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Picket of Communications House 15 December Over forty women and men joined a noisy and colourful demonstration outside Communications House, the Immigration Services offices, in Old Street on Thursday 15 December. Placards, chanting, drumming, dancing and leafleting drew attention to this anonymous-looking office block where, unknown to the thousands of people living, working or travelling past this very busy part of central London, asylum seekers have to "report" to the Home Office on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. For so-called "failed asylum seekers", whose cases have been closed often because they have no lawyer or terrible legal representation, Communications House is a place of terror and dread. Even those who have managed to find lawyers to reopen their asylum claims face the terrifying possibility of being taken into detention every time they go there to report. Sick people are told to bring their medication with them and mothers, their children, so there is no obstacle to anyone, no matter how ill and vulnerable, being detained when they report. Behind the building, vans await the next load of passengers to take to Yarl's Wood or other 'removal' centres where they will be held whilst arrangements are made to deport them back to the countries they fled. Twenty women from the All African Women's Group joined the demonstration with their children, several of whom have to report to Communications House themselves. They described movingly how having fled to the UK to escape rape and other violence, they instead faced yet more terror in the UK, including at Communications House. Former detainees from Uganda and Zimbabwe who had been on hunger strike, spoke about their protests against being sent back to countries where they had suffered so much. The demonstration was inspired to hear from David O'Reilly, Positive Action in Housing in Scotland, who spoke about the dynamic and highly successful weekly pickets of the "reporting" Immigration Service offices in Glasgow, where protesters had repeatedly padlocked themselves to the gates of the building to prevent the vans leaving, which take people to detention. |