Action! Change!
These have been the most repeated words from mouth to mouth within the overcrowded hall of the Hammersmith Town Hall. A huge amount of people, a endless mix of colours and cultures, an amazing number of different charities and associations from all over West London met yesterday, on 18th November, to make their voices hear and to demonstrate that all together we can turn London into a better place.
There were people helping gamblers, people defenders of our roads safety, people fighting for our dignity supporting the London Living Wage.
MRCF was there with more than 25 people and all attenders to the course in Digital Activism! What better opportunity for us, newly arrived digital activist!
Clara, Simin and I were there. Three different stories, three different continents, one commitment: make people aware of the hard conditions asylum claimers whose asylum has been denied or who are waiting for a bail are submitted in the British centres of detention.
Not only hard conditions, but indefinite conditions.
Without having committed a real crime, they are detained in a centre of detention without any limits of time. They can be made aware of their future in one month as well as in three years.
Is it fair for the homeland of the modern democracy?
What do we ask?
We asked:
What is your opinion about AS detention?
How long do you think it should be humanly to stay in detention, away from family?
What can we do about it?
Surprisingly some people were not aware or at least did not know much about them.
An elderly couple who did not know much about it said: they think there are stages after being detained, and this should be done and wait for authority to decide when to deport them (not a very vice advise!!) .
An American said that No one should be detained especially children, this is against human rights.
"Detainees should not stay more than a month in detention centre and their case should be processed and dealt with as soon as they have been detained."
"I don’t know who is in charge with detainees but whoever is should make the process faster and not let detainees stay in more than a month"
We also interviewed Mr Julian Fletcher from the UK Border Agency.
Mr Fletcher said: “we don’t have Indefinite Detention (?!); we usually deal with AS detainees’ cases within 3 months.”
AS can make an application to the Chief Immigration Officer for bail. There is no court hearing for CIO bail, and the decision on whether or not to grant bail is made by the CIO. He said that they are doing their best to make the procedure shorter.
Mr Fletcher works for Hounslow area and he did not know about the length of detention in other areas of the UK.
Well, Mr Fletcher, no indefinite detention in the UK? cases dealt with whithin three months? Please, check at detainedlives.org!
Simin, Clara, Fausto
Well done Fausto, its great.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your hard work.
Simin
Fantastic blog you describe spot on the atmosphere of the event and all the good work West London Citizens are doing. I came away feeling so uplifted and want to spread the word about the Organisation.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all I would like to congratulate Simin, Carla and Fausto for the brilliant work you have done on the Blog. I would like to appologise for not been there.
ReplyDeleteOnly one comment about The UKBA representative when he said detainees can apply for bail from CIO, but he forgot to mention that you need to support your bail application with at least £1000.00 as a surety. Any way brilliant job.
Excellent post. Well done team!
ReplyDeleteThank you to Fausto and Simin,was great have you in the team.
ReplyDeleteWe can do?
As part of the Big Society, if our present government is serious about this concept, our response to asylum seekers should recognize that under international law, anyone has the right to apply for asylum in any country that has signed the 1951 Convention and to remain there until the authorities have assessed their claim. There is a cost to this but it is part of the cost of a civilized society. We should work against media reports that cast asylum seekers as villains and scroungers. We should support those organizations that work in the interests of asylum seekers, eg, the Refugee Council, etc.