to earn some money to be able to do some things that most of us take for granted; simple and mundane acts such as topping up a much needed mobile phone to stay in touch with loved ones and friends and perhaps, if things go well, buy a camera in Argos because he sent the one he had to his son back home (who doesn’t know dad is seeking asylum in a far away country).

I ask about food; that is provided by a soup kitchen in the city centre and a weekly parcel from a local charity that supports asylum seekers.

It is not difficult to see why someone in his circumstances would not resist the temptation of resorting to casual work, the only source of income possible, despite the fact that the jobs available are often appallingly and predictably underpaid, under conditions few people would ever dream of tolerating in 21st century Britain.

Maxi’s ‘first job’ consists in delivering leaflets around Liverpool for a fast food shop, the kind of unsolicited and annoying promotional stuff all of us often find in the box mail.

For £20 a day, Maxi has to deliver one thousand leaflets, a hard task, especially for someone whose health is still suffering from the injuries sustained back in his country, courtesy of the political enemies who did not share his views.

However, and against the odds, Maxi stoically manages to deliver them, if only to prove to this country that he is an honest man who feels betrayed by a system that refuses to believe his claims.

I can clearly see this when – in an unexpected confession after a hard day’s work, he openly talks about his life – which he describes as a “dog’s life”, confined to an underground existence, far from the hectic and respected professional life he once enjoyed.

In Britain, he has been reduced to nothing; an outcast, an asylum seeker, but one whose chances have been squashed; a man strangled by a present, terrified by a bleak and uncertain future.

Over the months spent with whom by now is considered a friend, I met other people in similar circumstances, people from a range of countries and backgrounds. People from Iran, Russia, Cameroon, Poland, some of them even stateless, people fighting for survival in hostile conditions, all of them roaming the streets of Liverpool, trying to fill their time as best as they can.

These are people who are in public libraries, in benches in a park or working if they can, sleeping in someone else’s spare rooms, unable to take their destiny in their own hands, trapped in a vicious circle, a limbo of unbearable uncertainty, waiting for a final decision, perhaps a deportation order – or who knows? – the dreamed leave to remain.

In a poignant moment in Ken Loach’s latest film, a character who earns a living by exploiting desperate migrants tries to justify her actions by claiming that we live in a free world and nobody forces them to work for her.

A free world it may be for some, but it is clear that this is not true for everyone, as Maxi knows all too well.

Find out more:
www.stillhuman.org.uk (Campaign to end the destitution of refused asylum seekers)
www.strangersintocitizens.org.uk (Call for a pathway to legal status for long-term migrants)

Kamal Begi: deportation

Ellie Keen — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 23:42:38 +0000

Kamal Begi, a Brampton Manor student, and his uncle have lost all their appeals for asylum and are under threat of deportation, despite having lived in the UK for over six years. When they arrived in January 2002, they were granted leave to remain for a year and then later refused indefinite leave to remain.

Kamal says that his father and one uncle were murdered by the Taliban and he was threatened by having a gun held to his head. His family decided that, for his own safety, he needed to leave. The family is Hazara, a Shia grouping which has, allegedly, been subjected to ethnic cleansing by the Taliban. Kamal left his mother and three younger brothers to travel with an uncle by a tortuous route through many countries to arrive in the UK and seek asylum.

Kamal, who joined his local Brampton Manor School in East Ham, London in September 2003, is now leaving Year 11, having taken his GCSEs. He is expected to do well and has been accepted by Newham 6th Form College where he plans to take his ‘A’ levels and later hopes to go to university and read business studies and information technology.

The school has already collected over a thousand signatures on a petition for him to stay which was handed to Lyn Brown MP at the House of Commons on 24 June.

Below we publish excerpts from letters written by fellow students campaigning for Kamal’s right to stay.

‘I have known Kamal for 5 years and as long as I have known him for he has not caused any trouble in or outside school … All he has ever done since he has come to this country is try and work hard to the best of his ability … please do not make him another statistic in Afghanistan … I and a lot of other people will be devastated if you take him away from us.’

‘He is a peaceful young boy with a chance to better his life in this country, he has built bonds with so many people including me. I have known him for 5 years now and would like to know him for the rest of time.’

‘He has always stood beside me when I was in trouble … the best memory of him was when we were in central London and we got lost, it took us 2 hours to find our way back. While I was panicking Kamal was keeping me calm.’

‘Me and Kamal have a very good memory. We both had some history.’

‘What’s the point him going back now. There’s war going on in his country, his life is in danger there.’

‘I started new and I never had friends. Kamal was my first friend. I never got along with no one. He was my first friend in Brampton Manor … he inspires people. If Kamal leaves then nothing will be the same without him.’

‘This person is always willing to go an extra mile to achieve best results. Kamal is an inspiration to the community and many children look up to him … He always used to help me. In maths lessons he was like my personal teacher … in ICT we used to have a laugh between ourselves.’

‘Kamal has been a close friend of mine for five years. He has helped me out in difficult situations and resolves things for me. When I need help on any of my work he tells me what to do and also helps other classmates. So here I am trying to say he is a great, loving and caring person so he should be allowed to stay … Our school has prepared a petition and of that doesn’t work out we are willing to go further because we won’t give up.’

Please support Kamal Begi’s campaign and sign the petition.

Outsourcing Abuse

Ellie Keen — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:46:36 +0000

Executive Summary

Background

Last autumn, 2007, stories hit the headlines about alleged assaults and beatings of asylum seekers by security guards employed by private companies contracted to run immigration detention centres or to escort detainees being moved between centres or when being removed from the UK.

In October 2007, an article in the Independent made reference to campaigners having a “dossier” of 200 alleged assault cases. The Home Office said the assault allegations were “unsupported assertions” and that if there was evidence of mistreatment they would expect it to be provided to them for investigation. In many cases, those alleging assaults had already lodged complaints, providing information to the Home Office and asking them to investigate, but where followed up by the Home Office, the complaints had largely been dismissed. The Complaints Audit Committee, set up to monitor the Home Office’s procedures for investigating complaints about the conduct of staff, informed us that there were about 190 complaints about alleged assaults in the previous 12 months.

In October 2007, we did not have permission from all those alleging the assaults to provide the Home Office with further information. We have since sought their permission where possible and now present findings from our dossier that has reached nearly 300 cases of alleged assault. Many additional allegations of assault have been reported to us that we simply have not had the resources to consider and therefore have not been included in the dossier. Because of this, coupled with the fact that other victims are fearful of coming forward, we feel our dossier is just the tip of the iceberg.

We have found an alarming and unacceptable number of injuries have been sustained by those subject to forced removals. This dossier provides evidence of widespread and seemingly systemic abuse of one of the most vulnerable communities of people in our society, who have fled their own countries seeking safety and refuge. The alleged assaults took place between January 2004 and June 2008. In addition to our findings, 48 detailed case studies are included in Part 2.

Key findings

In all cases in our dossier, what may have started off as ‘reasonable’ force1 turned into what we consider to be excessive force.
One asylum seeker ended up with his leg in a plaster cast and a woman was pushed through airports in a wheelchair after having allegedly been assaulted. The most common form of injury recorded resulted from inappropriate use of handcuffing, including swelling and cuts to the wrist, sometimes leading to longlasting nerve damage. Other injuries included bruising and swelling to the face and fractures to the wrists, ribs or ankles. Often psychological consequences resulted, such as the onset or exacerbation of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), panic attacks, suicidal feelings and depression.
66 % of alleged assaults were against men and 34 % against women.
48% of the assaults occurred at the airport before the detainee was placed on the plane and 12 % took place in the transport van on the way to the airport. 24% of alleged assaults took place on the aeroplane before take-off and 3% after take-off. 7% took place in the van back to the detention centre after the removal had already failed and 6 % took place within detention centres.
Allegations of assault were made by people from over 41 counties. Almost three quarters of these were from Africa. The most common nationalities of those being removed were Ugandan, Nigerian, Cameroonian, Congolese (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Jamaican.
There were 27 alleged incidents involving families, comprising a total of 42 children, 5 of whom are alleged to have been assaulted themselves.
Many of those assaulted made allegations of racism against the escort; there are repeated accounts of abusive language used such as “black bitch” and “black monkey, go back to your own country.”
Alleged assaults took place on scheduled airline flights, charter flights and military planes. Private jets have also been arranged to remove people from the UK. It is not known exactly how many airlines are contracted to carry out this task, or how much they are paid, but the costs run into millions of pounds each year.
Few asylum seekers are able to make a complaint or seek redress. The relevant procedures and legal process are complex and not perceived to be independent. There is evidence that asylum seekers lodging complaints are subject to harassment and further abuse. Many victims are already traumatised and see no option but to try to simply forget what has happened.
The authorities appear reluctant to investigate reported assaults which often happen behind closed doors, with no witnesses. Cell mates who witness assaults may be quickly moved to another centre or deported. CCTV evidence miraculously disappears or is conveniently obsured at the crucial moment. In most cases allegations of assault were not upheld following investigation, although in some cases, there were concerns about the inadequacy of the investigation.
There is evidence that the police do not take allegations seriously. In some cases where the detainee reported the matter to the police, counter allegations of assault were made against the detainee. In a number of cases, detainees who have complained have been charged and prosecuted, although none we are aware of have been convicted. A number of people alleging assault have been able to bring a civil action cases, some of which have settled out of court. We are not aware, however, of any security guards or their employers being prosecuted for any assault related offence under the criminal law. Our evidence suggests that immigration detainees do not have equal access to the law.

Summary

Asylum applications are a 14-year low, yet the proportional use of detention has increased 7-fold. The government is driven by seemingly arbitrary targets on deportation and has just announced a near doubling of detention centre capacity. “Mass deportations” may follow if the government puts into effect its announcement made in August 2007 to deal with 450,000 unresolved asylum cases within 5 years or less. The increased use of detention and target-driven deportations may lead to further injuries and assault allegations.

There have been numerous inquiries into alleged abuse of immigration detainees over the years but we see no improvement.

While the practice of using private companies for running detention centres and escorting of forced removals may contribute to a certain level of “see no evil, hear no evil”, our understanding is that the Home Office is aware of an unacceptable level of alleged abuse through its own complaints procedure.

We consider the evidence in this report reveals what may amount to state sanctioned violence, for which ultimate responsibility lies with the Home Office.

Link to complete report

Harriet Wistrich, Birnberg Peirce & Partners.
Dr. Frank Arnold, Medical Justice.
Emma Ginn, National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns.
Contact: info@medicaljustice.org.uk
Tel: 07786 517379

Brutality and Fear

Ellie Keen — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:27:34 +0000

The human costs of dawn raids

There are some statistics that the New Labour government makes sure the public know about. The constant rise in the number of police officers patrolling British streets for example; the number of arrests that these police officers carry out; or the relentless year by year increase in people incarcerated in prisons up and down the country. Another of these statistics is the number of people that are removed from the UK. The higher the figure, the better; and last year this statistic reached an all time high. Every eight minutes a person was removed, one way or another, from the country.

According to the Home Office, these numbers equate, quite simply, to a form of success: evidence that ‘strong controls are working’. So it is ironic that the means through which these figures are realised are shrouded in secrecy and misinformation. Dawn raids – or to use their official term ‘enforcement visits’ – are rarely discussed in the same self-congratulatory tones as the aims they supposedly achieve. And there is a reason for this. They are brutal. They rip people from their homes at the time that is least expected. And they tear families apart from each other; sometimes never to see each other again.

Dawn raids have emerged as a central facet of New Labour’s asylum and immigration policies, with little semblance of public debate. Statistics are not available to the public, yet what evidence there is suggests that dawn raids are carried out at rapid pace. Records of the number of dawn raids have only been made available since April 2005, but in the House of Commons in 2007, the Minister of State for Borders and Immigration explained that 8,100 ‘enforcement operations’ were carried out before 8 am in 2006. On average, that is roughly twenty-two dawn raids a day. Dawn raids are carried out explicitly for the purposes of detention and removal. Yet of these 8,100 conducted, only 2,009 led to arrests. A ‘success’ rate that equates to roughly one out of every four suggests that they are – from one perspective – an ineffective way of meeting government targets for ‘removing more failed asylum seekers than new anticipated unfounded applications’. Yet it is exactly these targets that continue to justify their use. Ensuring the former figure is higher than the latter is described as ‘public performance’ and according to Liz Fekete from the Institute of Race Relations, ensures that ‘[i]n the process, the fact that those who seek refuge…are human beings, not mere statistics, is lost’.

This reduction of people to statistics covers a horrifying level of abuse, harm, and fear. As stated above, dawn raids are particularly barbaric. They are carried out in the early morning – when people are most likely to be at home, asleep, and disorientated – apparently in ‘the interests of health and safety and to help minimise disruption’. But the reality of dawn raids suggests that health and safety is far down the list of priorities. For example, the 1993 raid on immigraion overstayer Joy Gardner led to her death, after she was placed in a body belt, had her wrists, thighs and ankles tied to handcuffs and belts, and thirteen feet of tape wrapped around her mouth to stop her making any noise.

Statistics for the number and nature of complaints made by people in relation to dawn raids are not available. But work by the Border and Immigration Agency Complaints Audit Committee gives some idea of mechanisms of redress. In their 2006/7 Annual Report the Complaints Audits Committee emphasised that 20% of records of complaints against BIA had gone ‘missing’ (although this was later reduced to 15%), and of complaints against arrest teams their audit sample showed that ‘none was handled in time’. Of overall complaints, those of criminal behaviour (some of which were assault) rose 7% from the previous year.

Where there is hope though, it rests within continuing actions of campaigners, many of whom are in the asylum process, who continue to display solidarity, raise awareness, and resist. In doing so, they emphasise not only their refusal to succumb to one of the fiercest tools available to the Home Office; but the wider polices in which these activities are concretely embedded.

42 days? Try 18 months

Ellie Keen — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:57:10 +0000

Until the end of the second world war Europe was a continent of emigrants. Millions left for the Americas: some to colonise, others to escape hunger, financial crises, persecution, ethnic cleansing, war or totalitarian governments.

European citizens arrived in Latin and North America en masse, without visas or conditions imposed on them by the authorities. They were simply welcomed, and continue to be in Latin America. They came to exploit the natural wealth and to transfer it to Europe, with a high cost for the native population. Yet the people, property and rights of the migrants were always respected.

Contrast the European “return directive”, to be voted on in the European parliament this week. It imposes harsh terms for detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants, regardless of the time they have spent in European countries, their work situation, their family ties or their achievements in integrating themselves into local society.

The EU is now the main destination for migrants around the world, because of its positive image of space, prosperity and public freedom. The great majority of migrants contribute to, rather than exploit, this prosperity.

They are employed in public works, construction, cleaning, hospitals and domestic work. They take the jobs the Europeans cannot or will not do. Maintaining the relationship between the employed and the retired by providing generous income to the social security system, the migrant offers a solution to demographic and financial problems in the EU.

For us, our emigrants represent help in development that Europeans do not give us (few countries reach the minimum objective of 0.7% of GDP in development assistance). Latin America received, in 2006, a total of $68bn sent back from abroad, more than the total foreign investment in our countries. My country, Bolivia, received more than 10% of its GDP in such remittances.

Unfortunately, the return directive is a huge infringement of the human rights of our Latin American friends. It proposes jailing undocumented immigrants for up to 18 months before their expulsion. Mothers with children could be arrested, without regard to family and school, and put in detention centres, where we know depression, hunger strikes and suicides happen. How can we accept it?

At the same time, the EU is trying to convince the Andean Community of Nations (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru) to sign an “association agreement” that includes a free trade agreement of a similar nature to that imposed by the US. We are under intense pressure to accept demands for liberalisation of our trade, financial services, intellectual property rights and public works. Under so-called “judicial protection” we are being pressured to denationalise water, gas and telecommunications. Where is the “judicial protection” for our people seeking new horizons in Europe?

If the return directive becomes law, we will not be morally able to deepen negotiations with the EU, and we reserve the right to legislate so European citizens have the same obligations for visas that Europe imposes on the Bolivians, according to the diplomatic principle of reciprocity.

The social cohesion problems that Europe is suffering now are not the fault of migrants, but the result of the model of development imposed by the north, which destroys the planet and dismembers human societies. I appeal to European leaders to drop this directive and instead form a migration policy that respects human rights, and allows us to maintain the movement of people that helps both continents.

Evo Morales Ayma is the president of the Republic of Bolivia presidencia.gov.bo

For more information on the Returns Directive, see No Fortress Europe‘s site – and sign the petition!

Asylum: The Myth of Sharing

Ellie Keen — Sat, 31 May 2008 21:06:51 +0000

Have you ever wondered why as children we’re taught the importance and value of sharing? I have and it seems somewhat misplaced; it’s not as if as adults we have any need for such a value.

The much-lauded childhood principle of sharing runs contrary to those principles we practise as grown-ups. As adults we are scared about what the next man has, we envy his lot. We are scared about what sharing might do to our children’s futures. Those very children who think sharing is so important. So while as children we equate goodness with generosity, as adults we try very hard to undo this philosophy. Bizarrely this seems to work.

As a nation we generally object to sharing, we’re scared of sharing, we don’t want to share – and certainly not with asylum seekers. We fear them, certainly, but we don’t understand them. We’re fed distorted figures and facts about the ubiquitous asylum seeker – rich, happy, with shelter and education; thousands of them, our country being undone from its core.

We couldn’t be more wrong and further from the truth, and it’s tragic that the more information we’re given, the further from the truth we get. Asylum seekers are denied everything. They are denied the right to a voice, denied the right to rights, denied the right to live.

Our government and media are obsessed with numbers and so if they really want to talk numbers the truth is that England is ranked 8th in Europe in terms of how many refugees we do welcome and barely takes in 2% of the world’s asylum seeking population. But still we’re scared.

What is forgotten amidst this obsession with statistics is that seeking asylum is an international human right. There can be no ‘bogus’ asylum seeker. There should be – and cannot be – a debate regarding who is eligible for compassion and humanity. We are all equal, all human. At least that’s what we’re taught as children.

Germain, Esthery and Fungi – three friends at the University of Leeds – are all currently guests of the Geography department there. They study hard for a qualification they will not be accredited and live on £35 Morrison’s supermarket vouchers a week. They are unable to work and are even forbidden from doing unpaid or voluntary work. They are unable to move and live with the fear of deportation. They are all asylum seekers. But the media does not seem to want this side of their story. Perhaps our lack of compassion would embarrass us.

Germain fled from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Esthery and Fungi escaped from Zimbabwe. All three were activists in their native countries. Knowing the risk and the danger to their lives, they sought to protest against the brutal regimes that they and others around them were living with. For this they were all forced to flee their homeland – leaving everything and everyone they knew behind.

In talking to Germain, Esthery and Fungi the idea of humanity and compassion is a subject that we touch upon time and time again. Britain, a nation that seeks to criticise countries for their lack of human rights and humanity, will at the same time refuse people who have fled those very countries seeking asylum. To them the notion of human rights is painfully obvious and contradictory. We have to ask ourselves are human rights real or are they just another fallacy like sharing? If they are to exist there cannot be one rule for some and another for the rest.

There seem to be many contradictory rules, many double standards that we use in dealing with those seeking asylum. Holidaying (for British citizens) in DRC or Zimbabwe is a no-no, too dangerous and unsafe, not possible (I have heard that deportation escorts themselves will not venture into Zimbabwe – they leave their prisoners stranded in Nairobi instead).

Germain knows only too well the dangers in the DRC; his life is still in danger if he returns but yet he lives in constant fear with the threat of deportation hanging over him. Germain arrived in England, at Heathrow airport in January 2005. But his story starts much before then when in June 2004 government forces in his hometown of Kamanyola accused the people there of supporting a dissident general opposing the government. As punishment for their supposed disloyalty government soldiers brutally raped, tortured and beat almost everyone. If they did not comply, the alternative was death.

In October of the same year, the People’s Party (for whom Germain was the mobiliser and his father the secretary) organised a demonstration in order to stand up for those people who were helpless against these attacks. The demonstration was broken up immediately. The party leader was shot dead at the scene. On November 3rd, Germain’s father was arrested and on the 4th his father’s body was found – beheaded. None of Germain’s family – his mother, his siblings, his wife and his children – was able to attend the funeral because of the danger to Germain and themselves.

His family was forced to flee to another part of the DRC and after a few weeks, Germain was arrested there. His sister, who was in the house, was also arrested. After more than a month of being beaten every day, after being fed only bananas, after being sexually assaulted, he was freed along with his 15-year-old sister who was also sexually assaulted and repeatedly raped.

In the Congo, as well as a school teacher and an activist Germain was also a choir-master. An Italian priest he knew very well, under the pretext of getting medical attention which they were in desperate need of secured their release. It was then that Germain escaped with his sister from these most brutal and unimaginable tortures to England – where his claim was denied.

In 2006 an article appeared on a French news website which reported that Germain is still a wanted man. Even though he fled a year prior the authorities are still searching for him. The article also told of how his mother was raped and murdered and that his wife and three young children were kidnapped as bait for Germain to return. He still has no idea as to what has happened to them. Tragically it was this article that allowed him to make a fresh claim with the Home Office and still two years later he has not heard anything.

Germain says he demonstrated ‘as a human rights activist, as a political activist to stand for these voiceless people’. For this, he goes on to say he has lost everything. But not only has he lost everything, he is denied anything here. Germain asks a poignant question; ‘who is the killer between you who is deporting me and the one who is the torturer there?’ How many of us would be that brave I wonder. Germain, as well as Esthery and Fungi have shown remarkable bravery. In a society where we protest by the dozen and shop in our millions, would we do the same?

A common myth about those seeking asylum is that their lives were simply static before they arrived in England. That somehow they have chosen to be an asylum seeker. Esthery says, ‘I was happy with my family back home but I had no choice in standing up for my country’. Esthery owned her own hairdressing salon in Zimbabwe; she had a daughter who was 10 when she arrived in England in 2002 that she was forced to leave behind.

Esthery protested against Mugabe’s regime with the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) – the opposition party. She held meetings, distributed flyers, sold cards and t-shirts, all in her own salon and all in protest against Mugabe. The ruling party became aware of this and between 2000 and 2001 Esthery’s shop was continuously targeted. She was ordered to stop her involvement with the MDC. Bravely she didn’t but as a consequence her salon was burned down, her house was destroyed and she was beaten.

MDC officials were warned that her life was in danger and in 2002 she arrived at Gatwick airport. From there she was moved continually – unable to feel safe and put down any roots – to London, Birmingham, Liverpool, and then Yarlswood detention centre for two months.

She launched a fresh claim in 2005 and like Germain is left with no clue as to what will happen to her, straddling a no-man’s-land with no rights. In October this year she tells me she will have been in England for six years. In that time she has been destitute and is only in minimal contact with her daughter for both their safety.

For the past six years Esthery, like her fellow asylum seekers has been unable to work, to study or to live. She has continually been on anti-depressants, constantly suffers headaches and is always fearful as to what will happen to her next. This system she says is ‘killing her silently’.

Fungi, from Zimbabwe as well, was also locked up in Yarlswood detention centre. She was detained for seven months in 2004. Fungi had to flee for the same reasons as Germain and Esthery – for standing up against a regime, for herself, and for others who were powerless to do anything. She arranged rallies, gave out pamphlets, organised demonstrations – all in the hope of making a change.

Like Esthery she was targeted by the ruling party and it became a matter of survival that she escape. Fungi tells me that she didn’t believe the danger she was actually in until she was threatened with a machete at her throat. She had no choice but to run away. Her uncle, who was also involved with the opposition party, had already fled and claimed asylum in England.

Arriving in England in 2002 Fungi stayed with her uncle in Nottingham and until December 2004 she was hidden. However, after a stop and search on their way to church, Fungi was arrested. Fungi tells me she had never been to a police cell in her life until that point. She was kept in a Nottingham police cell for a whole week. It was following this that the real torture began – in Yarlswood detention centre. During her time there, Fungi was given details of four separate flights on which she was told she would be deported.

On April 21st 2005 three escorts took Fungi to Heathrow airport so that she could board a plane back to Zimbabwe. As she was escorted out of the centre she didn’t say anything, she tells me, because she knew they beat detainees and taped their mouths. At the airport she asked to use the toilet. She was refused that request. When she saw the plane and the boarding entrance, she tells me she started struggling. Understandably, she did not want to go to a place where she would inevitably be tortured or killed.

As she started resisting, the escorts beat her, sat her in the rear of plane with her head in her knees and all of them punching her. All of their hands were on her face, her nose and her mouth so she couldn’t breathe. She was forced to bite one of them so she could inhale and at this they started screaming at her and pulled her braids.

An air hostess luckily saw all this and refused to allow them and Fungi on the plane. In the van the beating continued, they pulled her handcuffs until her wrists bled, the escorts raised the volume of the radio so no one could hear her screaming. When she arrived at the centre again she was given no treatment other than painkillers. In July 2005, Fungi managed to win a civil case against the escorts that so brutally and humiliatingly abused her – as an asylum seeker she was not allowed to receive any compensation.

There are three hundred documented cases of assault and abuse in detention centres, nation-wide. But we don’t hear about these stories. In our solipsistic society, after years of education we know more and more about less and less. We don’t know what our neighbour has experienced, we don’t know how asylum seekers are living, many of whom are destitute and living like this for years. Perhaps we are too scared to find out.

We don’t know that life for people like Germain, Esther and Fungi is unimaginable. The torture hasn’t ended by escaping, in some ways it has only just begun. All three are forced to live on £35 Morrissons’ supermarket vouchers a week. They are not allowed to work. They are unable to move. They are denied an education. They have been denied humanity in every respect. This life is impossible for most and yet they do it. This proves nothing except the human spirit’s resilience and will to survive. However it is not without consequences – we are killing them all silently.

Fungi and Esther told me about the work camps in Zimbabwe that they will be sent to if they are deported – above them a plaque which translated reads ‘You have achieved nothing’. But that’s not true; Esther, Fungi, and Germain have achieved so much. They were brave enough to protest against brutality and even now, all three are still fighting with what strength they have left to remain here without the fear of deportation.

They have achieved so much with what little they are given – imagine what they could achieve if they are allowed to stay.

Author’s note: Thank you very much to Germain Naruhana, Mafungasei ‘Fungi’ Maikokera, and Esthery Murumbi who were kind enough to let me write this.

Snatch of the Day

Ellie Keen — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:01:42 +0000

As protests target refugee deportation dawn raids

“Following on from the successful day of action on UN International Migrant’s Day on 18th December last year, we want to maintain the pressure on the frontline agencies of so-called ‘Managed Migration’.”

Paul Johnson from the UK No Borders Network.

Protests against the forced removal of migrant families have been continuing (see SchNEWS 618), with a second ‘UK-Wide Day of Action Against Immigration Snatch Squads’ taking place last Thursday. The actions happened in the early hours in order to intercept snatch squads as they attempted to leave on dawn raids to forcibly take asylum seekers into custody for deportation.

Although activists found themselves being greeted by numerous police vans when they arrived at the Norman House removal centre in Portsmouth, campaigners in Newcastle and Cardiff had more success.

Protestors from the South Wales No Borders network successfully blockaded the Cardiff offices of the Border and Immigration Agency (BIA) from 5am, preventing snatch squads from leaving the building and holding a picket outside.

In North Shields, Northumberland, activists managed to blockade the car park of the Northumberland House reporting centre, while in Newcastle there were banner drops from key locations around the city.

The Leeds No Borders group made their move the following day with a demonstration outside the Waterside Court reporting centre. Leaflets were handed out to the staff and a stall was set up providing information about anti-deportation campaigns and the No Borders network. A ‘Free Shop’ was also set up and food and drinks were provided for those having to sign.

In Portsmouth however, activists had less luck and were pulled up by three van loads of coppers as they were approaching the Norman House removal centre. Their van was searched for articles used to commit ‘criminal damage’ under Section 1 of PACE (The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 – the one that gives cops all their stop’n‘search-for-no-particular-reason powers, and recently amended to mean that, in the event of arrest, the right to legal aid has now become the right to ring a call centre – see SchNEWS 618). All their D-locks, chains and arm tubes were confiscated.

Harsh Penalty

The Cardiff blockade was drawing attention to the recent deportation of Ghanaian woman Ama Sumani, who was being treated for cancer at the University Hospital of Wales when she was forcibly sent back to her homeland in January. With the necessary drugs for her treatment unavailable in Ghana, she died on March 20th – ironically just days after her family had learnt that fundraising on Ama’s behalf had raised £70,000. The Lancet medical journal called the removal “atrocious barbarism” and even rock guru Sting was up in arms.

The BIA was unmoved though, with its boss, Lin Homer, telling MPs that there was nothing important about Ama’s case that stood out from the pile of other deportations in her out-tray. Instead, Home Office minister Alun Michael put the blame on Ghana for not providing free medical care and told the public that the real question was, “whether it’s right for somebody who has no right to be in this country to be given medical treatment” – errr, if they’re dying of cancer Alun, here at SchNEWS towers we think that’s an unreserved ‘yes’.

Meanwhile Alun Michael’s sponsors in the boardrooms of the City of London continue to clobber Ghana with more than £2 billion of debt – four times the country’s annual health budget … but that’s another story.

Early Kick Off

Not content with picking on the terminally ill, the newly formed UK Border Agency also happens to snatch kids from their beds as part of the ‘managed system of migration’. Careful not to get a bad press for snatching children from the class room (or risk solidarity actions from other parents), BIA goons prefer to remove the family as a whole while the rest of the world snoozes in bed. But not everyone’s been sleeping – with further dawn actions in Glasgow and Newcastle keeping immigration offi cials fi rmly in the office and migrant families in their homes – at least for a little while longer.

Some of the migrants facing an early morning wrestle for their freedom already have UK passports. Often leave to remain in the UK is dependent on toeing the line and forced removals of people busted merely for a traffic offence have taken place. Even if you’ve got an appeal pending you can be sent to a detention centre pending ‘removal.’ The Home Office has not yet contracted out the removals system to the private sector, but to keep some of the expenditure ‘off the balance sheet’ – as party-donating corporations profi t from taxpayers money and provide revolving door jobs for their political chums – they have handed over the refugee detention centres to become a nice little earner for companies like Serco (See SchNEWS 545).

Amongst their huge portfolio of publicspirited contracts – from nuclear weapons to surveillance to offender tagging to waste management to railways (see SchNEWS 497) – Serco run detention centres including Colnbrook and Yarl’s Wood, which is currently home to hunger striking mothers in the centre’s ‘family unit’. Seven women, including two mothers still breastfeeding, have been starving themselves to highlight the brutality of the Serco regime and, in particular, the forced removal of a Burundian woman and her baby on 17th April. In their petition the women say, “They treat us like animals. We are claiming asylum, we’re not animals. They treat us as if we’ve done something terrible.” And shareholders get paid dividents from this line of work…

Can’t believe that UK plc snatches kids from beds and deports the terminally ill to certain death? No Borders are keeping up the pressure – why not get involved with your local group or set one up?

See www.noborders.org.uk for more

Few Safeguards for Asylum-Seeking Children

Ellie Keen — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:23:01 +0000

An investigation by 11 Million, the organisation led by the Children’s Commissioner, found that children’s basic needs for food, accommodation and legal advice were often not met. The report suggested that ignoring these basic needs impacted upon children’s ability to understand and contribute to their screening interviews.

Most unaccompanied child asylum seekers are trafficked or smuggled into the UK and therefore do not claim asylum at the border. The report assessed how children were treated when they presented themselves at the Asylum Screening Unit in Croydon.

One of the greatest concerns regarded the issue of establishing age. Observers from 11 Million found that too much discretion was given to immigration officers in deciding age-disputed cases. Establishing an applicant’s age is critical for deciding whether he/she should be provided with accommodation and accompanied by a ‘responsible adult’ during interviews. While policy mandates that children at asylum screening units are entitled to a ‘responsible adult’ to guide them through the screening process, no such protection exists for age-disputed applicants, even though their age is undecided.

The report also highlighted other problems detrimental to children’s well-being. In the screening units there is a separate waiting room for children but no food is available and no signs for where food or toilets can be found. The 11 Million observers found that children were unlikely to ask for food in such an intimidating, formal environment and that their hunger would negatively impact upon their screening interviews. The observers found that the whole process was too long for children, particularly when they had the added anxiety about where they would be accommodated that night and where they could get food from.

The 11 Million observers found that no written policy exists on how staff should conduct interviews with children, which results in inconsistencies and excessively long interviews. There were also problems found with the content of those interviews. Screening interviews are only intended to establish the applicants’ identity and how they made their way to the UK; it should not involve questions on asylum claims. However, in one case, observed by an 11 Million employee, an applicant was asked eighteen questions about his asylum claim without the benefit of prior legal advice. This information can then be used in deciding an applicant’s asylum claim.

The report which described the current process as ‘frightening, confusing [and] intimidating’ recommended that children’s immediate needs for food, accommodation, cleanliness and legal representation should be prioritised before the lengthy process begins.

Download a copy of Claiming asylum at a screening unit as an unaccompanied child by the Children’s Commissioner for England, (pdf file, 480kb)